TASSQ June 2018 Meet Up

The Business Value of Accessibility


What Is Accessibility

The digital economy is driving economic prosperity through increased productivity and market growth, but the ability to use new emerging technologies is currently at the heart of social inclusion, with those excluded being left out of many work, entertainment, communication, healthcare and social benefits. In recent years, there has been an important paradigm shift affecting the development of new legislation and policies concerning persons with disabilities; from segregation to integration, from institutionalization to mainstreaming, and from the medical model of disability being viewed as a condition to be treated, to the social model of disability focusing on the removal of disabling barriers in the environment that hinder full participation in society.

The Accessibility Gap, also known as The Digital Divide, are the design flaws that prevent people from making informed decisions and from actively participating in society. That is, access to and usage of information communication technologies depends on an inclusive design strategy to achieve a good user experience. A wall with no window prevents you from looking outside, and a highway with no on ramp prevents you from getting to your destination. A wall with windows far above your head is not usable, and a highway with an on ramp but full of pot holes is not user friendly. The usage of information is as important to the user, as is access to the information. Understanding those barriers that create a gap in the user experience, and marginalize specific groups of people, is key to a good design strategy. Good design is the first step in bridging the accessibility gap, but an essential partnership with development and testing is required to achieve the desired user experience. We all have accessibility issues to some degree, but is only a major problem when the design fails your need. The Internet offers an opportunity for organizations to close the digital divide. Internet technologies have the potential to give persons with disabilities the means to live on a more equitable basis within the global community in a manner that previously was not possible. The Internet Society Paper released November 2012, offers policymakers guidance on both why and how to increase use of the Internet by persons with disabilities. the scope of the paper outlines issues surrounding accessibility, availability and affordability. The Internet use by persons with disabilities: Moving Forward paper explores both the business case and the human rights perspective for improved accessibility to the Internet for persons with disabilities.

Design Model

Design Pillars

Accessibility Barrier Gaps

Project Tools

Accessibility Videos


Why Is Accessibility Important

Company Goals for Greater Prosperity

Studies like the "Releasing Constraints: Projecting the Economic Impacts of Increased Accessibility in Ontario", by the Martin Prosperity Institute, shows that improving inclusivity and accessibility in Ontario provides both economic opportunity and benefits. Projected economic impacts of Increased Accessibility in Ontario, a more accessible Ontario, will accelerate the growth of prosperity in the province, by increased efficiency, productivity, and creation of new intellectual property enhancing the province's global competitiveness. some of the benefits include up to $9.6 billion in retail spending and $1.5 billion in new tourism spending.

Accessibility has become a mainstream requirement that can transform the business. Investing in accessible and usable technology products and services, workplace environments and facilities opens up new markets, increases productivity, liberates talent, and enables innovation. Embedding accessibility throughout the entire enterprise, from processes to product development and to the culture and partner relationships, will better manage compliance, improve the user experience, and create an inclusive workplace. Standardization processes, in an increasing complex world, will allow for more transparency and greater efficiencies, But more importantly work becomes more stable and predictable, which translates into greater satisfaction.

Key Business Goals

Strategies for Success or Failure

Ever wonder why smart, well-intended leaders sometimes make poor decisions? We as humans are heavily influenced by our biases. The unconscious mind is a repository of past experiences that includes perceptions, intuition, and subliminal desires. Although these influences rarely reach our conscious minds, they play a significant role in governing our decisions. Almost half of the 25 companies that passed the rigorous tests for inclusion in Tom Peters and Robert Waterman's 1982 book, "In Search of Excellence", today no longer exist, are in bankruptcy or have performed poorly. What happened in the 30 years since the book was published?

The digital revolution has imposed unprecedented pressures upon organizations, and has disrupted the traditional management model. The struggle for competitive advantage has forced organizations to respond to the rapid changes in technology innovation and human rights demands. Organizations that do not understand these global trends will not succeed in the digital age. This paradigm shift is having a profound impact on workplace productivity and organization infrastructure stability. Business leaders that do not understand the digital transformation are at risk of alienating groups of employees and consumers. Typically, business leaders try to understand complex systems indirectly through mental models defined by advisors, and then perform actions based on these models without any appropriate understanding of real life experiences.

This is evident in the failure of large successful companies over the past couple of decade. Business studies show that ineffective management strategies, refered to as "Systems Blindness" and "Culture Of Arrogance" was at the root of these failures. Many organizations unknowingly suffer from a severe form of corporate dyslexia known as Systems Blindness, which has had an impact on productivity. Systems Blindness occurs when leaders implement a strategy to solve a problem, but ignore the pertinent system dynamics, for short-term relief with the problem reappearing worse than before. Executives are human and can make mistakes, but in company failures, these are not simply minor misjudgments. Corporations can be rapidly brought to the brink of failure by executives whose personal qualities create risks rather than mitigate them. Employees make hundreds, possibly thousands of decisions every day, and incrementally small decisions add up and may contribute more to a company failure than the few big decisions made by executives, but cultural arrogance will have an impact on company success.

Often fear of the unknown can develop, affecting how organizations handle key decisions, and no one challenges the status quo and asks the tough questions. decision-makers are faced with the choice to "do it" or "not do it", but the choice to not act, and continue with the status quo, is an important decision. The Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) reports that the total cost from mental health problems and illnesses to the Canadian economy is significant. Mental health issues account for approximately 30% of short and long term disability claims and are rated one of the top three drivers of such claims by more than 80% of Canadian employers. Overall, large successful companies tend to fail because they do not pay attention to disruptive market forces, leading to a decline in sales. In fact, 86 percent of companies that were on the Fortune 500 in 1955 no longer exist. More importantly, a study conducted by Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis projected that 40 percent of the current Fortune 500 companies will face extinction in 10 years. Governments are not exempt from making bad decisions and impacting employees and citizens, as reported by CBC, Families continue to bear brunt of the federal Phoenix payroll fiasco, February 2018. Values represent guiding principles and motivations, which influence attitudes and behaviours. What values are at the centre of decision-making within your organization, from the top down? Read about the Peoples Agenda of Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Accessibility is about breaking down barriers of Cultural Arrogance and Systemic Blindness. Bridging the digital divide is about closing the gap between leadership understanding of Accessibility, and management implementation of Accessibility. When organizations integrate User Experience Design into their work environments, the need for employees to request individual accommodations through a separate process is reduced, which creates a more similar and equitable experience for everyone. James Collins book "How the Mighty Fall And Why Some Companies Never Give In" describes the five steps followed by some companies on their way to mediocrity.

Legal Compliance and Conformance

It is estimated that more than 30 billion devices will be wirelessly connected to the Internet Of Things (IOT) by 2020. IOT is changing the whole way we think about the division between the virtual and the physical, and the Programmable World is automating activities we normally do by hand and putting intelligence from the cloud into everything we touch. Currently, over a billion people including children (or about 15% of the world's population) are estimated to be living with disability. The lack of support services can make disabled people overly dependent on their families, which prevents them from being economically active and socially included. The Internet of Things can offer people with disabilities the assistance and support they need to achieve a good quality of life and allows them to participate in the social and economic life. Accessible, usable and inclusive digital communications will link virtual and real life experiences to achieve greater levels of productivity and satisfaction.

Governments around the world are legislating Digital Accessibility Laws, but more importantly consumers are demanding a better user experience. Do not risk your business success by ignoring societal trends. Technology is changing the way we interact, and smarter consumers will favour those organizations that adopt a user centred design strategy. Users desire flexibility that allows a wide diversity of user devices, and a responsive interface that customizes the style and format for their environment. This trend increasingly exposes organizations to the threat and cost of litigation, public relations issues, and loss of government contracts. Several private companies have been sued for not having accessible Web sites and have been forced to pay hefty fines and agree to re-design their sites to make them more accessible. Recognizing the history of discrimination against persons with disabilities, the province of Ontario has taken a global leadership role in setting legislative Accessibility Standards for an inclusive society. The purpose of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) is to benefit all Ontarians by developing, implementing and enforcing accessibility standards in order to achieve accessibility for Ontarians with disabilities with respect to goods, services, facilities, accommodation, employment, buildings, structures and premises on or before January 1, 2025.


Designing for the Future

Seamless Integration

The digital communications divide, that is marginalizing the blind, low-vision and deaf-blind community from the economic prosperity in Canada, is an inflexible systemic paradigm that needs new ideas with adaptable leadership. In the past, the roots of research and development (the telephone, GPS navigation, optical character recognition, text to speech synthesis) were to resolve a human disability challenge, but eventually became mainstream products for all to enjoy. However, more recently digital technology innovation is designed to persuade and influence human behaviour (social media) to create a new market demand, and is eventually adapted to support disability challenges. This has been driven by the race for corporate market control and profits, and has resulted in marginalizing people living with vision loss. The idea of creating accessible and flexible workplaces is another common theme among digital strategists. Emerging technologies, such as desktop virtualization and cloud software, enable Canadians to work remotely in secure and accessible ways. many Canadians are choosing remote work to avoid traffic, reduce travel expenses, maintain a healthy work-life balance, and to increase productivity; But is this an option for Canadians living with vision loss?

The seamless merging of people and machines is transforming the way we look at innovation and design. The Artificial intelligence (AI) revolution is well underway, and recent significant milestones show that AI can improve the lives of people with disabilities. In early 2016 Facebook released its groundbreaking automatic alternative text feature that describes images to blind and visually impaired people, Apple implemented facial recognition as the new way to unlock the next generation of iPhones, and Google launched its Neural Machine Translation (GNMT) system, which removes the language barriers by automatically translating web content. The human and machine integration is built upon three innovation accessibility design structures.

Testing and Evaluation

Accessibility solutions benefit people with and without disabilities and are becoming increasingly available in standard computer hardware, mobile devices, operating systems, web browsers, and other tools. For instance, some people do not use a mouse, keyboard, or both, while others use specific configurations for keyboard and mouse, or use alternative hardware or software altogether. Supporting an effective usage web experience for all people, requires more than just accessible Web content. You must understand how people interact with the web, and the accessibility solutions that best accommodates their particular needs. Everyone that is browsing the web has a user agent. When your browser loads a web page, it identifies itself as an agent when it retrieves the content you have requested, and the browser sends a host of information about the device and network that you are on. This is a set of data that allows web developers to customize the web experience. There are many different browsers, each using a specific Application Protocol Interface (API) structure, and thus delivering a different user experience on different devices. A screen reader is a software application user agent tool that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the screen, whether a video monitor is present or not. This interpretation is then re-presented to the user with text-to-speech. Screen readers are a form of assistive technology (AT) potentially useful to people who are blind, visually impaired, illiterate or learning disabled. Thus, the screen reader must understand the API structure of the browser, so as to present the web page information in a meaningful synthesized speech or braille output format. The benefit in coding for the screen reader user agent API, is that you are at the same time coding for search engine optimization and small screen smart devices.

Step one: Defining An Inclusion Baseline

Evaluating the accessibility of Web content for people with disabilities requires diverse kinds of expertise and perspectives. Comprehensive and effective evaluations require evaluators with an understanding of Web technologies, evaluation tools, barriers that people with disabilities experience, assistive technologies and approaches that people with disabilities use, and accessibility guidelines and techniques.

Step Two: Identify Types of Interoperability Challenges

Step Three: Identify Issue Severity

Step Four: Identify User Experience Quality