Accessibility in the 21st Century

Imagine a world...

Imagine a world where everyone can fly. Every single person is able to hover around, travel vast distances, and reach unimaginable heights except for you. Everyone else flies to work, but you would have to drive. Everyone else can reach tall shelves, but you would need a ladder. Everyone else can fly up to the tenth floor, but you would need to take the elevator. Even though you can't fly, you would not be considered disabled since you would have all the necessary facilities to live your life without problems. 

Then one day, your company decides to move to a new office building that provides hollow shafts for people to fly up in place of working elevators and stairs. When everyone else has no issue getting to their respective floors, you would be stuck in the lobby pondering how you are going to get to your office. You do not lack any physical attributes, you are just incapable of flying like everyone else. Lacking the facilities that you would need to live normally now turns your incapability to fly into an impairment, and by extension, a disability.

The social model of disability states that a person is not disabled because of who they are and what they are lacking but the failure of society to provide facilities to help them live lives as others do. This means that society has the capability to ensure nobody is disabled by taking accessibility designs into consideration to include every member of society. Provide ramps alongside stairs. Include braille on restaurant menus. Install handles in public restrooms. Sometimes, all it takes is a simple augmentation.

Back to reality

Accessibility is in everything that we do, thus, it is not only limited to the material world. Providing a conducive environment for people with impairments is also relevant in the digital world. In website design and development, accessibility is a topic of increasing priority and relevance. With more and more internet users becoming aware of disability issues each day, advocacies for more inclusive websites and web applications have become more vocal. Therefore, developers are becoming more prudent in their designs.

Such is the case of the natural world, the digital realm comes with its own set of standards to create the best environment for every user. With the inception of the internet, multiple international standards have been created to ensure the world wide web is convenient for users of every background. Standards such as W3C WCAG 2.1, the Americans with Disabilities Act, JPA’s PKPA Bil 2 2015, and BBC Mobile Accessibility provide detailed guidelines for creating an accessible website design.

The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.

What is a good guideline for an accessible website design?

When creating a website or a system, there are a few things to keep in mind. Websites or web-based applications are commonly used on digital devices such as computers, laptops, and especially mobile phones. Therefore, a website design would need to cater to internet users using these platforms as points of access. This would also mean that web standards need to revolve around visual and audio impairments as well as operability by users of differing backgrounds and capabilities.

In 1999, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 was established and has since become the most globally recognized standard. This standard was mostly focused on accessibility for HTML and outlines four main benchmarks. These guidelines state a website design and its content need to be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust and include three levels of conformance which are A, AA, and AAA with AAA being the most comprehensive. Over the years, this standard has been slowly updated up to the latest version of WCAG 2.1 as of when this was written.

For website designs to be accessible, developers should take into account these kinds of guidelines when creating their systems. It has been structured in detail for the convenience of developers and, subsequently, the users.

Why make website designs accessible?

If you make a ramp for wheelchair users, able-bodied people may use it for trolleys. If you provide automatic doors, those using crutches can walk in as easily as those who are not. If you include lifts, mothers with strollers may use them alongside the elderly using walking frames instead of using the escalators. Accessibility eases everybody.

The same concept applies to creating systems and website designs. Accessibility provides convenience to every single user regardless of whether they have disabilities or not. In fact, structuring and implementing accessibility elements will improve the quality of life for everyone else. Accessibility practically improves user experience across the board. When everyone is comfortable with the system, then the system would have more users.

The foundation of good UI/UX is accessibility and inclusivity. So, if a website is made to be accessible, every internet user will be able to comfortably use the website or system because the user experience of the website or system is directly enhanced. Another advantage of having a website or system that is accessible to an audience of varying backgrounds is that more users are comfortable using the product, thus, gaining more traffic and visitors to the website.

Conclusion

Humans live in communities. We have been for as long as humans have existed. Even various archaeological finds have proven that our ancestors cared for the weaker individuals in their community. Being in a society means that it is our innate responsibility to provide each other with conducive environments and accessible facilities.

Web accessibility is one of the many efforts of our civilization to make the lives of each and every community member better. Inclusive designs will make it easier for internet users of varying backgrounds to use the internet comfortably, thus, making sure no one gets left behind when it comes to digital technology advancements.

At InspireNow, creating website designs and systems that are inclusive, accessible, and user-friendly is our passion and our drive. However, creating custom systems and websites would require companies to expend a lot of financial resources. At InspireNow, we offer EasyPayment, a method in which organisations and companies may spread out their payments spanning a period of up to 12 months. We hope to provide accessibility to every internet user through ease of mind for every company.