Accessibility, Content Enhancement, and Design Thinking

Posted on : June 26th 2023

There are over 2 billion websites1 on the internet. Many of these websites have a significant amount of content. In addition to the websites, there is a large volume of diverse types of digital content – documents, images, audio and video files, and social media posts. These websites and various types of digital content provide helpful information. They are a source of unlimited images and amazing resources that offer value to the readers.

Now here is the catch. A significant percentage of digital content is inaccessible to People With Disabilities (PWDs). For example, a 2019 study found that only 16.8% of websites surveyed met all Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 success criteria. A significant percentage of the websites, i.e., 90 percent, are inaccessible to PWDs who rely on assistive technology.

This lack of accessibility means enterprises are ruling out a global population with tremendous buying power. For instance, globally, the Disability Market influences over $13 trillion in annual disposable income 2. If we consider the U.S. alone, the total disposable income for U.S. adults with disabilities is roughly $490 billion 3. Besides, family and friends who value products and services that accommodate all people in society surround PWDs.

Essentially, digital accessibility is good for business. By making digital content accessible, enterprises break down barriers and ensure everyone can access and benefit from information and resources. Consequently, digital accessibility has become a business priority, with eight out of ten enterprises working on achieving digital accessibility 4.

Advantages of making digital content accessible for PWDs

Embracing accessibility leads to reducing legal risks, improving customer experience, broadening the reach of the content, and improving brand perception. Besides enterprises, implementing an accessibility program will help disabled users be more included and participate in a society without barriers. Digital accessibility offers other tangible and intangible benefits, such as:

1. Improved usability: Digital content designed to be accessible has the highest degree of usability for all people, including those with visual, auditory, motor, cognitive, or other disabilities.
2. Increased reach: According to the 2018 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data release, an estimated 32.2 million adult Americans (or about 13% of all adult Americans) reported they either "have trouble" seeing, even when wearing glasses or contact lenses, or that they are blind or unable to see at all. By ensuring digital accessibility for people with visual disabilities, you can reach an additional 32.2. million adult Americans.
3. Legal compliance: In many countries, some laws and regulations require websites and other digital content to be accessible to people with disabilities. By making content digitally accessible, you can ensure you comply with these laws and regulations.
4. Ethical responsibility: PWDs have equal rights to access goods and services. By providing equal access to information and resources, you can break down barriers and ensure everyone can participate and engage with your content.
5. Increases representation: You can help to increase the representation and visibility of PWDs in your content. This can help to foster a sense of belonging and support for people with disabilities within your community.
6. Demonstrates commitment to DEI: Enterprises that value Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) could create a more inclusive and equitable world by taking steps to make content accessible.

Think digital accessibility from the start

Digital experiences are inherently visual. Consequently, there is a pressing need to ensure that more people, including those with visual impairments, can read the content on websites and digital documents. Furthermore, today’s laws require papers, books, corporate publications, and websites to be accessible to everyone. Historically, there have been barriers that proved challenging for people with sensory, physical, and cognitive disabilities to gain access to published content in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Digital accessibility makes content fully available and usable to a broad swathe of people. Accessible content allows the most comprehensive range of users to engage with information. It helps create websites, apps, and electronic documents—anything people read or do in digital form in a way that allows independent use by PWDs.

Digital content reaches far and wide. Therefore, intentional and thoughtful inclusion of accessibility in the initial phases of content design is a prerequisite for content development. Furthermore, if digital content has already been built without considering accessibility, it is vital to test and update it to be made it more accessible.

Design thinking and content accessibility

A best practice is considering accessibility at the earliest stages of the content creation process. Design thinking would help ensure that content is designed and developed in a way accessible to all users from day one. Furthermore, it can reduce the need for retroactive changes and save time and resources in the long run.

Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that can be applied in many contexts, including developing accessible content. For example, while planning or prioritizing webpages, design thinking can help create easy-to-read webpages that are logical, well-organized, and simple to browse. These are not only cornerstones of webpage design but also accessible document design.

Leveraging design thinking for accessibility will result in developing documents that are easy to navigate, search engine friendly, socially inclusive, and available to the broadest possible audience. Here are a few fundamental principles of accessibility in design thinking in the context of content:

1. Inclusion: Including everyone, including people with disabilities, at the content development stage will ensure that websites, digital documents, educational materials, corporate policies, investment growth and earnings reports, information brochures, booklets, etc., are accessible to a diverse range of users.
2. Empathy: By understanding the needs and perspectives of people with disabilities, content developers can create more effective and usable content.
3. Iterative design: Iterating and refining content based on feedback from users allows content developers to identify and address any barriers to accessibility that may exist.
4. Universal design: By adopting a universal design approach, content developers can create content that is usable by everyone regardless of their abilities or needs.

Reimagining Accessibility Platform through Design Thinking Process

From the start, Straive envisaged its accessibility platform as a digital accessibility and content enhancement hub. The overarching intent was to offer an end-to-end digital solution for testing, captioning, alt–text, and remediating services.

The design thinking process involves several steps, including empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing. Each step focuses on understanding the user's needs, defining the problem, generating ideas, building prototypes, and testing the solutions.

The first step of design thinking is empathy, which involves understanding the needs and perspectives of the user. Publishers must consider how PWDs interact with content. For example, people with visual impairments may need alternative formats such as Braille or audio descriptions. In contrast, people with hearing loss may need closed captions or transcripts.

The second step is the definition, where publishers define the problem they want to solve. Regarding accessibility, publishers may identify barriers, such as inaccessible website design or lack of alternative formats.

The ideation step involves generating ideas for solutions. Publishers may consider alternative formats, such as audiobooks or e-books, or redesigning websites with accessibility features, such as adjustable font sizes or alternative text for images.

The prototyping step involves creating a prototype of the solution to test with users. For example, publishers may develop a prototype of an accessible e-book with adjustable font sizes and alternative text for images.

Finally, the testing step involves testing the solution with users to identify any issues and make improvements. Publishers can gather feedback from people with disabilities to ensure the solution meets their needs and is accessible to them.

Straive’s accessibility team took a design-thinking approach to develop an accessibility platform. The team comprising designers, developers, domain and subject matter experts, ADA, WCAG, etc., and compliance champions, created a design system to enrich accessibility.

They performed various usability tests, completed code reviews, and conducted user interviews, i.e., with our clients to identify the design direction. Here is how the platform evolved:

Empathize

• Conduct user research
• Define the problem
• Create personas
• Set accessibility standards

Define

• Cross-functional design thinking
• Usability studies
• Navigation tree testing

Ideate

• Wireframes
• Low-fidelity prototype

Prototype

• High-fidelity prototype
• Design system creation

Test

• Usability tests
• Browser testing
• Functionality testing

The outcome of this design thinking approach is Straive’s accessibility platform.

Platform for Diversity and Inclusiveness

The web-based platform for delivering accessibility services to publishers is powered by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and Machine Learning (ML). It enables publishers to create accessible content quickly, efficiently, and at scale by automating the generation of alt text. The platform addresses publishers' Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) needs by ensuring their content is accessible to all users, regardless of ability.

In addition to the alt text generation feature, the web-based platform offers a range of other accessibility services, including the creation of accessible PDFs and the testing of content for accessibility compliance.

Furthermore, the platform supports creating, converting, and managing accessible documents. It offers end-to-end automation and seamless integration with legacy document workflows. The platform is customizable and includes a broad range of accessible and scalable solutions to meet the document accessibility needs of enterprises across industries.

The accessibility platform leverages A.I. to process high-volume transactional and static documents of all types. Furthermore, it converts input documents such as XML, PDF, PPT, and Word into an accessible format.

The process flow for each digital content type is represented below at a high level:

Moreover, the platform automatically generates alt-text for math-type equations. It also uses ML to generate Alt-Text-specific images. Besides, the platform has an alt-text Writer and Q.C. Interface, which helps review the quality of the alt-text. Furthermore, it ingests alt-text into all images and math-type components in the document. It also ensures the validation of converted documents against WCAG guidelines.

Why Choose Straive as an Accessibility Partner

For more than 20 years, Straive, formerly SPi Global, has been helping to create a digital world accessible to all. Our Accessibility Team is fully versed in all WCAG-2.0/2.1 guidelines areas. The team is not only on the frontline of industry best practices but acknowledged experts in ensuring equal access to information for everyone. We will help embed accessibility in your strategy and meet global accessibility standards through a hybrid Subject Matter Experts + Process + Technology approach.

For more information, visit www.straive.com/solutions/accessibility-overview or contact straiveteam@straive.com