Three big fallacies regarding accessibility
In my everyday conversations about accessibility in digital media, I frequently encounter these three big misconceptions:
1. Accessible design is mostly about blind people and screen readers.
2. Accessibility helps a tiny fraction of people.
3. Our responsibilities regarding accessibility are going away.
These are all 100% incorrect, and failing to understand why they're incorrect puts us (and our clients) at tremendous risk — legal risk, and the risk of a huge loss of engagement. Often I find that the person who's saying something like the above hasn't ever really thought about it and it's just sort of casually coming out — so this is an opportunity for us to educate them and get them aligned with us in prioritizing accessibility. More on all of these misconceptions below...
Fallacy #1: Accessible design mostly means considerations for blind people and screen readers
Many web users who are blind use screen reader software, aka text-to-speech software, to have digital materials read out loud to them. When we digital professionals are designing digital materials, there are certain design considerations and coding considerations that are important for us to implement in order to make sure that screen reader users are able to easily access the same content as typically sighted users. The design and coding guidelines for this are pretty straight-forward. But our responsibility for accessibility doesn't end there! Not by a long shot. There are a ton of other accessibility considerations that don't affect screen readers at all. Failing to design with these further considerations in mind means we fail to accommodate people with other kinds of disabilities beside blindness.
Some examples:
You might design something with text in your brand blue color on a background that's your brand yellow. This is fine for screen readers, but bad for people with certain kinds of colorblindness.
You might design a text element with all caps. This is fine for screen readers, but bad for people with dyslexia.
You might design a callout as text in an image, and include corresponding alt text. This is fine for screen readers, but bad for users with certain types of low vision who use software to change the color of text to something they can see more easily.
You might design something with a small font size for body copy, let's say smaller than 15px. This is fine for screen readers, but bad for the very large percentage of people who have other kinds of visual impairments — and it's also bad for people who simply don't have their glasses handy! Or people who have a headache! Et cetera!
Screen reader software won't be affected by any of the above design decisions because it's simply reading your content out loud to users who are blind — it doesn't consider what the content looks like visually. But all of these design decisions will decrease engagement for users with other types of disabilities, cause frustration for them, and ultimately cause them to bounce. How many people are we talking about here? A lot! Next point:
Fallacy #2: Accessibility only helps a tiny fraction of people
I've heard colleagues casually say things along the lines of, "We don't have budget to make this piece accessible, so we realize we'll lose whatever amount of engagement that is; a percent or two." This is painful to hear! First of all, even if it were just one percent of our audience who require marketing materials to be accessible, it is our ethical responsibility to make sure that we're accommodating them. I cringe when I hear my fellow digital professionals (carelessly, never consciously) talk about these people like we just don't care about them; we can abandon them. We don't need them.
Now, beyond that, this line of thinking is just dangerous and irresponsible with regard to our clients, because the reality is that a very large percentage of our audience are people with various disabilities who require that we make our materials fully accessible for them. These are our client's customers and potential customers. Our clients might not completely understand their needs for accessibility, but it's our job to.
As of the last time I looked this up, the World Health Organization reports that 2.2 billion people have visual impairments of some kind; that's 27.4% of Earth's population. And that's just visual impairments; that's not covering the large percentage of people who have cognitive disabilities like dyslexia, or other disabilities that can make our digital materials hard to engage with if we're not following accessibility protocols.
Failing to consider accessibility for all types of users can result in a massive loss of engagement for our clients. It's not "a percent or two." It's a huge chunk of the population. I promise you, our clients want these people's engagement. And, just as importantly, it's our ethical responsibility to make sure we're providing accommodation to these people.
Fallacy #3: Our responsibilities regarding accessibility are going away
That is to say, some people I've spoken to recently believe, very cynically, that accessibility laws may be going away entirely in the near future, or they're going to become significantly less important to our clients from a legal standpoint. It's true that protections for many different vulnerable groups are currently at risk in the US. Some of our clients who see accessibility primarily as something that costs them money might be eager to stop considering it for their digital marketing materials.
So, the most important thing here is for us to educate our clients that accessibility considerations aren't just there to protect them from lawsuits. We're the digital experts; it's our responsibility to guide them! Personally, I consider the legal requirements of accessibility to be the third-most important reason to make our work fully accessible. The first is that accessibility is simply our ethical responsibility to people with disabilities — and, uh, unfortunately the reality is that some clients don't really respond much to this point. The second is that digital materials that are made to be fully accessible are easier to engage with for all users, meaning enhanced success for our clients. This is an easier sell!
Then, sure, it's (currently) the law. But I believe that thinking about real people, caring about people — those are the more important reasons to value and prioritize accessibility. And the real-world benefit to our clients is tangible; it's measurable.
Let's say, in the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) gets struck down at some point. This would be a tragedy; it's frankly unconscionable. But some of our clients might be pleased to know they no longer have to pay their marketing agencies for the (relatively small, I would argue) additional time and effort it takes to make their marketing materials accessible.
Not so fast!
There's still the European Accessibility Act (EAA), which has enormous overlap with the ADA in the requirements it dictates, but with regard to the EU. If our client's materials are going to used by a global audience, then they simply can't abandon accessibility.
I'm getting ahead of myself here, but there's also the chance that a future American administration would reinstate accessibility law in the US. Then our clients would have to completely redo or overhaul any marketing materials they've produced that are not compliant. This is essentially what they all faced a few years ago, when the ADA had already been in effect but most companies weren't taking it seriously, and then a series of high-profile lawsuits occurred. Suddenly all of our clients were in a rush to make all of their materials compliant. This was hectic, and expensive, and they remained exposed until we could accomplish this for them. In all the rush, we weren't able to do our very best work. No one should want a repeat of any of that.
And, again, we should make the argument that following accessibility guidelines increases engagement for all users. Materials that are accessible perform better, period. Our client wants maximum engagement, and it's our job to tell them that designing for accessibility is part of that. Yes, they're paying a bit more for those hours that we spend ensuring that their marketing materials are compliant. And they win that back through the increased engagement they get from the public — again, not just from the (very large) portion of our audience with disabilities, but from all users. It just makes sense for all materials to be fully accessible — we just have to educate our clients as to why. Make them see dollar signs; that should be all it takes.
On top of all of this, of course the ADA is still here, for now, and with a little luck it won't be going away any time in the foreseeable future. I think gambling on the idea that it might go away is a big mistake. For all of these reasons, it just makes sense to continue ensuring that everything we're producing is fully accessible. We can explain all of this to our clients in a way that gets them on board; that's our job. Let me talk to them!
– Manning
Questions/comments? Feel free to contact me at manning@manningkrull.com. I update these articles pretty frequently — best practices evolve over time as the world of digital quickly changes, and I always welcome insights from others.