360° Accessibility

Synopsis: True accessibility is only achieved when everyone in the content supply, company employees, outsourced teams, and consumers can benefit from it.

Est read time: 4 minutes

Introduction

Remember how your perception changes from the time you first learn about a topic to when you’ve done it multiple times?

The topic might have looked interesting and easy to work on at the beginning, but as you understand the nuances, you no longer have the same stance.

This perception holds true about your work, relationships, things, or any other topic that catches your attention. This is how we operate. Our reactions are dynamic and true until the last piece of information we learn or experience.

Accessibility holds true to this theory of life as well.

For most of us, accessibility might instantly remind us of wheelchairs or screen readers, but it is so much more!

Accessibility should be a consistent experience for both the consumer and the employees of a company.

Why? Because value is generated by the employees. The consumer enjoys and further transfers this value.

Yet, unless specifically made in house, only customer-facing website accessibility services are currently available on the market. This is the biggest challenge now and is leading to a growing disconnect between content supply teams and stakeholders.

We used the word ‘content supply teams’ here instead of employees mindfully. Content supply refers to the different content/documents/data produced by people across the company, as they set out to get a project done. Example:

The above image denotes how content flows across the different internal teams of a company. Notice how each team creates unique content that best suits their findings.

Not all companies have all their teams in-house; some teams are outsourced as well. For example, content and design teams are often augmented by agencies.

Empowering people, process and technology are the foundation to unlocking 360° accessibility

Take-Away

Accessibility should consider the delivery solutions employees and outsourced teams use as well, along with consumers. Why? 

Part 1 - Internal Accessibility

“Good habits always start at home”.

True accessibility - 360° accessibility will be achieved at that moment, when your company's employees are truly able to perform all their tasks without accessibility issues and are able to produce accessible content.

That is, the requirement document made by the project manager should have a simple flow of information that is easily understood by the developers, according to web content accessibility guidelines. Similarly, the designs created by the creative department should have WCAG recommended contrast ratios. Parallely, the product listings created by the eCommerce team would have appropriate Alt-Texts according to web accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1 and above), etc.

The team responsible for company culture should also work towards changing a11y attitudes and perceptions of people, with respect to disability and accessibility.

Currently, most people lack visibility into how their AX (accessibility) goals impact their overall processes in the company and their potential impact.

Process breakdowns happen due to a lack of understanding of how to incorporate AX not only into output but also into the tools that the resource teams are using. 

Accessibility providers today take aim at the band-aid, widget approach and merely go to cover external legal risk, not implementing website accessibility for internal teams the way it’s supposed to be.

Take-Away:

The content produced by all the employees of your company should be accessible.

Part 2 - Outsourced Team Accessibility

Quite often, companies outsource a part of their team. Usually, FMCG companies outsource their creative and design departments to an agency, and their logistics to a 3PL logistics provider.

The content produced by such teams should also be accessible, in the schema of things, according to the principle of 360° accessibility.

Take-Away:

The content produced by outsourced teams should also be accessible.

Part 3 - External Accessibility

Your customers go through the ‘Buyer’s Journey’. Where initially they start to notice that they are facing a problem (awareness stage). Then they figure out a solution to this problem, usually through their friends or by browsing the net (consideration stage). Later, they analyze different providers of this solution and make a selection (decision stage). 

In this process, they come across multiple touchpoints directly or indirectly related to your product.

Awareness Stage Touchpoints: Online Ads, eMails, Word of Mouth, TV, Print

Consideration Stage Touchpoints: Blog, Social Media, Reviews

Decision Stage Touchpoints: Website

Retention Stage Touchpoints: Offers, Social Media, Emails, Blog

Thus, all these customer omni-channel touchpoints should be made accessible.

Take-Away:

Make all the customer touchpoints with your company accessible.

Conclusion

360° accessibility is the purest way of achieving accessibility by your company. Quite simply put, everybody irrespective of your direct or indirect employees, along with your customers and consumers should be able to access all the content produced.

360° Degree accessibility should be a part of your Brand Mission, to be ahead of the competition, to reach more customers, and to promote inclusivity.

Wally can help you achieve all of your accessibility goals, end-to-end across the content supply.

Using Wally, you can enable your consumers to have unique accessible experiences on mobile and web separately. While obtaining tailor-made insights for developers, designers, and e-commerce professionals.

We do not believe in short-term web accessibility solutions like widgets and offer you a complete accessibility solution.

Try Wally on a Free Trial today.

Let’s together achieve 360° accessibility.

Take-Away:

Achieve 360° Degree accessibility easily with Wally.