Understanding accessibility
Making a website or mobile app accessible means making sure it can be used by as many people as possible.
At least 1 in 5 people in the UK have a long-term illness, impairment or disability, many more have a temporary disability (For more information visit Scope - Disability facts and figures). This includes people with:
- cognitive impairments or learning disabilities
- deafness or impaired hearing
- impaired vision
- motor difficulties
Assistive technology
Accessibility means more than putting things online. It means making your content and design clear and simple enough so that most people can understand it without needing to adapt it, while supporting those who do need to adapt things.
Examples:
- Someone with impaired vision might use a screen reader (software that lets a user navigate a website and 'reads out' the content), braille display or screen magnifier. Poor colour contrast, and small text can make content difficult to read.
- Someone with motor difficulties might use a special mouse, speech recognition software or on-screen keyboard emulator.
- People with cognitive impairments or learning disabilities may find it difficult to understand complicated layouts, symbols, large blocks of text and detailed descriptions. They may struggle with moving images or varied, inconsistent layouts. Keeping content short, precise, using bullets and step by step instructions can make it easier for everyone to understand.
- People with hearing impairments might not be able to understand audio information without visual aids. They rely on captions, transcripts, or sign language interpretation to access audio and video content.
If content is accessible, software and technology designed to help people read web pages will have no problem following what you have written.
Adding an accessibility plugin or widget may help some people make the website more accessible by doing things such as changing colour contrast or text size, but its just on your website. It can also mess up the website for people who already use assistive technology which is set up on their device, making it useless for the very people it is intended to help. And you may still have an inaccessible website.
Why making your public sector website or mobile app accessible is important
People need to use our website or documents to find out information or use our services, so it's important they work for everyone. The people who need them the most are often the people who find them hardest to use.
Accessible websites and documents work better for everyone. They are generally faster, easier to use and appear higher in search rankings.
Accessibility is about making sure web content can be used by as many people as possible. It doesn't just help users with specific needs. Making things accessible benefits our entire audience by helping them read our content quickly and get all the information they need.
Common problems include:
- websites that are not easy to use on a mobile or cannot be navigated using a keyboard
- inaccessible documents that cannot be read out by screen readers
- poor colour contrast that makes text difficult to read - especially for visually impaired people.
Benefits of accessibility
Web Accessibility Perspectives Videos tell you about the impact of accessibility and the benefits for everybody in a variety of situations.
Stories of Web Users represent the experiences of some people with disabilities.
An example of inaccessible design
Adi Latif of AbilityNet tests five airline apps to book a flight using a screen reader.