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Raising Awareness for Web Accessibility [Infographic] — International Day of Persons with Disabilities

December 14, 2022

Last December 3 we celebrated the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. This day aims to promote the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society and development, and to increase awareness of the situation of persons with disabilities in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life.

One of the rights of persons with disabilities is the right to access information and communications technologies.

“Promote access for persons with disabilities to new information and communications technologies and systems, including the Internet.”

International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The Web is for everyone and everyone should be able to access it, regardless of their abilities. To help promote a more accessible Web we’ve put together an easy-to-digest infographic about Web Accessibility.

🇬🇧 English Version — Web Accessibility PDF

🇵🇹 Versão Portuguesa — Acessibilidade Web PDF

Infographic as text only:

WEB ACCESSIBILITY — Creating accessible digital experiences for everyone

What is web accessibility?

Websites, apps and web tools that can be used by everyone, regardless of their ability.

It means everyone is able to:

  • Perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the web
  • Contribute to the Web

1 Billion people in the world live with a disability. That equals the population of the Americas.

  • 2.2 billion people have a near or distance vision impairment
  • 430 million people have a disabling hearing loss
  • 46% of older people aged 60 years and over are people with disabilities
5 Types of disabilities

Visual

  • Blindness
  • Low vision
  • Colour blindness

Auditory

  • Mild or moderate hearing loss
  • Deafness

Cognitive

  • Epilepsy
  • Alzheimer’s
  • Dyslexia
  • Autism

Physical

  • Missing limbs
  • Limitations of muscular control

Speech

  • Muteness
  • Stuttering
  • Apraxia of speech
Who benefits from an accessible website?

People with limitations:

  • Permanent — Someone with one arm
  • Temporary — Someone with a broken arm
  • Situational — Someone holding a baby
5 Reasons to act
  1. Don’t discriminate — Companies with accessible products/services don’t exclude people from using them
  2. Maximise target audience — People with disabilities are also people with purchasing power
  3. Stand out from the competition — If a website is not accessible, users will quickly turn to one that is
  4. Boost SEO — Accessible websites have better results in search engines
  5. Legal compliance — In many countries having an accessible website is required by law
However most websites are still not accessible
  • 9 out of 10 websites have accessibility failures
  • 18% of pages have ambiguous link text, like “click here” or “more”
  • 23.2% of all home page images have missing alternative text
  • 39% form inputs are not properly labeled
How to make an accessible website?

Use sufficient contrast — People with low vision find it difficult to read text without enough contrast against the background

Don’t rely on colour to communicate — Colour blind people won’t be able to understand if an error is displayed in red

Provide a text alternative for images — Using the <alt> element, so that people who use screen readers listen the content of the image

Caption and transcribe videos — Audio descriptions allow blind people to get the visual information necessary to understand the content

Ensure keyboard accessibility — Someone who’s unable to use the mouse must be able to use the keyboard to access and move between links, buttons, forms and other controls

Sources:

Want to offer a service accessible to everyone?

Xperienz can help you assess if all users can navigate and complete the necessary tasks on your website, app or digital tool.

Whether confirming if it meets WCAG guidelines, performing a heuristic evaluation or running usability tests, we’ll ensure your organisation benefits from building an easy-to-use site for all users.

Tell me more

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