Accessibility is the concept of whether a product or service can be used by everyone—however they encounter it. Accessible interfaces make our product usable for people who interact with products differently.
Accessibility is about more than compliance with standards. It’s about developing solutions to meet the needs of all users, with and without disabilities. Universal design, a concept now widely used in the private sector, provides a path for federal agencies to shift to this broader focus.
And it’s the law. Companies can (and do) get sued for not providing equal access.
Universal design is a concept in which products and environments are designed to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaption or specialized design.
Adopting universal design principles can help your agency address and improve accessibility in areas such as digital strategy, procurement, and design and implementation of digital products.
Through universal design, your company can:
Accessibility Requirements
Accessibility requirements are intended to make software products usable for people with a wide array of challenges, such as visual, cognitive, hearing, and motor impairments. These include poor eyesight or the inability to use a mouse. One common accessibility aid, a screen reader, reads text out loud to people who are visually challenged. In order to make screen readers work well, accessible software needs to include features such as skip navigation, which bypasses reading the site’s navigation on each page.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) define accessibility standards. At a minimum, you should:
We need to design accessible interfaces to make our product usable for people who interact with products differently. Also, your company can be sued if the product doesn’t work for disabled users.
Accessibility requirements make software products usable for people with a wide array of challenges such as visual, cognitive, hearing, and motor impairments. These include poor eyesight or the inability to use a mouse. One accessibility aid, a screen reader, reads text out loud to people who are visually challenged. In order to make screen readers work well, accessible software needs to include features such as skip navigation, which bypasses reading the site’s navigation on each page.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) define accessibility standards. At a minimum, you should:
Below are a few key takeaways from the full WCAG list:
A number of software products can identify and help fix your accessibility issues. Many of them work as browser plug-ins. Figma includes several such plug-ins including A11y, a color contrast checker.
View this site for a guide to accessibility in the digital age.
Accessibility Goals are: