Digital Accessibility

Surprising Digital Accessibility Practices

One digital accessibility practice that I had not previously considered is the colour of a webpage and font. Despite having my own issues reading webpages sometimes due to the colours on the page, I had never considered how this could be seen as a barrier with regards to accessibility. This seems to be one of the toughest practices to use for me as everyone’s vision is different, and it may be tough to find a colour scheme that works for everyone. Using a basic colour scheme, with a white background and black text, seems like it would be the most universally accessible, but even it may serve as a barrier for some. 

Why aren’t digital accessibility practices more common?

Until a couple years ago, I do not remember seeing any digital accessibility practices being used. In school we would watch movies without subtitles or any sort of captioning, and things like alt-text on photos seemed to be non-existent. In recent years, I think that I have seen an increase in these practices. Most people I know, including myself, seem to use subtitles all the time. This accessibility tool has become the norm for me, leaving me more surprised to see a video without subtitles. I think that apps like TikTok have actually been able to help with spreading awareness of this as an accessibility tool, with the app adding automatic subtitles to videos and making it easy for users to add their own subtitles as well. I have also seen alt-text becoming more and more common, especially on Twitter. Many accounts I follow seem to be adding alt-text when including photos in their posts, allowing those who are visually impaired to have access to these tweets. I have unfortunately not seen alt-text used commonly across other social media platforms and websites however. 

I think that one of the main barriers preventing these digital accessibility practices from being more common is people being unaware of the need for them. People who may not need these tools may not be aware that others do, leaving them in the dark when it comes to creating accessible content. I think that these accessibility tools should be taught in schools when discussing technology, presenting them early on to help spread awareness. This can help make them the norm in digital spaces, rather than something that is seen as extra. These digital accessibility practices were not taught to me when I was being taught about technology, and I did not learn about them until seeing them discussed on digital platforms and social media. I imagine this is the case for many people, but some may never see it discussed on highly curated digital spaces if they are not often viewing content relating to accessibility.

Example of a Video with Subtitles