Accessibility means many things. Available. Easy to use. Understandable. The list goes on. It can more specifically mean usable by people with disabilities. For CPM E-Business, we focus on digital accessibility.
Accessibility Happens Everywhere
Here are a few examples:
- Online
- Sporting events
- Schools
- Parking garages
- Sidewalks
- With TV shows and movies
- So many other places!
Everyone Benefits from Accessibility
When we design things accessibly, everyone benefits. While accessibility laws specifically cover disability, steps used to increase access make life easier for all people.
Creating accessibly is the right thing to do. Accessible content allows people with permanent disabilities to use their assistive technology and still get the same information at the same time. It will enable access for someone who experiences a temporary medical condition requiring accessibility. It also helps someone whose situation doesn’t allow for access without accessible features. When everything is accessible, people are more independent.
We create better content, products, events – you name it. The design is simplified and structured. We focus more on what is essential and ignore extraneous things that get in the way.
Examples
We’ve listed some examples about how accessibility, even just one feature, assists different people with different needs. In this example, we focus on how captioning provides access when watching videos. A supervisor tells their employee to watch a training video.
Notice that the same fix, captioning videos, gives access to several different people in whose needs vary.
Need: Permanent
Someone who is deaf or hard of hearing will not be able to, or will have great difficulty discerning the audio part of the video.
Need: Temporary
Maybe the employee has an ear infection which causes the employee to lose some of their hearing abilities. The infection should go away in a few days, but the employee needs to watch the video now.
Need: Situational
Now let’s say the employee works at a large factory with loud machinery. The office is right next to one of the machines. The noise from the machines is louder than the video audio. The employee can barely hear the video because the machine is so loud.
Problem
Each person noted above has difficulty hearing the video, but for several different reasons. They will not receive the important information if all the spoken information is given only by audio. This will negatively impact their ability to learn and do their job.
The Fix
Accessible features, in this case, captioning. Showing captions on the video will provide the employee with the spoken information in the video. The employee can get the information, and they can do their job right.
What Can I Do?
Learn about accessibility. Some of my favorite resources are linked below. You can also contact us with the form below. And check back on February 13, 2019, to read our next post!