Accessibility in digital.
19 Dec 2024
Web accessibility is for everyone.
What do we mean by web accessibility? Essentially, it’s all about usability and clarity, about giving equal and equivalent online experiences to as many people as possible.
Why is it important?
• Only 4% of the web is deemed accessible
• 16% of the world's population have a significant disability, which means they need some sort of adaptation on web pages in order for them to access it
- That corresponds to 1.3 billion people.
• 100% of people can benefit from accessible practices on a web page.
The European Commission recognises the importance of accessibility and is driving legal reform as a result. The European Accessibility Act (EAA) requires that many types of online experiences such as e-commerce websites and mobile apps, are accessible to people with disabilities. The Act was introduced in 2019 and has a deadline of June 2025 for providers of products and services covered by the EAA to comply.
It’s the right thing to do for all businesses and now it will become a legal requirement for many.
What does web accessibility cover?
People often perceive accessibility in a simplistic way, i.e. how big the font is or the contrast of colour on a web page. However, achieving high levels of accessibility is about much more than this. Accessibility for all has to account for much more than visual impairments.
Before taking any action, it’s important to firstly understand different people’s needs. These could cover a variety of disabilities such as:
- Visual
- Auditory
- Cognitive
- Neurological
- Physical
- Speech
It also improves experiences for many people without disabilities. Such as those in environments where they can’t listen to audio or perhaps have a screen in bright sunlight. With the rise of voice assistants, security tools such as fingerprint and Face ID, and the emergence of immersive technology, achieving access for all is more complex now than ever.
Some of those who are succeeding in delivering accessible experiences include:
An approach for better accessibility.
The right mindset will help to improve your approach. It’s an easy trap to focus on improving your score in a tool (we’ll come on to those), but we should all approach accessibility with the mindset of wanting to improve online experiences for all. That means understanding the different needs and embedding their considerations throughout your teams and projects.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has three standardised levels of conformance for accessibility.
Level A – the minimum which every site should achieve by default.
Level AA – which is often the typical target for brands looking to support a good level of accessibility across their digital ecosystems.
Level AAA – The highest level of conformity which is generally reserved for specialist use cases such as Gov.uk.
There is no start and finish to accessibility. Just like supporting better customer experiences, it should be an evolving process, that is reviewed and improves over time. Updates to websites, new content, changing technologies can all impact your accessibility, so we suggest routinely testing and evaluating your performance.
Where you have something which is less accessible than the top W3C standard, it may be a case of compromise or creating solutions to still strive towards a more accessible outcome. For example, on our own website, we use elements like animated text (such as the scrolling element below) which are less accessible than standard text and styling. To help support accessibility, we avoid using this for any descriptive information and we have an accessibility menu which allows users to stop any autoplay animation or videos across the site..
Organisations should be clear about how they are approaching accessibility and be open to suggestions. The more unique perceptions and feedback you receive the better you can cater for varying needs. We suggest putting an accessibility policy on your site just like a privacy or cookie policy, which outlines your approach and offers the opportunity for feedback.
In summary.
Everyone should be able to navigate, engage with and enjoy the web. While legislation has been slow in coming, the need to support more accessible online experiences is ever present. The conversation is growing, and we hope this article helps to prompt action too. It’s complicated and has vast implications, but sharing best practices and bringing it into your processes will help support a more inclusive web for all.
Want to learn how you can test your website's accessibility? Our Crafted Labs resource 'Accessibility in Digital' has a list of free tools available to help.
If you're looking for expert support, reach out to us at Crafted and we'd be happy to discuss.
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