20-Jun-19 | News

Some simple steps to make your digital content accessible

Someone using iPad and there is a search bar written AccessibleWhy Accessibility should be on your agenda?

Digital accessibility ensures that people with diverse needs, skills and abilities can equally perceive, navigate, interact and communicate with the content that is provided online or through digital tools. Therefore, it is important to consider accessibility if you are responsible for the design of a website or any kind of digital content.

Why accessibility should be your key priority?

  • According to the Disability Equality Act (2010), your website should meet certain design and accessibility standards.
  • You can provide a better user experience for everyone by making and designing your content to be both usable and accessible.
  • More than 1 billion people (roughly one in six of the world’s population) has a disability of some sort. You are losing out on a huge market if you don’t provide accessible content for your audience.

Microlink Knowledge Acceleration System is a Continuous Learning platform designed to deliver support and training to learners in very small and specific video bursts where they are in control of what and when they’re learning.

On this platform you can find self-learning modules on accessibility features and built-in assistive technologies which is available in eight languages (English, BRA Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Spanish).

Here are some simple steps to make your content accessible:

  • Provide description for your images.
  • Create subtitles and transcripts for your videos.
  • Align text to the left and keep a consistent layout.
  • Use images and diagrams to support the text.
  • Break down your text into smaller paragraphs, using headings and titles.
  • Describe your links.
  • Use high colour contrast.
  • Clearly and simply labelling the websites content.
  • Don’t use CAPTCHA as it is not accessible and is completely ignored by screen readers.

To get more information, W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) offers an excellent resource section plus Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and Checklists.