Digital accessibility
Digital accessibility means designing digital services that everyone can use, including people with disabilities.
It is neither an option added at the end of a project nor a technical category among others: it is a quality of design, in the same way as performance or security.
Who is concerned
The usual answer, "people with disabilities", greatly understates the subject.
It covers permanent disabilities (visual, hearing, motor, cognitive), but also temporary situations (a broken arm, an ear infection, fatigue) and circumstantial ones (a screen in sunlight, a noisy environment, a poor connection, one hand occupied). An ageing population widens the scope further.
Four principles
International standards, WCAG, taken up by the European standard EN 301 549 and the French RGAA, rest on four principles: content must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust.
A matter of organisation
Accessibility rarely fails for lack of technical skill. It fails because nobody owns it, or because it is addressed too late. Correcting after the fact costs several times more than designing accessibly.
Automated tests detect only a minority of defects. The rest requires judgement: the relevance of a text alternative, the clarity of a label, the coherence of a journey.
See also
- WCAG · RGAA · Human for IT · Sustainable IT · Ecodesign
