Content that connects: Tips for building barrier-free digital communication

Imagine this…

It’s your first day at your shiny new job – and you’re pumped! You head to the company’s intranet to dig into some workplace policies.

But there’s a problem. The screen reader isn’t enabled and, because you’re visually impaired, you’re left guessing what to click! Frustrating, right?

This might not be the exact experience of someone with a visual impairment, but it does shine light on the impact when content isn’t accessible.

Now that we’ve established what it can mean when content isn’t barrier-free, let’s take a closer look.

Digital accessibility means your websites, apps, and content can be easily used and understood by people with visual, auditory, physical, and/or cognitive impairments. It’s all about making sure everyone has equal access to information they want or need to do their jobs, and so they can participate fully – without barriers.

Individuals, organizations, and governments across the world follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) – a set of internationally recognized standards to ensure that digital content is inclusive and can be used and understood by everyone.

Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), WCAG is also a technical standard that’s intended for web content developers (page authors, site designers, etc.) and tool developers, or anyone requiring a standard for digital accessibility.

Ready to start building accessible content? If you’re not sure where to start, consider these best practices:

• Good design: Use simple layouts, high-colour contrast, and resizable text to enable a better experience for people with visual impairments (e.g., low vision or colour blindness).
• Descriptive links and images: Use meaningful descriptions for your links and visuals (aka alt tags) for people who are blind or who have low vision.
• Captions and transcripts: Post closed captions or transcripts with video or audio content for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
• Keyboard-friendly navigation: Enable keyboard navigation, voice recognition, and alternative input devices (mouse-free navigation) for people with limited mobility, dexterity, or coordination.

Once you’ve followed these best practices, be sure to get it scanned by an accessibility checker. If your content isn’t fully accessible, the checker will flag any issues so you can make fixes before your content goes live.

In today’s digital-first world, delivering accessible content is critical so everyone has equal access to the tools and information they want or need. In fact, several provinces have already set formal accessibility standards that you need to meet (big kudos for that!).

When all content is barrier-free, you’re optimizing a universal design within your workplace. That means you’re not only making your content accessible, you’re also creating a better experience for your target audience – building stronger connections, higher levels of trust, and more engagement.

We not only build digital accessibility into our design process, we also test content for compliance and provide reports that prove content meets the standards.

Our team of consultants, designers, content creators, and developers know the importance of accessibility. Our stance? “Mostly accessible” isn’t good enough.

Together, we can make your digital content accessible to everyone.

Visit our Communication Consulting page for more details.

Want to get started? We’d love to connect!