What does accessible really look like?

By Camilla West

Camilla has been creating digital content for public and private sector organisations for 20 years. She’s passionate about accessibility because it makes things easier for everyone. And is the right thing to do.

Make sure no-one is excluded

The digital design industry is getting better at accessibility - although we have a way to go. It is never a ‘nice to have’ and content design needs to be central to making sure no one is excluded from your website, product or service.

Accessibility audits cover a lot - but not all

There are rules to gain accessibility status levels from the Web Content Accessibility Guidance (WCAG) (opens in new tab) and great advice from organisations like the UK government and Government Digital Services (GDS) (opens in new tab). It is right and proper (and for the public sector - legal) that we don’t exclude anyone because they have a disability. Ableism is still shockingly high.

Accessibility audits often focus on physical accessibility aspects around sight and manual dexterity, particularly for users of assistive technology.

But it’s important that getting a high accessibility audit status does not become a tick box exercise and that you’re building something truly accessible.

The consequences of hard to read content

I’m adding a trigger warning here for dementia and distress. Not often this comes up when writing about content design.

My mum had Alzheimer's for a few years before she was diagnosed.

She used to ring me up, often very distressed, about letters from the bank. Even basic ones just informing her of changes to their processes. It was never clear to her what the marketing or terms and conditions meant. She would scrawl notes all over letters and often ring them up repeatedly to have them explain.

She also did this (unbeknown to me) with utility providers and the management leasehold company of her building. As a result of not understanding content, she cancelled multiple direct debits and accounts. And when we looked into it, we realised she had gone into considerable debt.

Now this may sound like an extreme case - although according to the Alzeheimer’s Society, nearly a million people in the UK have dementia.

Considering accessibility more widely

About 15% of the global population are understood to be what we would call neurodivergent - including ADHD, autism and ASD, dyslexia, and dyscalculia. And all of these can present different challenges with cognition and understanding content.

There can also be challenges for users who aren’t native speakers of a site’s language.

We also all face universal barriers (opens in new tab) at different times, whether it’s through time, emotional state, trust or confidence.

Then there is the importance of considering those people who are less digitally able. The example of my mum’s printed content is not an exception. According to a 2023 report on digital exclusion (opens in new tab), 2.4 million people in the UK struggle with digital tasks. Guidance from the UK government stresses the need for designing assisted digital support for offline channels (opens in new tab). Make this offline content clear and it can reduce how much non-digital, often expensive, support you need to provide.

Make sure content is in the accessibility mix

The written word plays an integral part in accessibility and it’s important that content designers are part of the conversation with UX and UI designers, developers and product owners.

When designing digital products and services you should:

involve content designers early - it’s not an add-on to a digital build
include content in user research and talk to people with different challenges
not be afraid of hard conversations with legal, compliance or policy on complicated content
consider your offline channel content as well as your online

A website can pass an accessibility audit with flying colours, yet still not be accessible to a considerable number of the people who need to use it. Don’t let your audit become a compliance tick box, it’s not enough.

Talk to us about making your content accessible to everyone.