Accessibility

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:

  • Save money by investing in the most accessible products from the start;
  • Innovate and create products for everyone regardless of ability; and
  • Engage staff, promote inclusivity, and pave the way for more people with disabilities to join the workforce.

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:

  • Ensure that sufficient contrast, and sufficient size exists to make text readable
  • Don’t rely solely on color to identify an object’s state
  • Don’t rely on hover for users to find information or to complete interactions
  • All images should have alternate text to make them accessible to screen readers 

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:

  • Ensure that sufficient contrast, and sufficient size exists to make text readable
  • Don’t rely solely on color to identify an object’s state
  • Don’t rely on hover for users to find information or to complete interactions
  • All images should have alternate text to make them accessible to screen readers

Below are a few key takeaways from the full WCAG list:

  • Make sure your entire website is easily accessible using a screen reader 
  • The overall website functionality should be available using only a keyboard
  • Ensure all non-text content (including images) has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose
  • Create text transcripts for all video and audio content on your website
  • All videos on your website should contain closed captions
  • Avoid videos or audio on your website that play automatically
    • If there are elements that need to be played automatically, ensure there are easy methods to pause or stop 
  • Avoid images on text unless necessary 
  • Color contrast on website needs to be legible, especially when placed on top of each other (here is a helpful guide on optimizing color contrast for your website
  • Ensure that text can be resized up to 200% without assistive technology, and without loss of content or functionality
  • Use a straightforward layout for your website that’s easy to follow and understand
  • Make all of your website forms accessible (label each form field, try to decrease the number of fields as much as possible)
    • Label each form error clearly 
    • Include multiple ways your users can access different pages (navigation menu, search bar, footer sitemap) 
    • Write descriptive and meaningful hyperlinks

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: