Accessibility Guidelines
Introduction
Accessibility is becoming essential to design, ensuring that websites and applications are accessible to everyone, including users with disabilities. An inclusive product should be accessible to a wide range of audiences such as users with low vision, any blindness, and hearing and motor impairments. Anyone with disabilities should be able to navigate and interact with a product.
To ensure that your website or mobile application is inclusive, follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 guidelines. This site is a guide to WCAG 2.1, helping businesses to comprehend the guidelines and principles of WCAG 2.1 easily.
Intent
We know how confusing and challenging it can be to read through the WCAG 2.1 guidelines. We’ve been through it ourselves. That’s why our goal is to provide a high-level overview of the guidelines that is easy to understand and digest. We will be doing our best to be short and concise, so you can spend less time thinking and more time understanding and designing.
Why accessibility is important?
Moral and Ethics
In 2006, it was proclaimed by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that access to communications technologies is a human right. People with disabilities have difficulty using some technologies and so they find themselves left behind in the economy, education and in equal opportunities. They are cut off from information, filling basic needs, shopping, learning, and connecting with others. With society moving more forward with technology, digital tools have become a primary means for everyday life.
Required by Law
In Ontario, if you are a private or non-profit organization with 50+ employees, or a public sector organization, your website must be accessible. Beginning on January 1, 2021, all public websites and web content posted after January 1, 2021 must meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA.
You can check out more information about it here:
https://www.ontario.ca/page/how-make-websites-accessible#section-1
Better for the business
Being inaccessible means that you will be creating a barrier for a specific audience. People with disabilities are your customers too! In 2018, the purchasing power of adults with disabilities was approximately $490 billion. Another reason why accessible design is better for the business is that it protects you from getting sued. In 2019 Domino’s was sued and lost their case when a blind man sued them for their inaccessible website.
