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Before diving into digital accessibility, an overview of some common terms:
Ensuring fair treatment, equality of opportunity, and fairness in access to information and resources for all.
Ensuring the representation of all possible identities and differences, collectively and as individuals - regardless of:
Ensuring that everyone feels involved, valued, respected and treated fairly.
Ensuring that all products and services meet the needs of everyone, including those with disabilities.
Accessibility is a sub-set of inclusion, as it focusses on inclusion and equity for people with disabilities.
And “Digital Accessibility” is a subset of accessibility.
Ensuring the accessibility of digital products:
Imagine you were designing and building a children’s playground.
Accessibility would mean considering the needs of children with disabilities - such a including ramps, braille tactile displays, clear iconography etc.
Diversity would mean considering all types of children - not only those with disabilities, but also different ages, cultures, genders, languages etc.
Equity would mean ensuring that all of these types of children had the same access to activities within the playground.
Inclusion would mean ensuring that a diverse range of audiences would be involved and engaged at every stage of the design and development process.
At the minimum, inclusion means asking these diverse groups of people for their opinion at focus groups, interviews or user testing sessions.
Ideally, inclusion involves co-creation - the collaborative development of concepts and solutions with experts and these key audiences.
All of IAG’s public-facing digital products:
All of IAG’s public-facing digital products:
However, it is well-known that these estimates are low, as many people do not identify themselves as having some form of disability.
Regardless of the exact percentages, can we afford to alienate any potential or existing customers due to inaccessible products and services?
In 2015, the legal case “Gisele Mesnage vs Coles” was settled out of court.
While there is a financial risk associated with legal actions like this, the possible damage to organisation’s reputation is a far greater risk.
“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.”
Benjamin Franklin
As we saw before, all of IAG’s public-facing digital products “must conform to WCAG 2.1 AA”. But what does this mean?
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), is the world-wide standard for web accessibility.
WCAG is the standard for web content accessibility. It explains how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities.
The latest version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is Version 2.1.
Within the WCAG guidelines, all key criteria are categorised as either:
To be “AA” compliant, sites must meet all “A” and “AA” Success Criteria.
This means that websites and web apps must comply with all 50 of these Success Criteria.
From a digital accessibility perspective, are four main types of disability:
Although “colour blindness” is a commonly used term, it is inaccurate in most cases. “Colour blindness” only refers to people with Monochromacy.
A small percentage of the deaf community that cannot read, and rely on sign language alone.
The lists above are just some of the possible groups of people who may interact with our digital products.
Disabilities may be spectrums - such as ADHA, Autism, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.
Some people have multiple disabilities or conditions such as:
Some disabilities change over time such as:
And finally, some disabilities may change in nature or severity from day to day or even during a single day.
Making digital products accessible for people with disabilities also benefits others.
For example, some people may experience temporary or situational barriers that are similar to the symptoms of disabilities.
Maybe not all of our products. For example, people with vision disabilities are unlikely to purchase car insurance. However, in general, yes. Everyone needs insurance!
With assistive technologies: software and hardware designed to help people with disabilities interact with websites and web applications.
These are just some examples of a broad range of Assistive Technologies in use today.
Person-first language is the most widely accepted terminology in Australia:
Person-first language is important as the phrase “Blind person” implies that being blind is the entirety of that person.
People should never be defined just by their disability. And, many people with disabilities have more than one disability, so these phrases are often misleading.
However, some groups of people prefer different phraseology. For example, some people from the Autism community prefer to be referred to as “Autistic” rather than “Person with autism”.
“Don’t be so afraid of saying the wrong thing that you don’t say anything at all. Relax, be willing to communicate, and listen.”
Avoid language that implies a person with disability is inspirational simply because they experience disability.
Avoid terms that imply a person is a victim or should be an object of pity:
Don’t accuse people of faking their disability. Each disability is a spectrum, so someone’s condition may not match your understanding or past experience.
Avoid offering solutions or advice to people regarding their disabilities.
Even though there are a wide range of disabilities and barriers, they can be broken down into six basic Accessibility personas.
These personas can become a powerful tool to be able to discuss issues in shorthand.
“Andrew won’t be able to access that date picker as it only works with a mouse.”
“Judith might find the lack of focus state confusing on those buttons.”
“Sophia may not be able see that action as it could appear off-screen when using ZoomText.”
“Will won't see those red error colours. We will need to provide some other form of indication.”
“Yên may need more time to complete that task. We need to allow him to extend the time limitation.”
“Eliana will need subtitles to be able to understand what is being said on that video.”