What is digital accessibility?

Digital accessibility ensures that everyone is able to access your digital resources, regardless of how they are accessing them. Accessibility is an umbrella term that encompasses a lot of different considerations, such as:

• The User Experience design (UX) and User Interface (UI) design of your website and application(s)
• The user-friendliness of company documentation and onboarding materials
• The accessibility of digital communication tools, such as via video conferencing
• Specific assistive technology such as text-to-speech tools, braille keyboards and sip-and-puff systems
• Customer support team members who are trained in digital accessibility

According to the UK’s Equality Act 2010, digital accessibility is a legal requirement of businesses. The UK government has a digital strategy that outlines ways that businesses can become more inclusive and innovative. It also provides information on testing assistive services, publishing accessible documents, how to make your service more inclusive and how to find user research participants to test your assistive technology. For more information, please visit the UK government’s website. 

Who benefits from digital accessibility?

There are many different reasons why seeking to improve the digital accessibility of your business can be beneficial. While creating a user-friendly experience for employees and customers with disabilities may be at the forefront of your digital accessibility plan, it’s also beneficial for every user of your services. Digital accessibility is beneficial for customers and employees who:

• Are accessing a service via a tablet, smartphone, smartwatch or any device with a small screen
• Require digital resources to accommodate changing abilities
• Have visual and auditory impairments
• Have long-term or short-term physical disabilities
• Have a neurological condition such as photosensitive epilepsy
• Are neurodivergent
• Have a learning disability

By streamlining your digital services so that they are accessible even with the use of assistive technology, you can therefore make your digital services available to all customers and employees. This is regardless of how they are accessing them.

Why is digital accessibility in the workplace important?

Digital accessibility in the workplace is empowering, as it means removing barriers for all employees. However, employees with different ability profiles may still face barriers in the workplace, which can mean that they are not able to demonstrate their skills fully.

We found that recruiting people with disabilities can revolutionise your company. More than 20% of working-age adults in the UK identified as having a disability. Often, these individuals demonstrate top qualities such as adaptability, tenacity, resourcefulness and a capacity to overcome significant challenges. Research also shows that hiring diverse teams produces better work, due to a broader range of skills, experiences and perspectives.

Inclusive recruitment practices also include looking at the accessibility of your website for a broad range of candidates with different skills and experiences. However, with a study reporting that the top 1 million homepages have 50 different accessibility errors on one page, businesses have work to do in order to make this happen. Digital accessibility can be seen as an ongoing concern for businesses, as ‘no product will be accessible indefinitely’ and they will face the challenge of permanently revising their processes and improving accessibility.

Tips for improving digital accessibility in the workplace

In this next section, we’ll explore some of the key ways that you can improve digital accessibility in the workplace. As the unemployment rate for people with disabilities tends to be higher than that of their peers – regardless of age and education level – employers are better equipped to access this untapped talent pool if they provide the right digital accommodations during the hiring process.

Digital accessibility represents a significant benefit to everyone and can make accessing your digital resources a smoother and more enjoyable experience. By promoting a culture of diversity and accessibility, businesses can also maintain a positive and genuinely progressive image to their customers. They can also help better reflect the customers and communities they serve by ensuring that they understand their needs.

Make the recruitment process more digitally accessible

One of the first steps you can take towards digital accessibility is to improve your recruitment process. Ensure that job descriptions are clear, easy to read and are written with inclusive language. Consider whether the language is exclusionary towards candidates with disabilities – think about whether a job requirement is really a ‘requirement’ or whether accommodations could be made.

Instead of writing ‘must be able to stand up during long shifts’, you might write ‘must be able to remain front of house during long shifts’. By making the language inclusive using subtle tweaks, you’re potentially opening up your talent pool to a more diverse range of candidates.

You can also make your recruitment process more digitally accessible by ensuring that application processes follow accessible design processes. If you plan to conduct interviews remotely, you can make video conferencing more accessible with the following suggestions:

• Make reasonable adjustments such as providing slide decks or information about the interview in advance
• Allowing candidates to remove the self-view option in order to reduce cognitive overload
• Allowing candidates to turn off the camera during the interview
• Providing captions for candidates who have an auditory impairment
• Encouraging candidates to use a headset, microphone or any other assistive technology they may need during the interview. 

Make your website more digitally accessible

When it comes to web design, you can visit the Web Accessibility Initiative for guidelines on how to meet international standards for accessibility. These standards are provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), who ‘helps everyone to build a web based on the principles of accessibility, internationalisation, security and privacy’.

When making your website more digitally accessible, it is useful to follow guidelines on universal design. The concept of universal design (a concept widely used in the creation of digital accessibility) was originally created by Ron Mace in 1997 and explores the following principles:

• Equitable use
• Flexibility in use
• Simple and intuitive use
• Perceptible information
• Tolerance for error
• Low physical effort
• Size and space for approach and use

While digital tools and the internet are constantly advancing, the core principles of universal design are still useful to keep in mind when creating an accessible website. When designing an accessible website, it can be useful to ask yourself the following questions:

• Is there alt text for images available for users with visual impairments?
• Is the text big enough for users with visual impairments?
• Is it easy for users with motor disabilities to navigate the website using a keyboard?
• Is there sufficient contrast between text and background colour for colour-blind users?
• Is the website easy to navigate for users of all cognitive abilities?
• Is website language simple and free of jargon for readers of all abilities?
• Does link text provide enough information about its destination, particularly for screen readers?
• Are there captioning or audio transcripts available for users with auditory impairments?

Providing digital accommodations for employees

As you ensure that your business is accessible and safe to all employees, consider the following digital strategies:

• Asking your employees which digital accommodations they might need
• Training your human resources and communications teams in digital accommodation standards
• Providing notes or slide decks before video conferencing meetings
• Allowing employees to turn off their cameras during meetings
• Ensuring that digital resource spaces such as intranets follow accessible design standards
• Ensuring all employees have the right tools to access digital resources

By making your digital resources more accessible to each one of your users, you can vastly improve the experience different groups of people have with your business. This can have a wide range of benefits for your business, including improved recruitment practices and staff management methods, the ease of website use and digital accommodations across all users. As a business in the UK, you are expected to provide a digitally accessible service to all.