Making Your Service Accessible to All ACADEMY

Learn for business > Making your service accessible to all ACADEMY

IMPROVING YOUR WEBSITE Making your service accessible to all Contents:

Over 13.9 million UK adults have a disability and need 1. Thinking about accessibility websites that are made accessible to them. However, only 2. What are the Governments' a very small number of businesses have websites that meet the required rules in place to make sure disabled accessibility requirements people can use them. Research from the Lloyds Bank 3. Accessibility is the whole team’s job Business and Charity Digital Index 2018 shows that 7 4. Researching with users with disabilities in 10 disabled customers say they move away from a website they find difficult to use. This means businesses 5. What to do about accessibility when are missing out on customer interactions and over £11.75 designing your website billion of potential turnover each year. 6. What to do about accessibility when If you make your website accessible for all, you are testing your website ensuring you aren’t excluding any customers, and are allowing everyone to use your products and services. 7. What to do about accessibility on Without an accessible website, there is a whole other existing websites market out there that you are missing out on; it’s like 8. Make non-digital parts of your service having a shop but not being able to serve some of the customers at your door. accessible

This means less growth and income for your business. Web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. This will mean disabled people can understand, navigate and interact with your website.

1. Thinking about accessibility In the UK, 1 in 5 people have a disability - this could At least 1 in 5 people in the be visual, hearing, motor or cognitive (affecting UK have a long term illness, memory and thinking). impairment or disability and may have accessibility requirements. However, the concept of accessibility doesn’t just apply to people with disabilities - all users will have different needs at different times and in different That's 20% of your customer xx circumstances. Someone’s ability to use a service base. could be affected by their:

1 Learn for business > Making your service accessible to all ACADEMY

·· Location - they could be in a noisy cafe, sunny park or area with slow Wi-Fi ·· Health - they may be tired, recovering from a stroke or have a broken arm ·· Equipment - they could be on a mobile phone or using an older browser Over a third of UK customers are opting to buy goods and services directly from their smartphones. In 2018, data showed that less than a quarter of small businesses have mobile enabled websites and services. Accessibility is about making sure your service can be used by as many people as possible and making sure that nobody is excluded. If you are developing a new service, be sure to find out sooner than later if any parts of your service aren’t accessible. Problems usually cost less to fix if you find them early.

2. What are the Governments’ accessibility requirements? The government have created an accessibility standard to ensure that organisations have a benchmark for their platforms and services. To meet government accessibility requirements, online organisations must: ·· Meet level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) as a minimum ·· Work on the most commonly used assistive technologies - including screen magnifiers, screen readers and speech recognition tools ·· Include people with disabilities in user research You can check your website’s accessibility through various online tools including Abilitynet, click here to access the website. They also offer help and support to get your products and services fully accessible.

3. Accessibility is the whole team’s job Accessibility isn’t the responsibility of just one person. Everyone is responsible for making sure your service is accessible, no matter how ‘techy’ your team or your business are. ·· User researchers and testers can help spot accessibility problems so the rest of the team can remove them ·· People looking at comms and marketing can consider the colours they are using in designs, and ensure that the language they are using is simple enough and can be read by a screen reader, etc. ·· Product and delivery managers should also understand accessibility so they can ensure it’s considered from the start and built in to the service efficiently ·· HR and people functions should also consider these factors for staff, as part of everyday engagement and recruitment to help build an inclusive team Read more about how each discipline can help build an accessible service in the US government’s Accessibility for Teams guide.

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4. Researching with users with disabilities When doing research, you must include users who have disabilities or use assistive technologies. You may need to pay for: ·· A recruitment agency to help you find participants ·· Expenses to help participants take part in research - this might include a helper, taxis, or someone to help with communication like a sign language interpreter During research, you should be learning how people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive impairments might use your service, as well as the barriers they face. You can do this even before you do any user research by: ·· Developing a clear understanding of what accessibility means as you explore the problem you’re trying to solve ·· Developing your understanding of the range of abilities users can have ·· Reading profiles of users with disabilities to understand how accessibility affects individual users ·· You could also visit Ability.net

5. What to do about accessibility when designing your website During design, you should be thinking about whether what you’re designing meets the WCAG 2.1 design principles - this will help you meet the needs of all your users. You should also start thinking about making sure that you are meeting all the required guidelines. You may have someone in your department with the necessary skills and auditing experience to do this. If not, you will need to appoint an external accessibility specialist. You can ask the person doing your auditing to spend a couple of days during the review of the design looking at prototypes for potential accessibility problems. You can also improve what you’re designing by running research sessions with users with disabilities.

6. What to do about accessibility when testing your website During your website testing, you need to start testing for accessibility and get an accessibility audit. Running a combination of manual and automated tests each time you develop a new feature means you can sort out issues that could be costly to fix at a later stage. You could choose to use an agency or one of the various free online tools available to test your site. Again, running research sessions with users who have disabilities will also help you check that what you’re building is accessible.

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7. What to do about accessibility on existing websites It’s important to carry on testing and researching your service regularly. Check that any new features you add meet government accessibility requirements, and continue doing research with users with disabilities. If you make substantial changes to your service, you can get another audit to check you still meet government accessibility requirements.

8. Make non-digital parts of your service accessible You should also make sure the non-digital parts of your service are accessible. For example, you should make sure that users who are deaf or have speech impairment are offered a way to contact you (by text, email or in person with a British Sign Language translator or lip reader). If you have to send out letters as part of your service, make sure you can also provide these in alternative formats that are accessible (for example large print, braille or audio CD).