usability services
project types
What is accessibility?
Accessibility is about design for everyone. It's about making the information and services that you provide online available to users, irrespective of age and ability.
Why do interfaces need to be accessible?
| "The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect." Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and "inventor" of the World Wide Web |
The financial argument: Between 10-20% of the UK population has some form of disability. We also have an aging population, where life expectancy is increasing while population growth is declining. As we age, we are increasingly likely to develop a disability: 25% of people in the UK have age-related disabilities by age 55. This rises to 50% by age 65. If your product doesn't cater for people with disabilities you're causing a lot of potential customers to miss out.
Accessibility makes good business sense
The spending power of disabled people in the UK is estimated to be £50 billion. Research has shown that people with disabilities make extremely loyal customers once they find a site that caters for their requirements.
The legal argument
There is a legal requirement to ensure that your Internet sites are accessible. The Disability Discrimination Act (1995) places a duty on service providers to make "reasonable adjustments" for disabled people by providing extra help or making changes to the way that services are provided. If the provision of information and services through your website is inaccessible to disabled users, you may be in breach of this legislation.
The moral argument
For many disabled users, technology is an essential connection to the world. It has revolutionised their lives by providing opportunities that were simply not available before.
For example, before e-commerce became available, buying a CD was an enormous chore for blind people. They needed someone to accompany them to the record shop to read the labels. Accessible e-commerce sites empower blind users to buy music whenever they want to.
Inaccessible web services have a particularly severe negative impact on the lives of disabled users.
Different disabilities cause different accessibility problems
Sometimes, people think of accessibility as being related to blind users only. Accessibility affects users with a wide range of disabilities. Typically, the following kinds of disability need to be considered when designing electronic products:
Mobility impairments
Examples: wheelchair users, people who cannot walk without an aid. These people can find it hard to access and use public access terminals, such as ticket kiosks etc.
Dexterity impairments
Examples: Cannot use fingers, cannot use one arm, reduced strength, reduced co-ordination. These people can find it hard to effectively use a mouse, use touch-screen devices etc.
Speech & language impairments
Examples: speech impaired, language impaired. These are users who have speech impediments, or poor levels of literacy. This can impede their ability to comprehend instructions and information presented to them as text.
Cognitive impairments
Examples: dyslexia, dementia, intellectually impaired. These impairments can impede a person's ability to comprehend and remember information presented to them as text.
Hearing impairments
Examples: Deaf, hard of hearing. Hearing loss impedes a person's ability to register or respond to auditory information such as alarms or music.
Visual impairments
These are users with low vision or total loss of ability to perceive form. This can impede their ability to comprehend information presented to them in a visual format etc.
By understanding the needs of all these users, you can create a product that is more useful to them. But our experience suggests it will also be more usable for all your users, whether they are disabled or not.
The benefits of designing for everyone
Accessibility often increases usability for everyone, not just those with disabilities. For example, the browser on your handheld computer might not support JavaScript, or you may miss an audio alert if you are listening to loud music. In cases like these, technology designed to cater for blind or deaf users will improve your experience even if you don't have those disabilities yourself.
Your product will be more robust, and usually better thought-out, if care has been taken to ensure that it is accessible. Well-designed products like these are more popular with consumers with or without disabilities.
Designing for all makes your project teams think carefully about who is excluded by the design decisions they make. It may not necessarily mean designing a single solution that works for all users. But it can help to ensure that your users have a range of different ways of interacting with your organisation.
What's the risk if your product doesn't comply?
Although there has not be a case pursued in the UK, both Australian and American courts have prosecuted website owners for failing to meet their legal obligations.
The RNIB has already forced two large companies to make changes to their Internet sites to make them accessible.
The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) has been assessing a large number of sites (1000+) .
They have told the site owners that they face legal action under the Disability Discrimination Act( DDA) and the possibility of unlimited compensation payments if they fail to make Internet sites accessible for people with disabilities.
Internet sites should have been complying with this law since 1999. Make sure your site is legal before it is too late.
Website accessibility audits
These audits check accessibility on two levels:
The technical level: ensure that the HTML conforms to relevant standards and is appropriate for use by assistive technologies. Typically, we will audit for conformance to W3C WAI guidelines or help our client achieve RNIB See it Right accreditation.
The "human" level: not all accessibility issues with a website are caused by the underlying HTML. Use of images, colours, layout and vocabulary can all have an effect on a site's accessibility but their effects can't be detected just by looking at HTML. For example, a GIF file included on a web page may contain visual information which is not accessible to colour blind users, but you could never detect that from looking at the HTML of the web page.
Accessibility testing
This can extend to any electronic product, not just Internet sites. The best way to ensure your product is accessible is to give a prototype to a range of disabled users and ask them to try using it, to see if it suits their needs. If team members can observe the testing, or see video evidence later, it helps to bring home the importance of accessibility in design.