World Accessibility Awareness Day is celebrated on May 19, which coincides with the third Thursday of every month, when institutions and companies of all sizes and types carry out promotional and awareness campaigns on the importance of digital accessibility.
There are four key principles to guarantee this universal digital access to products and services;
The first is that all elements must be perceptible independently of people’s senses, for example if I can’t hear a movie I can access it with subtitles. Or on the other hand we shouldn’t use color as the only way to convey information, why do traffic lights have 3 positions instead of one? More than 10% of the population is colorblind and if they only had color knowledge they wouldn’t be able to understand it.
They should be understandable on their own, without being affected by people’s technological knowledge or health conditions. Therefore, we must use a clear and accessible language that makes it intuitive to use and does not disappoint users.
Third, digital devices and items must be usable by all people, regardless of the input peripherals they use, whether it’s keyboards, mice, touchscreens, voice or gestures in virtual reality, among other interfaces.
Finally, for operation to be the same, it must be compatible with current and future technologies, comply with standards. For this, it is important to establish common parameters that are not at the discretion of the company that created the software or hardware for a specific purpose. For example, a page should look the same regardless of the web browser we use, whether it’s Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Edge.
We are immersed in a digital transformation process accelerated by the COVID pandemic, which is forcing institutions to ensure that existing digital barriers are eliminated while ensuring that other new barriers that increase the digital divide do not arise.
Video conferencing, streaming services or electronic media of any kind are here to stay, and it seems impossible for us to go back now, because technologies are finally making life easier for everyone, not just the disabled, if they’re accessible. as wrongly believed.
A decisive impulse to make the importance of accessibility visible is the legislative effort at national and European level. Examples are Royal Decree 1112/2018 on the Accessibility of Websites and Applications for Mobile Devices and European Standard (EN) 301 549 on the Accessibility of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Products and Services.
This regulatory development is helping public sector entities, publicly funded entities, large companies and other organizations to make all their digital products and services accessible to all people, inter alia, web pages, office documents, mobile applications, which require significant economic cost. forcing. Non-compliance with regulations will result in fines.
On the national stage, European funds received as a result of the pandemic and channeled in Spain to help companies through initiatives such as the Digital Kit require that all developments with this type of financing meet all the above-mentioned accessibility requirements.
Source: Informacion
Barbara Dickson is a seasoned writer for “Social Bites”. She keeps readers informed on the latest news and trends, providing in-depth coverage and analysis on a variety of topics.