Designing Accessible websites – Webinar transcript
Conference chair: Simon Minty (SM)
Guest speaker: Jonathan Hassell (JH)
Operator: Good afternoon Ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the designing accessible websites webinar. My name is Maddie and I will be your co-ordinator for today’s conference, for the duration of the call you will be on listen only however and the end of the presentation you will have the opportunity to ask questions. If at any time you need assistance please press *0 on your telephone keypad and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host Simon Minty EFD associate and Director of Sminty Ltd to begin today’s conference Thank you.
SM: Thank you very much Maddie, welcome everybody I hope you are well looking forward to this, this is the first time I have done a webinar like this. Maddie has been very useful setting us up. I know we have a few people phoning in from Royal Mail, if any of your colleagues are only watching it and not dialling in do give them a little nudge coz they are only going to get half of this. What’s going to happen is there are three major bits of this, I’m going to kick us off giving you a little bit of background obviously the housekeeping on how we will do this call. The main bit in the middle will be from Jonathan Hassell He runs a consultancy called Hassell inclusion, before he work at the BBC in terms of accessibility and websites and technology. That will be pre-recorded it’s going to be a very good technical day today if it all comes together. After Jonathan has finished we will have him and myself online.
We have got a few questions from some of you already but we would like you to think of questions as you’re going along, maybe the fact that your calling in says to me you’ve got a couple of burning issues around that so after Jonathan finishes his presentation if you let us know your questions and we can tackle them and maybe have a conversation.
Ok so let’s have a little look I have jumped ahead of myself here in terms of housekeeping. There’s two ways you can do these questions, you can use the chat window to the right of the screen and as I said we will pick these up at the end not during the webinar. Alternatively we can link you in and you can do it over the telephone, I’d rather you did that, the reason I say that is if I’m not quite sure what your question is we can come back and clarify but you have the option to do it either way if you get any technical problems dial *0 to speak to an operator which I’m guessing will be Maddie. If you get and problems during today do let us know here at the forum email is . We are constantly trying to make the events as accessible as possible for example if you have a visual impairment or hearing impairment we want to make sure we can get you to come to these webinars on the day like everyone else. Any thoughts tips or feedback is always welcome.
It’s going to be recorded today to make it a resource available to other members. When you are putting forward your questions and if there is something a little bit sensitive you may want to change it as it could well be public, or maybe you just don’t mention which organisation you’re from but hopefully there’s nothing to secretive.
This is the little show off side of me I awkwardly will pick out a couple of bits I have been associate to the Employers Forum on Disability for something like 15 years, I also run my own training consultancy company. I do a little bit of work with the home office as well I work with media, some of my clients including the Royal Mail who as I said are on the call and Logica I am having a call with you tomorrow not the people on the call but some other people. Generally working as I do with organisations I also do a little bit of stand-up comedy. We currently have a show at the Soho Theatre called abnormally funny people and we actually perform their monthly and its good fun.
OK, that’s enough about me.Let’s get on to my little bit after my lengthened introduction we are going to talk about the business case for making your websites accessible I hope for some of you that will just kind of bolster some of the arguments because I’m suspecting that you’re not all absolute IT specialists. Some of you will be, and you might be looks for the information on how you do this, and there’ll be others of you who maybe need a bit of information to justify why you need to make your website accessible.
Looking at some common problems, looking at finding solutions obviously, there are some recognised standards that we’ll run through, Jonathan Hassell will be embedding accessibility within your organisation through policies and proceedures. He picks up on some of the things we’ve mentioned and I am going to do this introduction. Obviously we’re looking at further resources and my bit which will be at the questions and answers and – to repeat – we would love some questions from you.
So lets have a look at some of the statistics. 71% of disabled people use the internet to find information on goods or services. You may say that’s… well, lots of people do, but I think when you start looking at the next one – 54% of disabled UK citizens consider the internet access essential, compared with only 6% of the general population. We can debate for the rest of the hour why that might be. It could be impairment related – the fact that people don’t have to go out and about and life’s a lot easier to do some of this through the internet, but it can just be other reasons, and I know myself as a disabled person that the variety of stuff that you can get from the internet which you can’t necessarily get from your local shop – or indeed knowing about things that exist. We also, as disabled people, share a huge amount of information via the internet, so when one of us finds a good retailer, a good supplier, we will share it with other people.
So, significantly more than the general population, in terms of the absolute essential use of the internet. 1.3 million disabled people in the UK are excluded by inaccessible and badly designed websites. The classic – I don’t know, suggestion – is that it’s people with visual impairments. Well yes, of course, but there is a huge amount of software – as some of you will well know – that can basically… it’s not the input for people with visual impairments, it’s getting the output: what is on the screen, how do you navigate it, so their screenreaders – their software – will be great, but if your website isn’t compatible or isn’t linked to that then suddenly you’ve made it inaccessible. Also, there’s people with learning disabilities, people with motor or physical impairments, that – you know, may be limited in terms of physical hardware for this, a keyboard, a pointer, and it’s making your website as accessible as possible to as many people as possible.
This is not a UK thing, obviously it is called the World Wide Web – excuse my pun – but these accessibility issues are anticipated to affect similar portions of the population worldwide. And this is where it kind of gets – Simon, you’re getting into millions of people and your also getting into small countries of people who could be excluded. And I just think it would be kind of crazy – looking at the list of you, you are all international organisations, so there wouldn’t be any reason why you wouldn’t want international people to access your website.
There is no reason why creative and interesting websites should not be accessible. I was trying to think of some, and I did struggle a little bit, and the things that I would say is that the BBC is a fantastic example of just a huge wealth of information, but it is also accessible. And that’s the critical bit.
Building a website which is barrier free is no more expensive than building an inaccessible website. So if you’re getting it in at the time – if you’re starting to think of a new website, start building in those accessibility features that Jonathan will be speaking about later on.
Making an existing website accessible can cost a little bit more, maybe 5% of total development expenditure, the bit that I would say to you from running my own website – Sminty.net and the comedy one – the tricky bit is when you’re updating it. Because you change things, and you put new information up, and you want to make sure that it’s easy to keep those accessibility features in, because websites are not static. So make sure whoever is doing it, not only is it perfect when you’re setting it up but any changes can also ensure that it remains accessible.
Investment can significantly increase market share, and it’s already alluded to, its about making it accessible to all users. If you’ve got it up, you’re going to reduce maintenance costs, enhance your reputations, and we haven’t mentioned it strongly yet, but there is a legal liability risk here as well. Under the Equality Act, it should not discriminate against disabled people. Trying to put that in another word or another language, it’s about… well, offering a less favourable service to someone who has a disability. A good example – it’s quite an old example – but it was at the Olympics in Sydney, and their website, they had some special offers for tickets, but you could only get this through the website. Now, if the website is fully accessible, you haven’t really got a problem… oh, I’ve just got a little not, I’m just pausing because some people can’t hear the content… I’ll carry on and we’ll pick that up, but if others are struggling, do let us know.
My point about the Australian part was that this was a unique special offer that was only available via the website, and their website wasn’t accessible to people with visual impairment or learning disabilities, so therefore, you can see, you have actually denied someone that possible service. I suppose a way round, you could say, well give us a call – give us a call on the telephone and we will offer the service to you the same way. We have a case going through at the moment – RNIB – The Royal National Institute of Blind people – versus BMI, the airline – I haven’t got the details, but you can have a little look on the internet – I’m not a big fan of cases, I am a fan in terms of it clarifying bits of legislation, so we’ll see how that goes. And I just had a curious moment, I was recently in Australia, at a Holiday Inn, and I was going to come back about a week… I was leaving and coming back a week later, and I said to them, what’s the best rate, so we’re standing there at the counter – the check-in counter, and they said, well, you need to go on the internet. And I found that – or go on our website – and… it was curious, I’m sounding very old now, but the idea that I would stand in front of a person, and ask for their best deal, and they say no, you need to go to our website. My bit with the – and I know InterContinental and Holiday Inn are very good at this – is, if you are saying the best deals are by our website, you must make sure your website is accessible as I’ve already alluded to.
OK, I’ve alluded to some of this already as well, who are the people who can be mostly affected – I’m always cautious of kind of limiting this down, but maybe to give you some specifics of what it is.
People with visual impairments – things like unlabelled graphics, that is – you’ll probably see it – if you roll your mouse over a photo or a graphic, you should really get a little pop-up box which says what’s in there.
Undescribed video – this would be an audio description, so they can see what’s going on, sorry, they wouldn't be able to see what’s going on if they have a visual impairment – but they might be able to hear the audio that they can’t tell if there’s big moment’s of silence or if there’s something else happening.
Poorly marked up frames or tables – again, its about legibility for screenreaders, and – I’ve alluded to it – lack of keyboard support or screen-reader compatibility.
Hearing impairments – a lack of closed captioning or subtitling for audio. Love the fact you’re putting videos up there, is it possible to have a button so you can switch on subtitles. And proliferation of text without visual signposts. So, if you use British Sign Language, and you’ve learned that as your first language, there isn’t a written equivalent, so if it’s just very text heavy without any visual signposts it could exclude certain people – I’ll be honest with you, it may put a lot of other people off as well.
Physical impairments – alluded to this as well – lack of keyboard or single-switch support for menu commands. This is because other people may have different bits of kit which will be suitable for their impairments, it’s about making sure your website allows that person to navigate it quickly and effectively.
Cognitive or neurological impairments - lack of… you know what, I think this is for everybody, but I can see various people who might be more affected, but lack of consistent navigation structure, a lack of illustrative non-text materials, and flicking or strobing designs on pages. The best and now topical again example of that was the 2012 games, the Olympic Games – you remember, there was a furore over the design of the pink 2012, the sort of abstract design, but where it got more complicated they had some video where it strobed and moved, and some people with photo-sensitive epilepsy were experiencing some real difficulties with it.
Just as a little one, and again, these are some old stories but they may be new to you, originally when Tesco kicked off their shopping online, they had their fancy-pants, lovely, headline website. They also designed one that was a bit more basic, it was a more accessible – screen readers and so on could use it – what they found was more people were going to use this. Not because more disabled people were necessarily persuaded to use their service, just all their customers found their slightly more straightforward website a lot easier to navigate to use. And I’d also say, slightly diverting, that people like Apple – the computer manufacturer – with all their apps, they have certain guidelines now that if you want to make an app for their system, it has to have some compatibility features in terms of accessibility. And I love that – that’s them saying, if you want to play ball, you’ve got to get things successful in the first place.
OK, finding solutions – so we’ve come up with some of the problems and some of the specifics, and we’ll speed up a little bit here because I do want to get to Jonathan.
Ask disabled people to give feedback on their experience of using your website. It is clear and obvious that that would be a very good idea and you can do that internally in your staff, or maybe more, preferably sometimes, an external group.
Design an action plan, taking into account the barriers that are most significant, and those that would be easiest to remove. And identify those who need to be involved. They can be slightly broader, so your suppliers and your partners.
Involve disabled people at each stage… when I’ve done accessible website audits, I’ve always done two things – one which is a technical report, which will say this works, this doesn’t work, this isn’t compatible, this is a glitch – and they you have what I call usability, so just how comfortable and pleasurable was it to use.
Stay ready, stay vigilant – I alluded to this earlier on, as you update things make sure you don’t lose your accessibility. And include your comms – train , equip HR personnel, web team, to understand how to communicate with disabled people and make appropriate adjustments – by that, it’s simply meaning if people have request, that you have a little process to put them in and change things.
In terms of… the big word I’m going to mention, if you see me speaking at Beyond Big Type, which was the sort of design day that the Employer’s Forum used to run, we always used to emphasis this word guidelines. These are not rules. Yes, I’ve already told you the law does kick in, although not heavily right now, but these are guidelines, so these are sort of suggestions, and they should always be married up with good design, you know, pleasing features and so on.
But, you have two standards of web content accessibility guidelines, the WAI, or Web Accessibility Initiative – they are worldwide. I believe there is a third stage as well, but it’s almost like a gold standard to get there. Also, the BS 8878, British Standard – Jonathan, who will speak in just a minute or two, had some involvement in this – this is how to commission, plan, implement and maintain accessible websites. The Employer’s Forum, who’s obviously hosting today, have an Accessible Technology Charter. That’s been signed up to by quite a few organisations, and I know Jonathan will speak about this in a moment, and of course there’s the Equality Act, it will give you, hopefully in sorts of codes of practice some examples of how to make this real and practical.