Digital Accessibility – what is it and why should you and your archives be concerned about it?
A great definition of accessibility comes from a workshop given in 2017 by Stephanie Slattery, a front-end engineer specializing in accessibility. She described accessibility as:
“The design of products, devices, services, or environments for people who experience disabilities and it is the practice of removing barriers that might prevent people with disabilities from accessing all those things”
Making sure your archive sites and content are accessible to as many people as possible is not only ethically responsible and good business, it is also legally required by the American with Disabilities Act and Section 508 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. As stated on the U.S General Services Administration web site “Section 508 may not apply to your website, but other laws likely do, so your website should be accessible…Regardless of whether or not federal regulations apply to your website, designing for all users is a best practice, and will help your organization more effectively meet the needs of all your customers.” – U.S General Services Administration
Under Title III of the ADA, companies cannot discriminate against disabled people “in the full and equal enjoyment of public accommodations.” But when the law was passed in 1990, the internet did not have the place in our lives it does now, leaving a vast gray area over what defines an accessible website. In 2010, the Department of Justice began to develop uniform guidelines but they have not finished. What most organizations and governments are doing is following the WCAG guidelines to meet accessibility.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium in cooperation with individuals and organizations around the world, with a goal of providing a single shared standard for web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organizations, and governments internationally.
WCAG 2.0 has become the internationally recognized benchmark for web accessibility. The Revised 508 Standards are based on WCAG 2.0.
The WCAG guidelines take a layered approach to accessibility, starting with four high-level principles that all content creators should strive to achieve. These principles, referred to as POUR are defined as follows:
- Perceivable: Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.
- Operable: User interface components and navigation must be operable.
- Understandable: Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable.
- Robust: Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.
Currently many schools and businesses are being sued because their sites and content are not accessible. In 2015, Harvard and MIT were sued by advocates for the deaf for falling to caption online lectures, courses and other educational materials. In 2016 the University of California, Berkeley was found by the DOJ’s civil rights division to have violated disability law by not providing the appropriate accommodations for its own free video lectures and podcasts. In January 2019, a class action lawsuit was filed against Beyoncé , claiming her website violated the ADA because it employed an exclusively visual interface and those with vision issues cannot browse the site and make online purchases without the assistance of a sighted companion. (Cullins, 2019). There have also been a rash of art galleries in New York being sued for violating the ADA because their websites are allegedly not accessible to visually impaired and blind visitors.
People can have one or several types of disabilities. They can have Visual, Auditory, Motor, Speech and Cognitive disabilities. Disabilities can also be temporary, permanent, sudden, gradual, or some combination. All these things need to be taken into consideration when striving for accessibility. Visual, Auditory, Motor, Speech and Cognitive disabilities rely on various assistive technologies and alternate methods of interaction to use digital documents, web and mobile apps.
People with Visual disabilities may rely on screen readers, braille displays, zoom functions or high contrast colors to get value from what’s displayed on screen. People with Auditory disabilities often rely on captions or transcripts for video content. People with Motor disabilities might require speech-to-text software or keyboard-only interactions. People with Speech disabilities require a non-vocal means of interaction. And, finally, people with Cognitive disabilities often require thoughtful and organized layouts with clear direction. Digital Accessibility is the practice of making digital documents, web and mobile apps accessible to everyone… including people with disabilities. — Adapted from W3C: Diversity in Web Use
This workshop will walk you through accessibility best practices, how to evaluate your web site for accessibility barriers, how to check your word and pdf documents for accessibility and suggestions for incorporating accessibility into your archives.
— Amy Wolfe
