For better or worse, over recent years accessibility has become a term that means ‘disabled access to websites’. We have been barraged by moral messages and scare-tactics about why websites have to be accessible, but there is still very little focus on the broader advantages of accessible design.
The truth is that – in most cases – accessible sites perform better for all audiences, open up new market opportunities and consequently deliver substantial benefits to their owners.
Let’s start with some of the facts, such as they are. There are have been numerous estimates of how large the disabled online audience in the UK is. The highest estimate I’ve seen is 48% – 29.3 million people. The lowest, 14%. That’s 8.6 million people: the UK’s officially registered disabled population.
Whichever figure you believe (I think a realistic addressable audience figure is more like 25% – just over 15 million people) the number is impressive. And that, of course, is just the UK.
These statistics span everything from the blind (where most of the publicity relating to accessibility has been centred) to the physically disabled. Along the way are partial and failing sight, cognitive disabilities, dyslexia, colour blindness, and dozens more. For many of these groups, the internet is a critical part of their access to everyday services.
A receptive online audience that may be as large as 15 million people? It’s hard to imagine anyone not taking that seriously, but most have not.
That, in essence, is the standard argument for accessibility. It makes a pretty compelling case on its own, but it’s not the whole story. Not by a long shot.
Despite what many would have you believe, most aspects of accessibility practice are not related to any specific technology consideration or technical approach. Sure, the format of the code matters, but the fundamental approach to design matters more – a lot more.
Accessibility in its truest sense means ‘being easily obtained, used or understood’. That principle is central to a successful approach to online accessibility too: make it simple to understand and easy to use; make it clear, straightforward and easily legible; and provide it in a format that everyone can access.
There is also an enormous amount of over-estimation among site owners about the capabilities and confidence levels of the average user. Most people, it turns out, are not web experts. They are impatient and intolerant of anything even vaguely confusing.
The link here is not a hard one hard to make. It turns out that fully able users want many of the same things as disabled audiences. We test ‘typical’ users all the time, and they always choose the simplest option presented to them. As do disabled users.
See the pattern here?
The principles of accessible design are a solid basis for the sites that the majority of people want to use. There are specific considerations, and some of those are invisible to anyone who doesn’t need them, but many simply provide an improved experience to everyone.
Ensuring that text can be scaled up elegantly has been an accessibility requirement for years – everyone with a vision-limiting condition makes use of it, as you’d expect.
Now if you, like me, use a computer with a large high-resolution screen, you’ll find that this comes in handy too – I often scale up text to make it easier to read a site’s content. So I’m suddenly making everyday use of an ‘accessible’ feature, simply because I have a good computer.
It’s the simplest of examples, but the principles are consistent with many accessibility-related issues.
We’re doing some work the the British Dyslexia Association at the moment, identifying key tasks that dyslexics find difficult online. The BDA represent the six million people in the UK with dyslexia, yet this audience is hardly ever considered by site owners. Over the coming months, we’ll be creating some best practice examples showing how these key online tasks can be made accessible to this key group – and I’ll bet my house, even from the work we’ve done so far, that the results are extremely well received by users without even a hint of dyslexia (some of them may even have a form of dyslexia without knowing it).
The reality for anyone who runs an online service, particularly in today’s climate, is that every customer counts. Every commercial opportunity has to be seized upon, and every effort must be made to increase key measures like conversion rates, successful transaction metrics and bottom line revenue.
It’s not an extra that should be cut when the budget is trimmed, nor should it simply be there as a nod to your social conscience: it makes solid, commercial sense. Every Pound spent on delivering a site to accessible standards will pay off, whether through increased reach or improved response from existing audiences.
Oh and finally, don’t believe that an accessible site cannot be as beautiful or elegant as one that is not: accessibility should have no detrimental effects on visual impact or brand appeal. Nor should it come at a premium. If it does any of these things, you’re doing it badly – or having it done for you badly.
[Published in edited form on mad.co.uk - 24/11/08]