TCUK 2013 - Digital accessibility: Strategy, content and delivery

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DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY, STRATEGY & CONTENT

DELIVERY

Léonie Watson

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OVERVIEW

● Importance● Benefits● Strategy● Content delivery● Technical communication

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DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY: IMPORTANCE

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IMPROVES COMMUNICATION

● Information about your products and services will reach millions more people

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MINIMIZES LEGAL RISK

●Meet your obligations under UK, European and international legislation

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BRAND REPUTATION

● Digital accessibility positively promotes your brand reputation

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DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY: BENEFITS

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YOU BENEFIT

● Communicate more effectively with many more people

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WE BENEFIT

● People with disabilities, or with a temporary loss of ability

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EVERYONE BENEFITS

● Everyone is a niche audience, with multiple platforms, devices and assistive technologies

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DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY: STRATEGY

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POLICY & GOVERNANCE

● Define your digital accessibility goals and a timetable for achieving them

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DOMAIN CHAMPIONS

● People with experience and knowledge of digital accessibility

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EVERYONE'S RESPONSIBILITY

● Professional pride, professional development, and quality metrics

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GUIDELINES & RESOURCES

● Training, guidelines, frameworks and libraries

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DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY: PROJECT MANAGEMENT

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WATERFALL PROJECTS

● Include accessibility requirements in your brief

● Build in key stage accessibility checks throughout the project

● Test at key stages with disabled people from your target audience

●Make "go live" dependent on accessibility requirement sign-off

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AGILE PROJECTS

●Make accessibility a prerequisite of task completion

● Build light accessibility checks into every sprint

● Test after milestone sprints with disabled people from your target audience

● Iterate based on outcomes of checks and testing

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DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY: CONTENT DELIVERY

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DELIVER CROSS-CHANNEL

● Communicate through different channels, and over different social networks

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KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

● 45 to 64 year olds are the fastest growing social networking demographic

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BE RECOGNISABLE

●Make it easy to identify your brand, and create trust through brand recognition

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MAKE IT EASY

● Communicate simply, clearly and visibly

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DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY: TECHNICAL

COMMUNICATION

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HEADINGS

● Create a consistent structure with a logical hierarchy

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LISTS

● Group two or more related items into lists

● Use bulleted, numbered and definition lists

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LANGUAGE

● Use plain and simple language, and short sentences

● Explain subject matter words and phrases

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ABBREVIATIONS

●Write phrases in full with the abbreviation or acronym in parenthesis

● Use the abbreviation or acronym freely after that

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IMAGES

● Use images to help people understand complex themes

● Describe images so everyone can enjoy them

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LINKS

● Use link text that can be understood in isolation

● Use the name of the chapter, page or website that the link leads to

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SUMMARY

● Understand that digital accessibility is important

● Know that digital accessibility benefits everybody

● Put in place a digital accessibility strategy

●Make digital accessibility part of every project

● Use digital accessibility to communicate effectively

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THANK YOU!