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- Introduction
- Key points for interacting with a disabled person
- A few tips for making your digital presence accessible
- Resources you can use
Introduction
Accessibility basically means making sure that everyone, (including those with disabilities) can use your services, buy your products, and generally interact with the world.
People who are disabled are normal people, often with the same passions, interests, and needs as everyone else. If you like, you can learn more about what disabled people think about in this video.
Sometimes, disabled people may use tools like a screen reader or voice control to help them use things like laptops, phones, TVs, or ATMs. This is called assistive technology.
They may use building adaptations to make the physical world easier to interact with. These might include ramps, accessible bathrooms, sensory rooms, just to give a few examples.
No one article can make you know everything you need to know about accessibility, and honestly, there’s no need to be an expert. This article however will give you a basic understanding of how to interact with a disabled person as well as digital accessibility, and there are links at the bottom that can support you further if you want to learn more.
Key points on interacting with a disabled person
If you want a few quick points that can help make your work more accessible, here are the important bits.
- Not all disabled people are the same, and two disabled people may have different needs. Two blind people may have different needs, two autistic people may have different needs, two people using a wheelchair may have different needs. It’s okay to ask someone if they need your help, but don’t force it. If someone tells you they are all good, believe them.
- Some people will use different language to describe disability, and language always evolves anyway. Disability isn’t a dirty word, although some people will not identify with the term. The most important thing is to respect how a person identifies, and you’ll do just fine. This doesn’t need to be scary.
- Talk to The person you are dealing with and not a carer or companion. Face the person when you are speaking to them as the person may need to see your face in order to lip read.
- Treat disabled people the same way you treat others. Talk to them normally and not as if they are a child. Occasionally, society makes assumptions that disabled people are stupid, sad, want to be cured, or all three. Some disabled people do want a cure, some are sad, and some are in fact stupid, that should never ever be your assumption though. Lots of disabled people are really smart, very happy, and would turn down a cure. You don’t know.
Once you’ve got an open mind, we can move to the next step.
A few tips for making your digital presence accessible
This is stuff that’s relevant to anyone sending emails, posting to social media, creating a website, etc.
There are guidelines called WCAG (the web content accessibility guidelines), that are designed to help make the digital world accessible. They are extremely useful, but can be a bit difficult to follow. I’ve linked the WCAG at the end, but here are some starter points to get you moving in the right direction.
- For images, provide alternative text. Alt text is used by screen readers to describe an image to those who can’t see it. Most social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn support alt text. It’s also important to describe the images on your website. If you are using a platform like WordPress or SquareSpace, then they will provide a facility for you to add alt text to your images.
- If you are posting videos online, think about if someone will be able to enjoy that video with one sense missing. If your video is music with no speech then someone who is blind won’t know what is happening. If your video has speech with no captions, someone who is Deaf won’t know what is being said. This goes for TikTok videos, Instagram reels and stories, as well as YouTube videos. For big campaigns or when budgets allow, consider getting signed and professionally audio described versions of your content. Note that like spoken languages, different places have different signed languages. In Ireland we primarily use Irish sign language ISL, which is different from British sign language and American sign language, BSL and ASL respectively.
- For audio, provide a transcript.
- For links, some technology will provide Links out of context by putting them in a list with other links. As such you need to describe a links purpose in the text of the actual link. If your link says “Click here” or just “here” that makes no sense out of context. A link should say where it’s going, for example, “visit the homepage”, or “Read The World Health Organisation report”, or “Listen to the audio recipes here”.
- Make sure that your content has sufficient colour contrast. If you put white text on a pink background for example, it may be hard to see. There are lots of great colour contrast checkers available for free online.
- If you are using a hashtag or website where multiple words go together, capitalise the first letter of each word. This makes it easier to read visually and allows screen reading technology to give an accurate pronunciation. For example #AccessibilityMatters.
This list isn’t extensive at all. In fact the latest version of the WCAG I mentioned earlier has 86 criteria.
If you need to be legally compliant with web content accessibility guidelines, I would highly recommend you engage the services of a professional accessibility company. For now though, the points above are enough to get you started.
Other areas of accessibility
There are other areas of accessibility to think about depending on the service you’re providing.
Accessibility in the built environment is hugely important, as is access to transport, money, culture, and so much more.
Hopefully this short guide will help you start your accessibility journey, and if you want to learn more you can.
You don’t need to get everything right straight away. Every time you add alt text to an image or make a document more accessible, you are making a difference and that has an impact. Thank you, and keep up the great work.
Resources you can use
This article isn’t going to be able to tell you everything you need to know about accessibility.
The good news is there are lots of free resources you can use to assist you, and Ireland has some of the best accessibility companies in the world if you need more help.
Useful links
The WCAG criteria can be a little difficult to understand sometimes but they are extremely useful as a tool for monitoring accessibility compliance. You can read more about them at the link below.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
The WEBAIM colour contrast checker allows you to test your content to see if it meets the colour contrast guidelines in the WCAG.
Use the free colour contrast checker here
The video exploring what disabled people think about was created by Bobbie Hickey and myself. You can find alternative formats for that video below. If you would like to use it as part of a training course, please feel free to reach out to us.
What do disabled people think about? With Irish sign language
What do disabled people think about? Descriptive transcript.
Vially is a digital accessibility consultancy company owned by Vision Ireland. They offer manual digital accessibility audits for websites and apps, continuous monitoring through their online platform Vially Insight, as well as accessible document remediation services. If you need an accessibility company to support you on your companies journey, they are a great team.
You can visit the Vially website here
In Ireland, you can claim back up to 90% of the cost to provide disability awareness training for your company, up to the value of €20,000. You can find out more about this scheme on the citizens information page linked below. It’s something that more employers should definitely take advantage of.
Learn what disability awareness training can be funded through the Work and Access scheme
I haven’t worked with Ability Focus directly, but they are a company that provides disability awareness training in Ireland. I have seen them recommended in the past., so they are worth being aware of.
Visit the Ability Focus website
Mobility Mojo is a platform that tracks the accessibility of your buildings. Your facilities team can complete an audit, and everything gets seamlessly tracked through one dashboard. They also provide a marketplace of companies that can help fix accessibility issues when they arise, which is a really useful resource.
Visit the Mobility Mojo website
The Wayfinding Centre is a transport accessibility training facility based in Dublin. It is a genuinely world class resource that I would recommend For transport operators anywhere in the world.
Visit The WayFinding Centre website
Connect with me on LinkedIn
I regularly post to LinkedIn about accessibility and other topics that interest me. Feel free to follow along or send me a connection request.
David Redmond 