Impact on people with disabilities
Digital accessibility allows people with disabilities to be more autonomous.
Accessible websites and applications allow people with disabilities to complete tasks online without the help of an outside person without disability. This is an important improvement for quality of life, as the person with disability can dispose of their own time more freely.
Digital accessibility allows people with disabilities to accomplish tasks more easily, and to create less fatigue.
While eventually, people with disabilities manage to complete their online task, it can take a lot more time for them to do so. The constant struggle and effort put into accomplishing what should be easy tasks creates a lot of fatigue. An accessible website helps navigate more easily, and reduces the mental strain of daily online tasks.
Digital accessibility allows people with disabilities to accomplish tasks quicker.
Without digital accessibility, a mundane task can take a lot more time to complete. To find a “confirm” button can take a very long time when there is no way to locate this button surely. An accessible website helps people with disabilities to spend less time accomplishing online tasks.
Digital accessibility allows people with disabilities to have better access to information.
It can be difficult for a person with disabilities to find information, as it can be contained into an image or another format not accessible to all. Information can also be several clicks away, which might not be an issue for the general public, but can be a struggle for a person with disability.
Example: Visual disabilities & screen readers
- How does a person with a visual impairment access a website, and how does an accessible website help? What obstacles exist for a person with visual impairment when browsing a website?
A person with a visual impairment cannot access the website via its visual interface. This person is not able to locate buttons, links and elements on a webpage via their vision. - What solution against these obstacles?
This person must resort to an alternative way of navigating the page, one that does not rely on visually locating buttons and interactions.
A person with visual disability can use a screen reader.
A screen reader is a software that will analyse the webpage and read it out loud to the user. But the screen reader needs to be able to identify all different parts of the website, and to identify any link. This way, it can convey the hierarchy of the webpage, and let the user know what parts of it are interactive, or not.
This is where accessible websites have a role to play. An accessible website has each element properly labelled for the screen reader to identify, and to navigate. And if there is an image, the screen reader will be able to read a description of the image provided by the webpage.
Look at it as puzzle pieces. When a website is accessible, it will fit right in with the assistive devices. When not, it won’t match.
Broader Audience Benefits
Accessible websites and content can also benefit broader audiences:
- Temporarily impaired people
Some people might be temporarily impaired, due to a treatable condition. A person with a broken arm for instance, will have difficulty using a mouse, and might need to use navigation via keyboard. A short-sighted person who broke or lost his/her glasses might need to make things appear bigger on a screen, or might even need an audio alternative. - Older people
Older people might have difficulty accessing and understanding technology. They may also have difficulty to see and to move, and could benefit from several accessibility tools. - People in an impracticable environment
Sometimes, a non-disabled person might have one or more of its senses perturbed by the environment. A noisy or sunny environment might cause difficulty to perceive some information. In this case, it is useful for all to have an alternate way to access information.
Case studies and examples
For a person with a hearing disability, any audio or video content will be inaccessible. It is then important to provide the information in another form.
A solution can of course be a transcription in a sign language video.
It can also be a written transcription below the video or audio player, or subtitles, in the case of a video.
Subtitles can also be a useful tool for non-disabled persons. It is quite common to see people in transportation looking at a video with subtitles. Though they are hearing persons, the environmental noise is preventing them from correctly hearing, so subtitles can be a good solution.