Thanks to the pandemic that prompted people of all abilities and abilities to shop online, accessibility has reached a critical point.
The digital world has been the only place where brands have been able to connect with customers for the past year. According to a Forrester survey, 8 out 10 companies have made the first steps towards digital accessibility.
This change is being driven by increased digital interactions. Fortune 500 companies are beginning to recognize that 1 billion people with disabilities comprise the world's market. According to Return on Disabilitys: The Global Economics of Disability, this population and their families have more than $13 trillion of disposable income.
Only 36% of respondents to Forresters' survey were 100% committed to making digital experiences accessible.
Although digital accessibility has existed for decades, many companies have only recently realised its potential benefits. The WebAIM Million survey of 1,000,000 home pages revealed accessibility issues on 97.4%.
What does all this mean? This is why you should care. This is an opportunity to position your company ahead of the rest and reap the benefits of being an early adopter.
Digital accessibility: The benefits
Companies now realize the benefits of designing accessible products and properties that do more than just doing the right thing. People are living longer. According to the World Health Organization, people 60 years and older are more likely than children younger than 5. The World Health Organization predicts that the population of people 60 years and older will surpass 900 million by 2050.
W3C Web Accessibility initiative provides an overview of Web Accessibility for Older Users. Let's see what it has to offer.
47% of those aged between 61 and 80 suffer from hearing loss.
16% of those aged 65-74 experience vision decline.
20% of those over 70 are affected by mild cognitive impairment.
More than half of those over 65 are affected by arthritis.
The bottom line is that developing digital products that are accessible to all people helps you reach more people, including your family, co-workers, and friends. Everybody will experience some degree of situational, temporary or episodic impairment at one point in their life. Everybody experiences a loud or dark environment, which can make it difficult to hear or see. A temporary disability or injury can make it difficult to access the internet. People suffering from arthritis, vertigo, and migraines may experience pain or discomfort that limits their ability to use digital apps, tools, and devices.
Moreover, no one has advocated for making websites and products more accessible. Despite the fact that accessibility is a universal principle, it does not necessarily mean that it will be easy to explain the need and get people on board for major organizational changes. It is still a lot to do to raise awareness and educate people about the reasons for these changes and how they can be achieved.
Now you know the why. These are five tips to help you make the right changes in your company so accessibility is a core part your business.
1. To create accessible experiences, tap the right people
The second annual State of Accessibility Report found that only 40% of Alexa Top 100 websites were fully accessible. This shows how people with disabilities are often overlooked in web design.
It is important to understand how people with disabilities use your web properties and products in order to design for them. It is also important to understand their needs and what tools they use to achieve them. It all starts with the right people.
Your development team can benefit from hiring accessibility experts who will help identify potential problems and create better products. Even better, people with disabilities bring a deeper understanding to your work.
2. Hire designers passionate about accessibility
It is a good idea to have accessibility experts in your team who can offer guidance and advice. If the rest of your team doesn't care about accessibility, it can become a problem. Ask about accessibility when interviewing new designers. This will help you gauge the candidate's knowledge and passion for the subject. You also set a expectation that accessibility is a top priority for your company.
You can save a lot of headaches by being proactive with your hiring decisions and ensuring that they contribute to an inclusive culture. Accessibility begins in the design and user-experience (UX). Your team will not deliver if they don't. This will delay the project and increase costs. It is more expensive to fix things than it is to make them accessible in the first instance.
3. Accessibility is for everyone
When deciding whether or not to invest in accessibility, people often ask how many people will use it. From a business perspective, the reasoning behind this question is understandable. Accessibility can be an expense and it's reasonable to want to spend money responsibly.
The biggest misconception in the field is that accessibility is only for the blind or deaf. Accessibility is only for the blind and deaf. This myth is frustrating as it underestimates the number of people living with disabilities and reduces their role in society. It fails to recognize that accessibility features can be used by people without disabilities.
All of us will be on the same spectrum at some point in our lives. Perhaps an injury temporarily restricts our ability to move and makes it impossible for us to do basic tasks online, such as shopping or banking. Maybe our vision or hearing changes as we age which can affect our ability to communicate online.
Once we realize that accessibility means designing in a way that is accessible to as many people as possible, it's easier to reframe the discussion around whether it's worth investing in. This is a clear message to businesses: A rapidly growing population cannot be ignored.
Consider this: What if you had to choose between an elevator and a staircase? Which would you choose? Most people choose the elevator. Curb cuts are those ramps that you see on streets corners. These ramps were originally designed to allow wheelchairs to cross streets.
Many people use these ramps: parents pushing strollers, travellers pulling suitcases, skateboarders rolling, and workers lifting heavy loads with dollies. This feature was originally designed to be accessible and has since been used by many more people than its original intended audience. This is the power of curb-cutting.
4. Accessible by default, hire agencies
Working with an agency is a great way to adopt and embrace accessible practices, whether you are a small company or a large organization. A partnership with an agency that supports your accessibility efforts is key to success.
Finding the right agency to work with is key. You can trust that you are working with an agency who shares your organization's values and will be a reliable partner in your quest to improve accessibility. This eliminates the need for revisions or guesswork later. This is a big win as designers often overlook the details that can make or break a user's experience with a disability.
A agency that focuses on making accessible experiences more appealing reduces the chances of mistakes going unnoticed or unrepaired, giving you confidence in your ability to provide an exceptional experience for all your audience.
5. Incorporate accessibility into your supply chain
Large organizations and enterprises often collaborate with many stakeholders on a daily basis. Today's business environment is collaborative and far-reaching. This includes vendors, agencies, freelancers, and employees. This is great for exchanging ideas but accessibility can be lost among so many people.
It is important to ensure that all moving parts of a business are aligned into a supply network that is accessible at every stage of the business. It reduces the chance of components being unavailable and creating problems in the future.
Startup advantage
The struggle to alter the status quo is a major problem that keeps popping up over and over again. It is difficult to effect meaningful change once an organization has instilled inaccessible products and processes into its culture. It is not easy to change the way you do things, even if everyone is willing.
Startups have an advantage in this area: They don't need to carry years worth of unaccessible baggage. It is not part of the code for their products. It is not part of the business culture. Startups are in many ways a blank slate. They need to learn from their older peers.
Startup founders have the ability to create an accessible organization right from the beginning. You can build an accessible culture without having to rewrite the code in 10, 20, or 30 years. This is possible by recruiting diverse workers who are passionate about accessibility.
Many of these issues share a common theme: culture. Accessibility is a worthy cause that technology professionals agree on, but it faces a significant awareness problem.
Software development must be accessible from requirements to sales to marketing and other non-technical teams. This cannot be left to a small group of people to manage. We will be able to create a culture where accessibility is a priority for everyone, both as an industry and society.
This culture will change the way we think about accessibility.
Although advocacy for accessibility can seem like a difficult task at times, it's not rocket science. Education and awareness are the most important needs.
It is easier to get buy-in from all levels of your company when you know the people who will use the products you create. This is the first step on a long journey towards accessibility. It gets easier from there, which is the best thing about it.
