Accessibility
The Challenge Should Be Ours, Not Theirs
Overcoming Barriers for All People
People with disabilities face barriers every day that keep them from having a similar experience as everyone else in the world. When it comes to using the web, those barriers are challenges that need to be overcome. But should those challenges be theirs, or should they be ours as people responsible for creating and developing websites and applications?
While considering the answer to that question, it’s important to understand that people with disabilities aren’t the only ones who face these barriers. Even a person without any disabilities can experience them. Even you.
Quiet, everyone
You don’t have to be deaf to have problems listening to a video. You could be sitting in a loud café unable to hear one that discusses the markets crashing and what advisors, investors, and portfolio managers need to be concerned about.
It’s an important video, and it’s the only free time you have to watch it. You absolutely need the information before your meeting in two hours.
Now think about what it’s like for people who face those barriers every day instead of just temporarily, whether they were born with a hearing deficit or have recently become deaf or hard of hearing.
As a member of the website or video team, how can you make sure everyone can get the information they need from the video?
One way is to provide synchronized captions on the video so that what’s being said can easily be read in that loud café – or in the everyday quiet if you’re deaf. A transcript is good too, but it doesn’t necessarily offer the whole experience, especially if there are charts and graphs that go along with the talking head.
A day in the sun
People who are visually impaired or blind aren’t the only ones who can’t read a webpage on their laptop or mobile device, not without assistance anyway.
Imagine you’re out by the pool. The sun is glaring down on your laptop, tablet, or iPhone, preventing you from being able to see your screen. What do you do then?
You could turn on the screen narration technology, but that only works well if the page is coded correctly with proper headings, navigation, buttons, links, and the ability to skip right to the main content of the page instead of having to hear the navigation over and over again as you go from webpage to webpage.
Consider what it’s like to have that barrier all the time, not just when you’re out in direct sunlight. Should it be something you have to overcome, or should the barrier be removed by the people creating the experience?
I’m so distracted
Believe it or not, you too can have cognitive impairments at certain times during the week. Whether you’re distracted, tired, or stressed, sometimes you just can’t understand what you’d normally be able to understand, especially when reading. That’s when writing and design come into the mix.
Web writers must accept that simple language is better. As people read, they just absorb the ideas without paying close attention to the actual words – unless you use highfalutin words or jargon. Those types of words actually stop readers in their tracks to either admire the word or wonder what it means (such as highfalutin). That’s why it’s important for webpages to be written at a ninth grade or lower reading level. If you can write at an eighth grade level, that’s even better.
It’s also important to keep content short to retain the reader’s attention, whether or not they have some sort of cognitive impairment – short-term or long-term. If the writing is too long, readers will skim or stop reading altogether, especially if they can’t understand what it means. Then all those words go to waste.
When it comes to design, it’s important to design the webpage in a way that does not further distract the reader. You’ll want to avoid such features as uncontrolled movement on the page or a bright, flashy design.
Cognitive impairments include such conditions as autism, Down Syndrome, traumatic brain injury, attention deficit disorder, dyslexia, and learning disabilities in general.
Out of your hands
Just like any disability, physical disabilities can happen to anyone at any time and can be permanent or temporary.
A physical disability that inhibits using a computer could be as temporary as having a squirming child on your lap while trying to book a cruise – ahhh, a vacation without the children. Your mouse-wielding hand is occupied, so you start navigating your computer with just the keyboard, tabbing through and typing in the appropriate fields one-handed.
A broken arm, two broken arms, and burned fingers are also considered some temporary disabilities. More permanent disabilities that affect the use of a computer include quadriplegia, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, spina bifida, and ALS.
Removing the barriers
Is it the disability or the barriers that prevent everyone from using a website similarly? If you remove the barriers, is it really considered a disability?
That’s why the challenge of helping all people use our websites and applications equally should be our challenge rather than a challenge for someone with a disability. It’s about removing all barriers so that all people have a similar experience, regardless of their location or temporary or permanent physical characteristics.