Accessibility guidelines for digital content turns 10 this year – the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) became an ISO standard in 2012. The start of the W3C initiative was in 1995, with version 1.0 published in 1999. Yes, accessibility standards have been around that long! Yet my industry experience tells me that many development teams still don’t think of accessibility until way too late in the product roadmap. The product managers discover that they will need to spend an inordinate amount of time retrofitting their digital products or upgrading their code to meet accessibility standards.
Accessibility is a legal requirement for both organisations public and private sectors across North America and the UK and Europe. It’s not a surprise, then, that lawsuits against companies for accessibility shortfalls rose 64% in the first half of 2021. As the saying goes, you can pay for a lawsuit that you’ll definitely lose and then fix the problem, or you can just fix the problem.
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/
Increased accessibility lawsuits (Wall Street Journal) https://www.wsj.com/articles/lawsuits-over-digital-accessibility-for-people-with-disabilities-are-rising-11626369056
How to make a product accessible
Companies who think that fixing their accessibility problems simply means checking against colour contrast and colour-blindness charts and adding alt-text fields to their digital assets will be sorely disappointed. Aside from the easily-fixable misuse of alt text fields for citations and inside jokes, there are ninety other guidelines that also need attention.
Rather than fixing individual accessibility problems as they arise, it’s best to work out an accessibility strategy that looks at a product or service holistically. This approach lets you embed accessibility from inside out: from the code to the design to interactions, to reach the “ignored minority” – 1.85 billion disabled people in the US alone. Here are five aspects to consider when creating your accessibility strategy.
Misuse of alt text (Wall Street Journal) https://www.wsj.com/articles/misuse-of-twitters-alt-text-feature-draws-criticism-from-accessibility-advocates-11657879200?cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_2&cx_artPos=1&mod=WTRN#cxrecs_s
The ignored minority of people with disabilities (Svetla Kouznetsova on Twitter) https://twitter.com/svknyc/status/1549430300555575296
1. Choose your expertise with care
Consulting with accessibility experts is more than paying lip service to your strategy. The depth of knowledge that accessibility experts, particularly those who have had to navigate those accessibility issues daily, can greatly shortcut your road to accessibility compliance. Let’s look at two examples of deeper knowledge of how to do accessibility with integrity.
- Digital designer Chiara Angori discusses the nuance involved in communicating through sign language, and how easy it is fall into the “UX theater” of assuming that having used a resource for a short time is a substitute for the experience of someone who lives it daily. https://medium.com/doctolib/how-learning-a-sign-language-made-me-a-better-designer-dc42e564bfe1
- Accessibility consultant Svetlana Kouznetsova, who is also deaf, explains the difference in the usefulness of edited captioning over auto-captioning. The related business benefits are aspects off accessibility compliance that companies often don’t consider.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ngKp9M1UGj8
Engaging an accessibility expert who has lived the experience is an investment that pays for itself in record time. Creating an accessible user experience from the first release onward creates credibility with customers, who can be quick to take to social media to complain about accessibility shortcomings.
2. Start with the basics
First, know your guidelines. The W3C has categorised them into four areas, creating the acronym POUR:
Perceive
Information and user interface components must be presented to users in ways that users can perceive. This includes providing alt-text on images, captions on audio or video, and related accessibility alternatives such as sign language. There are guidelines around colour contrasts for low vision and for colour blindness, and usefulness of the graphics. Perception also means structuring content to be read out in a logical sequence, that tables are usable, and that text is presented in a way that makes it easy to read. Dyslexia is an example of a condition that can be helped with the use of a particular font, adequate spacing, and so on.
Operable
This area, mostly for developers, has everything to do with the ability to use commands from a keyboard. This doesn’t preclude the use of a mouse, but keyboard shortcuts and other mousing alternatives should be available. Operable also covers providing enough time for users to read and use the content. There are guidelines around authentication, interruptions, and time-outs, guidelines around how to disable visual presentations that could cause seizures, guidelines around the ability to navigate and find content, and guidelines around input modalities – for example, how large a clickable area needs to be so that people with disabilities can easily click in the target area.
Understandable
This area is squarely aimed at text-based content. Accessibility guidelines prescribe that abbreviations be expandable and have a way to show the meaning of unusual words. The guidelines also dictate that the language level be aimed at an average reading level. The need for consistency is stressed: navigation, identification, and ways to avoid and correct mistakes.
Robust
The term robust includes extensibility, scalability, and the expectation that the content can be used across a wide range of current and future interfaces, including assistive technologies.
W3C Quick Reference https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref/#to
3. Know which standards affect you
ISO accessibility standards cover a lot of ground, from built environments to cognitive accessibility to digital products to ergonomics. There may be more than one standard that affects your organisation or even your digital presence.
It should be noted that the guidelines apply no matter what type device the content is displayed on – from website, tablet, and mobile displays to kiosks and other devices that can handle spoken commands. They also apply to a range of disabilities that include impaired vision or hearing, limited movement and dexterity, as well as cognitive and learning disabilities.
Cognitive accessibility https://www.boia.org/blog/what-is-cognitive-accessibility
Accessibility standards apply to the following categories of content, assets, and interactions:
Website content
Though website content isn’t a strict category, the corporate website is such a fundamental asset that it’s worth mentioning. Website content falls under the W3C’s WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) initiative. The W3C updated WCAG 2.1 in 2018, with an anticipated major revision to WCAG 3.0 to include emerging technologies and display mechanisms, from wearables to IoT to using the metaverse.
W3C Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/
W3C Accessibility Guidelines 3.0 https://www.w3.org/TR/wcag-3.0/
Interactivity
Your digital product likely falls under the UAAG 2.0 guidelines, which covers what are known as “user agents” – plug-ins, web-based app, or video and audio players. The guidelines ensure that people with various types of disabilities can access the content through the plug-ins or apps. This ranges from being able to control settings to accommodate different types of disabilities to avoidance of flashing that could cause seizures to better control time-based media.
W3C User Agent Accessibility Guidelines https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/uaag/
Tools
This category covers software developed for use and administration by humans. This could be an intranet, software used by a call centre, wearables, IoT (Internet of Things) systems, and so on. There are guidelines for authoring tools, to ensure that users can work with the tools.
Windows-based code has long been accessibility-compliant by design, particularly around programmatically accessible user interfaces. The most popular CMSes (content management systems) have accessibility built in, both for those who use the CMS, and for the output of the CMS. Some even include accessibility checks.
Cognitive accessibility
https://www.boia.org/blog/what-is-cognitive-accessibility
Accessible ICT products and services
https://www.iso.org/standard/70913.html
ATAG (Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines)
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility-tools-docs/
Developing for Web Accessibility
https://www.w3.org/WAI/tips/developing/
4. Implement and test
Implementing accessibility has been a bit of a struggle. Of course, it’s best to think about accessibility from the start, and do an iterative develop-and-text process throughout your development cycle. An organisation following that process would be at a relatively high level on the digital accessibility maturity model.
The reality is that most organisations fall below the threshold that would have continuous compliance. The temptation to prioritise cool over compliant, to take dodgy shortcuts rather than build in safeguards, to make public apologies rather than take preventive measures, are all too frequent.
Accessibility starts at the top, with management directives to incorporate accessibility practices across the board, from code to design to content, and from audits to ongoing testing. Management needs to back up their commitment through a strong governance model, with a change management component that builds in the time and resources to allow for the needed activities.
5. Monitor and educate
Accessibility is not a project but a programme. As long as content and digital assets are produced, software is developed and systems implemented, existing technologies deployed and new technologies emerging, there is an ongoing need to stay on top of accessibility compliance.
At some point, the logical progression is to have a dedicated resource – this may be a part-time, full-time, or outsourced role – who knows and understands the organisation and its accessibility challenges. This person’s role is not only to monitor the state of affairs, but also to educate new hires and update existing staff about new regulations and guidelines. Accessibility affects so many aspects of an organisation that a module on accessibility should be part of onboarding, sitting alongside the modules on company mission, ethics, and cyber-security.
We don’t do our clients any favours by ignoring accessibility requirements – or letting them postpone the implementation. It is in our best interest to inform and educate them about the regulations and offer to provide them with a plan to reach a state of compliance. While the client takes the ultimate decision on whether they want to implement accessibility now or later, we owe it to them to point out the benefits of compliance, and also the risks and potential repercussions.