Category: UD and ICT

Accessibility and inclusion begins with procurement for any project. Often a scope of works is done by a non-expert to get the expert.  But if the scope isn’t targeted correctly, the consultants are committed to sticking to the scope in the contract. So, the consultants are “doing the thing right” but not necessarily “doing the right thing” for the intended outcome. Consequently, staff involved in procurement activities need to understand access and inclusion basics. That means co-designing of the scope of works to include accessibility requirements. 

The G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance  has a webinar and a model policy on their website about ICT Accessibility procurement. It states:

“Procurement policies are a critical lever in increasing accessibility. They set out the expectation, standards and criteria for how goods and services will be purchased, and through this the city can ensure the acquisition of universal designed products and services to safeguard the equitable development and participation of all.”

A procurement policy or code of conduct can: 

• • • clearly document and ensure compliance with national legislation on accessibility and procurement, or
    • define a clear approach for ensuring inclusive and accessible services that demonstrates alignment with globally recognized standards, even if national legislation does not exist.

While the focus of the advice is on ICT procurement, the principles are applicable to other types of procurement. 

Model Policy

The model policy set out on this website looks very wordy and not an easy read. It’s aimed at city planners and policy makers in the context of smart cities. However, it does set out processes for tendering and contract management. It also includes a section on training, awareness and capacity building for all stakeholders. 

The model policy is worded in policy-speak so that cities and local government can copy and paste sections. The website has various Standards in an annexe and includes Definitions and policy references. 

The references include the UK Government policy and guide on accessible technology, and another from Chicago. Also included is the G3ict discussion guide for accessibility in public sector procurement. 

The model policy is available in English, Spanish and Japanese. A five minute video with James Thurston explains.

Karen Tamley, “The adoption of a policy like this is going really help your city to make sure that accessibility is part of your DNA”.

As our lives transition to digital formats it’s important to know some digital accessibility basics. Creating accessible websites is the first step. But accessible websites need accessible content too. If your Word or PDF documents end up on a website, will they be accessible? 

Gregg Vanderheiden from the Trace R&D Center has developed an Accessibility Masterlist which has more detail on accessible digital design. The Masterlist acts as both information and a checklist for developers and others.

The Masterlist is helpful for anyone engaging a web designer because it shows what needs to be considered.  Most web designers know about web accessibility and say they will meet the standards. However, standards are a minimum and tend to get tacked on at the end. Not the best solution – better to be integrated to avoid digital clunkiness. 

Some Quicksheets

Here are some of the 33 Trace R&D Center Quicksheets that summarise information:

What are Learning Disabilities?

Citizen action has never been more important and much of this is done online and through social media. This is due to the ease of technology, a pandemic and plain economics. Consequently, it’s important to make online spaces accessible for everyone. 

On The Commons Social Change website, Manisha Amin provides some advice form making online spaces accessible. Here are some facts about the Australian population:

• • • 18% living with disability
    • 70% of disabilities are invisible
    • 20% have a long term health condition
    • 28% live in regional and remote areas
    • 48% born overseas or have parent born overseas
    • 8% men are colour blind

These figures don’t include people who have a temporary loss of capability, such as a broken leg. 

An inclusive social environment, online or face to face, is created through respect and listening. Being accountable for your own emotions and accepting all experiences are valid are important too.

Online meetings have benefits and drawbacks and not everyone needs the same features. For example, having video on helps people to lip read and see facial expressions. But some people with neurodiverse conditions find video distracting. 

Live captioning is better than auto-generated captioning and provides a transcript later. Captioning is also good for people with limited English language skills or find different accents difficult to understand. 

The article is titled, Digital Accessibility: Making Online Spaces Accessible. There’s more information about preparing for meetings and good advice about learning to be inclusive. Don’t worry about not getting it right first time – it’s a learning journey for everyone.

In addition, meeting facilitators need to be aware of the power dynamics in the room. Who holds the pen? Who has the loudest voice or the most influence?  

Sheri Byrne Haber has also written about Zoom for people with vision loss.

Economics of universal design in ICT

It is often thought that economic arguments will win the day if social justice arguments are ignored. This may be partially true if these arguments are allowed to be heard. “On Assessing the Costs and Benefits of Universal Design of ICT”, is another attempt to show that universal design has cost benefits, particularly if you take the longer view. This research paper on the economics of universal design in ICT is from Norway.

Abstract: In the ICT and IT domains, universal design is typically viewed as a burden and an expense, and its application is often justified only by ethics and/or legislation. Advocates for universal design are arguing that it is cost-effective, but so far there are few studies that document this in a detailed way. In this work, we discuss related research and studies dealing with the costs and benefits of accessible and usable ICT solutions.

In particular, we discuss the findings regarding what is a universally designed solution, what is needed to make such a solution, how much does it cost, what impact can be anticipated by the extra effort, and how it can be measured.

Finally, we suggest an approach for carrying out cost-benefit analyses of developing universally designed solutions. There is a weak indication that the economical benefits of UD solutions are much higher than the initial and running costs.

I think it is problematic to talk “cost-benefit” because politically it seems it has to benefit those who are not excluded. “Cost effectiveness” is a somewhat different measure with a focus on outcomes rather than outputs. Schraner et al have developed a different model using assistive technology as a case study.  Jane Bringolf, Editor.

The latest CanAxess newsletter features a visual podcast on AI for Accessibility. The team from Global AI discuss how using AI to remove accessibility barriers can help people with cognitive impairments understand content better.

There’s a second video on Inclusive Design 24. This one is about using screen readers to evaluate a website. There is also a link to a repository of downloadable screen readers testing resources.

Other articles include automating accessibility testing and a list of useful links about usability. Jonathan Kaufman writes in Forbes magazine about how accessibility is a wake up call for the progress of business evolution. He writes: 

“Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella said, “… top of mind for me… is how we must make Microsoft products accessible to the more than 1 billion people globally of all abilities… Universal design is central to how we realize our mission and will make all our products better.” 

Discover more about accessibility in the ICT and Universal Design section of this website. 

Web designers provide the framework for content. Then it’s up to others to provide the content. Pictures, videos, text, colour, readability are important for accessibility once the site is built. 

The UK Government has a series of six digital design posters for designers. The aim is to raise awareness of people with different digital access needs. To keep things simple, the posters are divided into Do and Don’t. The content of each poster is listed on the webpage titled, The Dos and Don’ts on designing for accessibility.  Also available in 17 languages.

The posters help designers make online services accessible. They cover low vision, deaf and hard of hearing, dyslexia, motor disabilities, people with autism and users of screen readers.

The posters are simple and this is what makes them effective. Basically they act as visual prompts to designers rather than offering technical know-how. There are posters for people:

with autism

who use screen readers

with low vision

 with dyslexia 

who are Deaf or hard of hearing

with physical or motor disabilities.

Posters by Barclays Bank 

Barclays Bank has developed a set of inclusive digital design posters. They are based on seven design principles. These principles are applicable to other design fields as well as digital platforms. You can download the A3 poster which gives a quick overview. Or download a more detailed  set of A4 posters.

The posters are a good quick reference for web and app design professionals. The seven principles below are explained in more detail: More detail of the seven principles are explained:

1. 1. 1. Provide comparable experience
      2. Consider situation
      3. Provide comparable experience
      4. Be consistent
      5. Give control
      6. Offer choice 
      7. Prioritise content
      8. Add value

 Artificial Intelligence and inclusion

The way businesses design and develop new technology will determine the inclusiveness of our digital society. Technology has the potential to bring people with disability into the workforce. 

The 24 page PDF report, Amplify You, covers understanding the digital divide, design for humans, AI is the new UI, and more. I the last section, What to Do Now, it has bullet points under headings of: Understand the implications of accessibility, Design accessibility into your business, Build an ecosystem of accessibility – and continuously think about what is next.  

When you are in a rush it’s easy to leave out the description of the image in the alt-text box – but should you?. Alt-text is a description of an image that’s shown to people, who for some reason, can’t see the image. Among other things, alt-texts help:

• • people with little or no vision
  • people who turn off images to save data
  • search engines find your website and posts

People with little or no vision probably benefit most from alt-texts. They use a screen reader to navigate the web.  If you don’t include alt-text you run the risk of a screen reader trying to convey something like “publicity_pre_launch.jpg, or “cropped_img32_900px.png”. Find out more from Axess Lab on how to convey context and meaning without writing an essay! Once you get into the habit, it doesn’t take long to do.

Choosing colours for websites

Colour vision deficiency or colour blindness affects around 10 per cent of the population. But each person varies in what colours they can see, which is why it is not “colour blindness”.  So what colours are best if you want all readers to enjoy colours on your website?

Colour choice is not just a matter of making it look good – it can affect the readability of text and graphics as well.

A small qualitative study looked at two websites to assess their readability and usability by people who have colour vision deficiency. The researcher analysed body text, background and links and found they affected usability of the websites. The results should be read in conjunction with the methodology otherwise it won’t make sense. The conclusion section does not provide the specific outcomes.

The title of the article is, The effects of color choice in web design on the usability for individuals with color-blindness.  This is a Masters theses.

Colour kindness for colour blindness

It’s one thing to talk about colour blindness, but it is quite another to see what it looks like to the 6-10 per cent of the population that have colour vision deficiency. Axess Lab has produced an excellent set of successes and failures using real life examples of colours used by web designers.

These examples provide really good guidance for anyone involved in web content and design, as well as printed material. The blog page has links to more information. There is a nice pic of what a football field looks like to someone who can’t see red and green – so it’s not all about the web – it’s all around us as the picture shows. If you want to see more on this topic see ColourBlindAwareness Twitter feed. 

The banner in the picture shown should read ‘You Are Not Alone’, instead it looks like, ‘You Are Alone’.