Today it's GAAD day, what's GAAD?
Global Accessibility Awareness Day, the day that companies should care about
accessibility of their digital environment. Of course, I believe that
companies and governmental agencies should care about accessibly 365 day’s a
year, but how can you accomplish that in an inaccessible world? That’s why I
added an extra blog, in English to my blogpost. Hoping to reach out and be part
of this global day of awareness.
My believe in
the need for accessibility has been my life story. Taking part in education,
playing with other kids, traveling and learning to ride my bike. Of course,
some of these things took me longer than other kids, without disabilities. And
that leads to the question, just because I need to make a bigger effort?
Partially a ‘yes’ would suit. In many cases accessibility of books, information
signs at the train station, bus stops and other places could have saved me a
lot of time.
Time is money
In regard to
current society, we tend to live by the statement ‘time is money’ and this is
the reason why things need to be fast. This counts for developments, web
visits, sales, etc. Than the question arises, why don’t we consider the time
people need to get there? Have disabled customers too much time on their
hands???
No, that’s not
the right thought here. Disabled people would love to take part in society and
many assistive technologies offer the chance to do so. But still, companies
look at disabled people as impaired, vulnerable and even a high risk. Where
people with disabilities fight for equality in society, only a few companies
see them as a real customer group. This is a sad thing…..
Why include accessibility in your business?
Accessibility is
about easy access, easy to read, easy to navigate, easy to work with, open use
for all, without breaching security. Accessibility web guidelines, known as
WCAG 2.0, pursue POUR digital environments. POUR stands for Perceivable,
Operable, Understandable and Robust. And these four principles can make any
webpage accessible, trigger action based on the fact that POUR can benefit so
many customers, with and without disabilities!
It’s quite
simple, when even in a well-developed country as The Netherlands almost 2.5 out
of 17 million people experience trouble in reading, writing and mathematics.
Shows that accessibility goes far beyond people with disabilities. By understandable
text, we can get all the information to these customers.
