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Yesterday was Global Accessibility Awareness Day! There were lots of events all over the web, and it was hard to choose what to attend. Aside from a couple of internal work events, I mostly attended sessions at the very well run Festival of Accessibility.

Digital by Default: Baby Boomers and the impact of COVID-19:

• “Over the past year the digital world has quickly evolved. This change has impacted older web users more than most.”
• My takeaways from this session: of people who are over 50 years old, around 23% find an ‘increase font size’ option useful (according to, I think, YouGov). And the UK has an average reading age of 9, so it’s very important to use simple language. This became something of a theme in many of the talks I saw today.

Writing in Plain English – the inclusion challenge:

• “Did you know that as many as 1 in 4 UK adults have very low literacy skills? And 10% have dyslexia, which can cause reading challenges?”
• Think about your target audience before you write. Imagine how you would talk to your target reader if they were in front of you, and write that down – it won’t be quite right, but it’ll be a great starting point that likely sums up the most important things you have to say.
• Use signposts throughout your content: headings, bullet lists, and frontloading of content (i.e. put the important content towards the beginning of your sentence). Personal, conversational language tends to read better, e.g. “your heart may beat faster” vs “the heart may beat faster”.
• The Flesch Reading Ease scale looks at sentence and syllable length and arrives at a score of complexity from 0 to 100, where the lower the score, the more confusing the content. GOV.UK aims for a minimum of 70.

Digital Literacy & Accessibility in the Public Sector:

• “Up to 1 million people in the UK cannot speak English well or at all.”
• 50% of the population are below primary school numeracy level.
• The Patient Information Forum has a charter that organisations can sign up to. It encourages:
  • Using clear communication (verbal, written, digital)
  • Creating easy-to-use digital tools/websites, printed information and premises
  • Involving users in the development of information as routine and inviting feedback
  • Training staff in health literacy
  • Commit to consider digital exclusion and the equalities impact when introducing new resources.

The Future of A11Y:

• This panel session ended the day of events. It touched on lots of interesting topics.
• There was talk of Public Sector Accessibility Regulations being a useful ‘stick’ to encourage compliance, where the ‘carrot’ of inclusivity doesn’t always work.
• Advocating for accessibility at the highest levels requires different tactics: the threat of litigation (see above), the cost to the business (someone mentioned that accessibility costs 200 times more to retro-fit into an established product than to build in from the start). But empathy can work too: invite a disabled person into your board room to demonstrate the challenges they face using your product.
• There was a shout-out to DIVERSish on YouTube, a skit which points out that whilst 90% of companies claim to “prioritise diversity”, it usually means focusing on LGBTQ, BAME and women, whereas disability regularly gets overlooked (“only 4% prioritise disability”).

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