What is digital accessibility and why implementing it is a must have? Since the beginning of this year, Coflight Cloud Services has volunteered to audit its communications tools. Today we explain this approach and the challenges at stake.
Digital accessibility rules
In Europe, digital public services and some private services are required to be equally accessible to all citizens, whether or not they have a disability (visual, hearing, motor, dysfunctional, etc.). An accessible digital service ease the usage for people with disabilities and provide a better quality for everyone.
Making online communication services accessible to people with disabilities means that they are:
- Perceptible: making it easier for the user to see and hear the content; providing text equivalents for any non-textual content; creating content that can be presented in different ways without loss of information or structure (e.g. with a simplified layout)
- Usable: provide the user with guidance for navigating, finding content; make all functionalities accessible by keyboard; allow the user sufficient time to read and use the content; do not design content that may cause seizures
- Understandable: make pages work in a predictable way; help the user to correct input errors
- Robust: maximising compatibility with current and future uses, including assistive technologies
To comply with the requirements of the General Accessibility Guidelines (RGAA), online services must pass a compliance audit. The evaluation will be carried out on a set of representative pages. It is composed of 106 criteria, classified according to different themes:
- Colours
- Content (images, tables, links, forms, etc.)
- Multimedia
- Structuring and presentation of information
- Navigation and consultation
- Technical elements
In order to address these accessibility challenges, CCS communications services will be audited in the coming weeks. Subsequently, the entire website will be redesigned and adjusted according to the recommendations made, so that it can be read and browsed by everyone.