
What is user experience?

Make your product more usable by more people in less time. That’s a great aim, and it is the opening line in the IBM Equal Access Toolkit. With many websites remaining inaccessible, this toolkit assists web developers and designers increase accessibility. It comes with Accessibility Checkers and has reporting tools for accessibility conformance.
Non-tech people should also have a look at this Toolkit especially if they are in charge of contracting a web developer for their website. Or when they update their website.
There are five steps: Plan, Design, Develop, Verify, and Launch. The process inolves the whole team regardless of their level of expertise.
The Equal Access Checklist is where it gets technical and links to the WCAG2.0/2.1 Checkpoints. There are four principles underpinning the process.
For an overview, G3ict has a media release explaining why this toolkit is needed. Accessibility is an issue that comes up in legal and policy discussions in many organisations. While many websites have improved their accessibility there is still a long way to go. It is worth noting that a new site might be fully accessible but as new material is uploaded, it isn’t always checked for accessibility over time.
Digital infrastructure accessibility and content accessibility are not the same things. Infrastructure covers things like elements that show up on every page and anything related to navigation. Content is anything that can be updated and uploaded. So that’s text, documents, articles, photos and videos. We all need to stay vigilant on web accessibility.
A key point in an informative article from Sheri Byrne-Haber is:
Every single time the content is updated, content accessibility should be reassessed.
This is particularly relevant if staff or third parties are free to upload content onto a site, or are providing content. The other key point is:
Accessibility is never one-off and done.
Byrne-Haber uses a case study to show how organisations can be left vulnerable to lawsuits if they don’t check regularly for accessibility. Webpages can be accessible today, but next week they might not be because new content has not been assessed for accessibility.
The title of the article is, What’s more expensive than getting sued over inaccessibility?.