What is accessibility/universal or inclusive design? Who does it concern? How and why should we incorporate this as a mindset as well as a practice in web design?
The truth is that the development of technology and the evolution of IT is so rapid that it seems that sometimes it "leaves some people behind". And in this case, I am not referring so much to the professionals in the field (although it is very true for them, too - and to a certain extent it is perfectly reasonable), but to those to whom we are addressing, i.e. the rest of the world, who is, after all, the recipient of the applications/ programs/websites we create. And we leave them behind because technology itself sometimes intensifies the phenomenon of inequalities, instead of minimizing it.
It's been a very long time since we designed a website and ended up "rebuilding" it to look good in Internet Explorer. Enough time has also passed since responsive design, i.e. the design of websites in a way that facilitates access from mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.), turned from a "luxury" into a necessity. Google's decision in 2015 to no longer include non-mobile-friendly websites in search results when someone searches from their smartphone certainly contributed to this. Today it is unthinkable for a new website not to be mobile-friendly, while existing, older websites are feeling the pressure to adapt to the new era, especially when more than 50% of traffic now comes from mobile devices (visitors that these websites "lose" rapidly, if they are not responsive).
But is just having a mobile-friendly website enough these days? In fact, have you ever wondered how a visitor with limited vision, with a mobility disability or even someone with dyslexia or perhaps someone who is on the autism spectrum "sees" or navigates a website (even yours, if you have one)? What effect can it have, e.g. a page with 3-4 moving elements, like a slider or a flash, to someone with an anxiety disorder? In the end ,how can you facilitate access to special categories of visitors, such as the above?
This is where the concept of "accessibility" (or inclusive or universal) design comes in to give us some simple and (in many cases) easily implementable guidelines on how to make a website more friendly to different categories of disabled people. These guidelines have been standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) with the so-called "WCAG" Standard (currently in version 2.1). In fact, the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) determines a website's compliance with the relevant accessibility guidelines at three levels: A, AA and AAA, depending on which guidelines are met and their priority. In addition, these guidelines are also adapted to each professional field, so that anyone can apply them to their subject, whether they are programmers, graphic designers, marketers, etc.
But what are these guidelines?
The truth is that a proper and responsible professional in the field should have read all the relevant guidelines, i.e. WCAG 2.1, directly from the source, as a thorough analysis of the guidelines would be beyond the scope of this post. However, it is interesting to see some indicative yet crucial advice in the design aspect of a website - and the IT department (loosely translated as "Digital, Data and Technology") of the British government's Home Office has done a very good job in this. In particular, they made a series of posters with simple instructions on what to prefer and what to avoid when designing a website for different categories of disabled people. The posters have already been translated into various languages - and into Greek, as a small contribution that I had the pleasure and honor to make in this project - and they are a quite valuable guide for anyone who wants to "get into the mood" of accessibility design.
Of course, to check compliance with the WCAG guidelines there are also a number of online tools that perform relevant tests and display the relevant findings either directly on the website or in a report. A fairly large list of these tools is also available on the W3C website itself, at this link: Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List.
Accessible, Usable, Universal or Inclusive design? Is there a difference?
In general, when talking about trying to make the internet more accessible to a wider part of society, these concepts are considered relatively synonymous and are almost always used to describe the same thing: designing for accessibility. However, although their -admittedly minimal- differences may belong to the "fine print", they exist and it is good to mention them in order to be fair to all the respective initiatives, worldwide. So, also taking into account the W3C definitions:
- accessibility design mainly aims at reducing inequalities in terms of access to the internet by people with disabilities and, by extension, strengthening their rights in the digital society.
- usability design aims to create useful and efficient websites and applications, by placing more emphasis on design for user satisfaction (User Experience or UX design) and possibly sometimes overlooking certain special categories of users, such as Disabled.
- Inclusive or Universal design includes designing for accessibility (like accessibility design mentioned above) but also goes beyond it, as it touches more broadly on the issue of accessibility on a social, economic and political level. That is, it takes into account other social inequalities that contribute to limiting access to the internet, such as "digital illiteracy", cultural, economic status or even the limited access of some to modern equipment (e.g. smartphones) or the limitations set by low internet access speeds in some areas (or even entire countries).
How "critical" is compliance with these guidelines?
The minimum terms, conditions and requirements for the operation of websites and applications for mobile devices, with the aim of facilitating their accessibility by users and in particular by the disabled, have already been established for public sector bodies with the 2016/2102 Directive of EU, which was subsequently incorporated into Greek legislation (L. 4591/2019). The same applies to websites or applications of individuals or companies that are built using NSRF (National Strategic Reference Framework) resources. Therefore, there is already a special emphasis by state and international bodies on the gradual compliance of websites with these standards. Based on this, it would not be a terrible guess to say that it is only a matter of time before these guidelines become new, additional ranking criteria in the major search engines, as it happened in the case of responsive design.
In addition to the legal aspect, however, the criticality of compliance with accessibility design guidelines deserves to be put in social terms as well (which are also the starting point). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), disability is a complex and changing phenomenon due to the interaction of the personal characteristics of the individual and the characteristics of the environment in which the individual lives. Based on this definition, the relationship between environment and disability is interrelated, and therefore it must be considered whether a person with a disability can function in a particular environment, both physical and digital. The digital environment, however, is shaped by all of us who in one way or another deal with technology and IT. So, the way we design a website, an application or a digital service in general has a decisive effect on the right of a disabled person to have access to the information society - a fundamental social right of every citizen. By extension, the construction, operation and maintenance of websites and applications that are not easily accessible by mobile devices or people with disabilities, or their structure and content are not compatible with assistive technologies (e.g. screen readers) affect their right to participate in the digital society and the right to social welfare.
In conclusion, the importance of following these guidelines depends not only on how "okay" you want to be legally, but also how "okay" you want to be vis-a-vis society (which you are, after all, addressing). And all this may not be something that is implemented within an hour (or even in a day), but on the other hand a project never seems to really end, as there is always room for improvement or even new challenges to make it even more complete, even more friendly, even more functional, even more secure. The issue is to be able to recognize these challenges and to respond responsibly and professionally to them.
