Why We Should Care About Accessibility
Universal access provides greater than expected benefits
Making digital content universally accessible means that anyone who understands the language of the content can access the information regardless of disability. Consider a closed captioned video. A viewer with hearing loss certainly benefits from closed captions. A person who has difficulties understanding speech in noisy environments can also benefit. Now consider the video content itself. What if the presenter has a strong accent or is speaking in technical terms? Captions can help provide clarity. Captions can also support poorly recorded video, such as content recorded in a noisy environment. This wide range of benefits is very typical when you use universal access best practices.
Universal design provides benefits for the site creator as well! Accessible websites are well structured and easier to read. These properties can also improve your site's search engine optimization (SEO) and artificial intelligence interactions. For instance, AI tools are frequently used to summarize web pages. Using HTML headings for headlines provides structure for your content. It provides AI with an outline of your site in advance and helps people who use assistive technology, such as screen readers, to understand the hierarchy of your content and quickly navigate to what they need. Similarly, alternative text on images not only makes the images accessible to someone using a screen reader, it identifies the content of images for a search engine or AI as well.
Doing it right the first time saves time — and money
Having your content accessible from the point of creation can save extensive time and effort spent on remediating the content after the fact. It could also save legal costs— dozens of colleges and universities across the United States have faced legal action over inaccessible technology and online resources.
We're librarians!
More importantly, providing universal access helps us fulfill our ethical mission:
"We provide the highest level of service to all library users through appropriate and usefully organized resources; equitable service policies; equitable access; and accurate, unbiased, and courteous responses to all requests." — from ALA Code of Ethics
We should be at the front lines fighting for our patrons’ and students’ access to everything. We're librarians! Access is our middle name.
Fear not, the basics are easy
While implementing advanced web accessibility requires development experience, making the basic content accessible can be accomplished by us all.
Learn More...
- Introduction to Web Accessibility: from the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative.
