Global Accessibility Awareness Day

“Someone with a disability must be able to experience web-based services, content and other digital products with the same successful outcome as those without disabilities,” reads the accessibility.day site.

Today, Matt Fernand talks to us about the ways in which our UX/UI design teams at Deltatre are currently supporting and contributing to this awareness and commitment to inclusion in the work that we do.

"I'm working mainly with websites and apps right at the moment, but I know that this is something we bring to all the things we make - our on-air graphics or smart TV apps, for example. In my team at the moment, we’re developing many things, such as personas which are users of assistive technology, to help in discovery and design. These then translate into actors in our Agile User Stories so that users of assistive technology are still front of mind when we move into development and quality assurance.

Design Systems are another major help. They’re like extended style guides which include interactive features and whole page templates. They give us a whole-site view, which is essential to ensure that the finished product is fully inclusive.

Design Systems also help once the product is live. Every site or app needs to adapt to changing business needs, or external factors like new technologies, or sporting changes. If that’s not managed carefully, it could result in the site or app requiring a lot of small tweaks which, over time, add up to major changes. This can impact all areas of usability, including accessibility, which is why a whole-site view is essential for us.”

What are some design challenges yourself or your team have overcome to help achieve this goal?

“Presenting data is at the heart of storytelling in sport – not just scores and results, fans want to delve into team or player performance records and stats. Conveying those numbers in a way that’s meaningful to users who may be visually impaired is a real challenge. I’d love to see the industry come together and agree some standards in this area, but right now it’s something we solve here, one product at a time.

Occasionally, we can come across challenges when the brand colours of a project we are working with aren’t accessible, for example, mid-range colours are tricky because they’re too light to work against white, but not light enough to contrast with black. We solve this by working with clients to adapt those colours for screens and apps.”

What are you most excited about regarding the future of global accessibility?

“I think the shift in thinking from ‘accessibility’ to ‘inclusive design’ is a really big sign that we’re heading in the right direction. Possibly even as little as five years ago, industry-wide, accessibility tended to be an afterthought, but now it’s something that’s expected, so it’s baked into the production process. That’s essential. You can’t retrofit accessibility, so it must be planned in from the start for the user to have the best experience possible.

Ultimately, we want designing for screen readers, for example, to be on the same level as designing for mobile or multiple languages. We’re not quite there as an industry, but the mindset has definitely shifted, and inclusivity is now an expectation not an exception

It’s great to be part of that push, and to see clients and non-design team members within Deltatre challenge and support us on inclusivity more and more often.

The other thing I’m excited about is the potential for technology, especially AI, to help us see designs from different viewpoints. There’s currently a large range of tools to help make sure that what we design and build is as inclusive as possible. Ideally, we user test with a broad range of people, but that’s not always possible, so having browser and design app plug-ins to check for accessibility can help there.

Most of the significant progress in this area, however, has tended to centre around visual impairment. As an industry, we haven’t come nearly as far in designing, for example, for neurodiversity - and that’s something we need to fix.

If we can create tools to help us understand how it might be to use a site if you have, for example, short-term memory issues or dyslexia, then that’s only going to help in a world where people are living longer, and we’re increasingly aware of the many ways that human brains differ from one another.

So, while a few years ago having a cognitive or physical impairment was a barrier to using technology, we’re getting ever closer to the opposite - a world where technology empowers people who were previously seen as ‘disabled’. Who wouldn’t want to be part of making that happen?”