The Coronavirus crisis has hugely impacted the way we work, with large proportions of office-based employees suddenly forced to work full time from home. For some people this has presented challenges, while others have found that there are unexpected benefits such as an increase in productivity.  

In the media and online there has been an avalanche of advice on how to work from home, how to communicate with colleagues, how to run online meetings and so on. While much of this advice has been helpful in helping us get through a difficult time, one area which has been less explored is the importance of accessibility during the crisis. What can internal communicators and digital teams do to help employees who are now working remotely and need good accessibility on their digital channels?

During this crisis ensuring the accessibility of digital channels has become particularly important for two reasons.

1. Employees need to stay informed and up to date in a rapidly evolving situation
2. Some employees are now relying on digital tools and channels in ways they weren’t before, exposing the need for better accessibility when previously they may have been able to “get by”.

In considering improving the accessibility of employee-focused communication channels such as your intranet and also other collaborative tools used to work remotely, there are a number of good practices that teams can follow.

Eight key tips to improve digital accessibility

1. Make sure your key pages are accessible

   If your internal digital channels for employees have generally poor accessibility, then immediately prioritise the accessibility of those key pages which are used to inform employees of developments during the crisis or provide advice that supports employees. These pages might include:

   • Your intranet homepage
   • Intranet news
   • Leadership updates
   • HR information and updates
   • Covid-19 update page
   • Health and well-being page
   • Information about tools to use at work
   • IT support and helpdesk

   In the medium to long term you should be introducing processes to make sure all your content is accessible; however,  focusing on these priority areas will make a real-world impact for employees and help support them through Covid-19.

2. Keep on testing for accessibility issues

   Because your content is likely to be changing as the situation develops you need to keep testing these pages for accessibility issues. Any new content or an edited piece of content may potentially have an issue, so make sure you keep running checks on your prioritised pages. A weekly check may be a practical approach that works. Using automation is a quick, convenient and cost-effective way to stay on top of accessibility issues.

3. Provide a feedback mechanism for employees to report accessibility issues

   With large amounts of employees working from home it’s inevitable that some employees who have disabilities will be using digital channels and tools for the first time which have accessibility issues.

   Work with HR or IT colleagues to set up some kind of feedback mechanism that is well publicised for anyone to report an accessibility issue; this means appropriate action can be taken to fix issues. It will also expose common types of problems that can also be addressed. In addition, it may give you an idea of the proportion of employees who are impacted by accessibility issues.

4. Check out the accessibility of new tools used

   With a sudden and unexpected move to homeworking there has been an unprecedented use of digital collaboration and web conferencing tools. Zoom, in particular, has experienced massive growth. Inevitably new tools will start getting used within your organisation.

   With any new tools that are coming into use make sure you check on the levels of accessibility and also the configuration options that are available; issuing guidance to employees about how to make these tools more accessible can help. 

5. Focus on good accessibility for online meetings and video

   Online meetings and the use of video have significantly increased with the rise of homeworking so it’s important to provide guidance on how to make these as accessible as possible. This is a major area that we will be covering in a standalone article; this will be  about the use of closed captioning, following good meeting etiquette and also configuring tools to enable the use of assistive technologies.

6. Provide assistive technologies to employees

   If possible, organisations should provide assistive technologies to their employees such as screen readers. If a scheme is already in place, make sure it is publicised to those who may now need assistive technologies because of their new working circumstances. If there is no scheme, help employees to get set-up using free or cheaper assistive technologies

7. Form a user group

   If the crisis is acting as a catalyst to improving accessibility on your internal digital channels for the first time and you are now in contact with employees who are impacted by poor accessibility, consider forming a user group to get their feedback on future improvements. This will be hugely beneficial to future efforts.

8. Use this as a springboard for improving accessibility in the future

   Accessibility is important. If your efforts in the past have not been good enough, consider using the current situation as a springboard for improving the accessibility of your internal digital channels going forward.

Don’t ignore accessibility during the crisis

We can get through this difficult crisis by working together and supporting each other. Improving accessibility will make working remotely that little bit easier for some employees. What you do will make a real-world difference to more people than you think.