By Ami Ireland
Here at lABLEd, we work hard to create a space that welcomes all no matter what your disability illness or difference. It’s why our commitment to making this show accessible for all lies at the heart of everything we do.
In this week’s bonus blog lABLEd social media coordinator, Ami Ireland, explains why accessible content is so important to us and why you should care about it too…
Believe it or not, accessibility affects everyone, not just disabled people.
Can’t open that jar of pickles? It’s inaccessible.
Can’t remember your password for an old account you want to start using again? It’s inaccessible.
Everything is accessible, sometimes people just need a workaround for them to access it.
Accessibility is about giving everyone choices so that they’re not limited to access something with only one specific way. When you think about it, we all learn in different ways and that’s what we need to be mindful of – everyone is different.
If you’re non disabled, you probably believe that you won’t face any accessibility barriers, but you’re wrong.
What non-disabled may find as a mere frustration and easily forgotten about, disabled people feel excluded and ignored.
In this era of social media there’s absolutely no valid excuse as to why content is inaccessible, it’s really not that difficult, but the truth is, when content creators share inaccessible content,often because they believe it’s not their responsibility to make it accessible, it shows the disabled community that they are not welcome in thier spaces. it is 100% their responsibility, not the reader’s, customers, etc.
As disabled people we should never be afraid to speak up about inaccessibility online. You have absolutely every right to access content that you wish to peruse, it doesn’t matter if you’re not the creator’s ídeal audience’.
You have every right to access it. Fair and square.
Creating accessible content really isn’t that difficult, especially nowadays as there are so many tools, apps, types of software that can make content accessible in a couple of clicks. Sometimes all it takes is the toggle of a setting and closed captions can be readily available.
Accessibility may seem quite daunting and complicated, but when it’s broken down and explained, it’s pretty easy and straightforward.
With Alt Text, you describe an image – what’s happening in the image? If there are people in the image, what do they look like? What are they doing? What is the context of the image?
Closed Captions and Transcripts, I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to double-check your CC/transcripts, it might have picked up on something you said and produced it with something completely different. For example, I was watching a video about creating digital products, and the creator was talking about an ‘action steps tracker’, but what it come up as in the closed captions…
‘Action Sex Tracker’
Remember to double-check!
Link Text – describe where you’re directing the reader to, if you don’t want them going to Narnia then don’t put vague text, like “click here”
And remember to make content easy-to-read. Is there really a need to sound professional all the time? Not unless you want your readers to Google every word and find out what it means!
Break it up. Use short sentences. Case in point.
Accessibility isn’t difficult to implement, it’s people’s attitudes towards it that makes it more difficult than it actually seems.
For More information about making content accessible for all Click here to learn about Scope’s Online Accessibility Training
labledpodcast.co.uk 