We sometimes get asked by customers for an overview of the basics of accessibility. Everyone has to start somewhere and in this article we are going to try and provide a very quick overview of web and digital accessibility, why it is important and how to get started.

What is web and digital accessibility?

Web and digital accessibility is the practice of making sure any digital touchpoint or channel that you provide such as a website, app or content, is fully usable by all the people that visit or use it,  including any visitors who may have some kind of disability. This includes people with visual and hearing impairments and other physical disabilities, as well as mental disabilities and cognitive impairments.

Just as buildings need to be adapted to make sure everybody can visit, you also need to ensure that everybody can visit your website.

In an even wider sense, accessibility can also refer to people without disabilities, for example those accessing your site who are not native speakers of the language your site is in, or even those who are temporarily in a noisy public place. While the accessibility measures you must put in place for compliance reasons do not cover these groups, accessibility helps us all.

Why is web and digital accessibility important?

Accessibility is important for a number of reasons: Firstly, there is a growing collection of legislation around the world that means having an accessible website is a legal requirement. Some of these apply to all organisations and some to specific sectors, particularly government and public sector websites. There are also additional regulatory demands across different industries that require websites or sections of websites to be accessible.

High profile acts include the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and country-level legislation that follows the European Union Directive 2016/2102/EU  such as the UK Equality Act. In short, if your website is not accessible, you face the risk of legal action as well as a risk to your brand and reputation.

It also makes solid commercial sense to make sure your site is accessible. A much higher proportion of the global population have disabilities than most people realise; for example in the US, the CDC reports over 1 in 4 of the adult population have disabilities. In the UK 19% of working age adults are disabled.

Therefore an inaccessible website may impact the experience of somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of your visitors; this is a very high figure that can impact sales, conversations or the ability for citizens to access important information.

Web accessibility also has a number of other positive outcomes including better usability, increased SEO, better support for Diversity & Inclusion and likely alignment with your organisational values. Generally, it is also considered the right thing to do from an ethical standpoint.

How do I know if a website is accessible?

An accessible website is usually one regarded as meeting AA level conformance with the WCAG 2.1 standards, building upon standards already established in version 2.0. These are the internationally recognised standards for defining accessibility and have been published by the Web Accessibility Initiative from the World Wide Web Consortium. The standards are regarded as robust and authoritative and are recognised as an international standard by the ISO.

The 2.0 and 2.1 guidelines detail various recommendations published across four key principles to make sure that content and information is:

• Perceivable
• Operable
• Understandable
• Robust.

The guidelines cover three levels of conformance reflecting different levels of adoption of the recommendations: A level, AA level and AAA level.

What are assistive technologies?

One of the things that conformance with the WCAG guidelines means is better support for assistive technologies that help users with disabilities access digital channels and content. There are a wide range of different assistive technologies, but they include screen readers and special keyboards. Having an accessible site means visitors can use assistive technologies to better access your content.

How do I get started with accessibility?

If you are new to accessibility, the good news is that there is a wealth of information about accessibility on the internet, including information provided by the WCAG. It is a good idea to increase your understanding of web accessibility in order to help you get started on improving accessibility on your own website or digital channels.

To improve accessibility, many organisations use automated assessment technologies that test a website against the WCAG guidelines and identify the changes that need to be made to move towards conformance with the guidelines and /or compliance with legislation. There are a number of reputable solutions available, including Sitemorse.

Teams should be wary of solutions that claim to automatically guarantee compliance for you by fixing issues without you having to take any action as well as accessibility tools that are built-in to a Content Management System; the latter may not be able to provide all the information you need to stay on top of accessibility.

Realistically you also may need to additionally bring in an accessibility expert to either conduct an audit or provide independent advice. There are additional things you may also need to do, such as providing an accessibility statement on your website.

Once my website is accessible, do I then need to do anything more?

The effort to improve accessibility and maintain standards needs to be ongoing. For example, many digital teams conduct regular automated testing. It is important to appreciate that accessibility issues occur across coding on your CMS but also on your content. Any new content added to a site may have accessibility issues.

Need more information?

We hope you found this article useful. For more information we have also compiled a list of useful resources for those getting started with accessibility.  Good luck on your accessibility journey!