Web Accessibility in a nutshell.

**Within the EU, Web accessibility has a lot more importance this year. Products and services must be accessible before 28 June 2025.**

Published in

REWRITE TECH by diconium

7 min readJan 18, 2022

In 2022, one of my essential topics is ‘Accessibility’. Within this post, I will briefly explain what is, why it is crucial, and whom it affects.

Web Accessibility, what exactly is it?

Often, accessibility abbreviates to A11y — as in “a” then 11 characters then “y.” The concept of accessibility refers to products or services that anyone can use, regardless of how they encounter them. It is the practice of making these as usable by anyone as possible. Accessibility laws exist to aid people with disabilities. Yet, designers should try to accommodate all potential users in many contexts of usage anyway. It is a benefit doing so; better designs for all.

Accessibility issues include:

Visual (e.g., colour blindness)
Physical/Motor/mobility (e.g., wheelchair-user concerns)
Speech and Auditory (hearing difficulties)
Neurological/Seizures (especially photosensitive epilepsy)
Learning/cognitive (e.g., dyslexia)

Ability barriers might arise for anyone:

Using devices that have small screens such as phones, watches. Etc.
Incidental (e.g., sleep-deprivation)
Environmental (e.g., using a mobile device underground)
Older people whose abilities change due to ageing
Temporary disabilities; such as a broken arm or lost glasses
A slow internet connection
Situational limitations: bright sunlight or a loud environment where audio can’t be heard

A pair of glasses on a flat surface. Photo by Joshua Newton on Unsplash

Differences between Accessibility and Usability

Accessibility and Usability tend to be confused at times due to their similarities. Both of these aspects are vital to User Experience Design. What do these terms mean? Which are the differences, and where do these overlap?

Accessibility

The ability of a website or service to be accessible by anybody refers to as accessibility. Accessibility is an attribute. It is being able to access or enter some system or entity; irrespective of whether it is physical or digital. Accessibility seeks to provide a comparable user experience for a service or product by focusing on persons with impairments.

Usability

Usability assesses how simple it is to use a website. It is the degree or measure to which something can or should be used. Usability is essential in technology to consider how simple a system is to use. It indicates if designs are efficient, beneficial, and effective. Usability encompasses accessibility. If a product is inaccessible, it serves no use.

Accessibility by 2025 — not a trend, but a need.

European Union

Starting 2022, accessibility within Europe will be prominent within the digital industry. The national laws developed by the Member States that comply with the European Accessibility Act (EAA) will be published by June 28, 2022.

The EU Web Accessibility Directive was developed out of an ongoing attempt to overcome accessibility shortcomings within the European Union. Siteimprove explains what the European Web Accessibility Directive is more in-depth.

“The purpose of the web accessibility Directive is to approximate the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States concerning accessibility requirements for the websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies so that users, particularly people with disabilities, have better access to them.”
Deutsche Sozialversicherung Europavertretung

Services and products where requirements must be implemented include:

Banking Services
E-commerces
Telephone Services
E-books
Mobile services (related to air, bus, rail, and waterborne transport)
Smartphones
Operating Systems

This has to be done by June 28, 2025. The EAA applies to every app available in any app store of a country within the EU.

Province of Ontario, Canada

The Path to 2025: Ontario’s Accessibility Action Plan aims to turn the province into an accessible region. Similar to EAA, AODA has set a deadline for accessibility topics. AODA stands for Accessibility for Ontarians with Disability Act. AODA, the Canadian anti-discrimination law, was passed in 2005 for the Province of Ontario. It aims to recognize the history of discrimination against persons with disability in the province of Ontario.

There are accessibility standards within the law that directly apply to web and digital accessibility. Under Section 14 within Part II, “Accessible Websites and Web Content,” organizations covered by this law are required to ensure that their websites are fully accessible (we discuss the actual requirements in the next section, below). All covered entities were required to meet all but two of the WCAG 2.0 Level AA criteria by January 2020.

Have you heard the term “WCAG” being thrown around?

Within your product team, have you heard developers or designers talk about or make reference to the term ‘WCAG’? WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium publishes these guidelines. They help make products and websites accessible, hence why you may hear designers use this term when checking the contrast of colours, for example.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) regularly releases new versions of the WCAG. They increase and refine them as technology progresses and accessibility best practices evolve. The current version is 2.1 — which contains levels of success criteria.

The three levels of conformance are Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. Most regulations suggest having a conformance level of AA. Conforming at higher levels indicates conformance at lower levels. A website fulfills both the A and AA conformance standards by complying with AA.

Level A
It is the lowest level of compliance. Level A prohibits elements that would make the website inaccessible. People with disabilities suffer adversities using websites that barely meet the Level A requirements. Level A does not achieve broad accessibility in many instances.

Level AA
Level AA is the mid-range level of compliance and is the recommended compliance level for almost all businesses. It possesses an acceptable level of accessibility for many online services. Level AA means that people with or without disabilities find the website usable and understandable. It improves a user’s ability to interact with the site without encountering significant barriers and frustration.

Level AAA
It is the highest level of compliance, viewed as the gold standard. This level offers the best and most current way to make websites and content user-friendly with very few barriers. This level takes a good experience and turns it into an excellent one.

Keep in mind who your market is. If your product or service addresses people with disabilities or the elderly, you will have to consider using a Level AAA. Not only does this demonstrates that you are mindful. It also shows you pay attention to your audience’s needs by exercising good UX.

A screenshot of https://designmatters.io/

Conferences in 2022

Last year I attended the Design Matters conference online. It was well organized, speakers were very insightful, and exhibited a very positive environment. The main topic last year was Design Systems. This year it seems to revolve around Accessibility. Besides Design Matters, here are some events that will be touching on the topic of Accessibility.

Online access Early Bird until February 15th, 2022: https://designmatters.io/line-up/laura-kalbag/

Other interesting conferences worth checking out:
UX Istanbul
UXDX APAC 2022
Interaction Design Day
Amuse UX Conference
An Event Apart

10 Practical UX Guidelines for Accessibility

If you don’t address accessibility at the design stage of your project, it’s much harder to fix bugs.
When writing personas, include personas with varying abilities.
Use alt text on content-enhancing images.
Writing accessible copy: Make content is easily understandable. Simpler language reaches more users. As do effective information hierarchy, progressive disclosure, and prompting. Use a B2 (upper-intermediate) or high school language level.
Have a link strategy; links should be clear and meaningful
Use headings to create structure
For lists use either bullets or numbers
Provide the correct levels of colour contrast
Use live text rather than text in images
Use visual cue rather than colour alone; achieve this by using shapes, patterns, and/or text equivalent

Everyone benefits from Accessibility. A broader range of customers may acquire information regardless of their individual needs. We can achieve this by making websites, services, products, and electronic documents accessible. Equal access should result in a more user-friendly and inviting experience for individuals of all abilities.