Social Technologies
Author: Hilary Hooks, Department of Law, ALL Institute, Maynooth University
Earlier this year I was tasked with creating an accessible blogsite for the ALL Institute. While I welcomed the opportunity to do so, my background and expertise is that of an administrator, with little web accessibility experience. The process of making this blog site as accessible as possible has been a steep learning curve for me and I would like to share some of my new-found understanding of the issues and accessibility tools.
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) states that access to “information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems” is a human right (Article 9 CRPD), and, among other things, requires States Parties to the Convention to ensure that websites are accessible to people with disabilities.
The CRPD does not indicate specific accessibility criteria, which are however elaborated by Standardisation organizations across the globe. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) first published its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG) in 1999 explaining how to create inclusive websites, applications and content. It has since been updated and the most recent is WCAG 2.1. There are three levels of conformance – A, AA and AAA of which AA is the one that most government websites aim for. However, according to a report published in 2020, 98% of the home pages of the top million websites had automatically detectable WCAG 2 errors (WebAIM, 2019).
I was not sure whether to feel daunted by this – if these top websites were so inaccessible, it must be a mammoth undertaking, or buoyed – some effort and commitment on my part would be enough to raise this site up above them, if the bar was set so low.
I chose WordPress to build the site, as it has a flexible and simple interface which would allow me to introduce the accessible elements that I wanted.
On researching web accessibility, I found many resources to help me get started. The W3C guidelines, WCAG 2.1 were an obvious starting point, however while it is a comprehensive resource, I found it overwhelming in its breadth, and quickly turned to more user-friendly sites.
On advice, I used WAVE – the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool by Web Accessibility in Mind (WebAIM). This scans your site, and in just a few seconds you will be told what accessibility errors and features you have on the site. I ran it for the fledgling front page of the site and then examined each one, to see what the ‘errors’ and ‘alerts’ were and how to correct them. With this new knowledge I could then ensure that the other pages I was creating were optimal. While I have not been able to fix every accessibility ‘alert’ suggested by WAVE within WordPress (for example, there is not the flexibility to remove some redundant links, as far as I know) all errors and most alerts were easily resolved.
There are many options for accessibility plugins for your site within WordPress including ‘WordPress Accessibility’, ‘WPAccessibility’ and so on. We chose One Click Accessibility, because it had a wide suite of options from the toolbar appearing on each page, from the typical ‘increase font size’ to ‘links underline’. We also liked that you could choose from different icons for the toolbar – not just the traditional ‘wheelchair’ image but we preferred the web accessibility icon, as having a broader appeal.
To check that the colours on the site have sufficient contrast, I used contrastchecker.com. You just upload an image and check that your colour combination passes the six different criteria; you can use the tool to adjust the colours if necessary. This has also been very useful for creating PowerPoint slides, for example, and I can foresee using it frequently going forwards.
Another aspect of making the site accessible is related to the content of the blog. I have created and arranged different versions of the blog posts: audio, Irish sign language and easy-to-read. The audio has been the most straightforward – recording through my phone, uploading to SoundCloud, then embedding it into the post. Doing easy-to-read translations has been an enlightening experience in itself, but uploading them has been challenging because of having many more images than other types of posts, each of which has an ‘alt text’ (important information) and a description (further detail) for screen-readers. Finally, it took several weeks and emails to get the sign language translation. I experienced how difficult is to find Irish sign language translators, and this made me aware of the barriers that still exist in society for Deaf people and of the many necessary steps to fully implement the CRPD in this respect. Once we had the sign language translation I overlaid it on the original video, surprisingly easily, using EaseUS – free video editing software.
While some of the accessibility features were more elaborate, many were quick and easy; there is a lot you can do in only twenty minutes.
How can we encourage other website and content designers to make their sites more inclusive? It is the right thing to do of course, but that is evidently not enough of a motivation. The answer is: universal design – having an accessible site benefits all of us!
- I love that when my reading glasses are not at hand, I can make the font bigger when browsing on my phone and still be able to read the text.
- My 80-year old mother who is only as technology-friendly as many of her generation, will be more likely to stay engaged with a site that has a simple, uncluttered look with an intuitive structure.
- My 8-year old has read the easy-to-read-version of the welcome post, and now has a real idea of what my work is about.
- Our accessible site is quicker to download and more easily refreshed, which is great for those people living in places where the internet is not what it could be. In 2019, 92% of people in the Dublin area reported a fixed broadband connection, while only 69% of people in the Midland regions did so (Central Statistics Office, 2019).
- Currently, about 15% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability. Based on data of Eurostat it can be estimated that there are approximately 80 million EU citizens with disabilities (Disability Europe). Our accessible site means that up to 15% more people can engage with the site (World Health Organization).
This has been just a snapshot of some of the accessibility tools and issues. I will keep exploring and expanding. If you know anyone creating a website, please encourage them – just a small amount of time and commitment can make a great site for everyone and will contribute to making the CRPD a reality.
I welcome any suggestions for accessibility improvements to the site. Please contact me at all.institute@mu.ie.