It is great when website accessibility improves. It’s interesting witnessing websites progress from ‘accessibility’ as a tiny footer link, to Accessibility at the front of everything they do. When this happens – it really does speak volumes about the organisation.
Sensory story-telling
At last week’s Access in Museums Conference at Leeds City Museum, Dr Joanna Grace gave a fantastic talk on sensory story-telling using objects. Good sensory story-telling means positioning story-telling objects in a way that is accessible for people with varying sensory experiences.
Later that day, Ally Beckett ran an equally engaging workshop about promoting honest and objective accessibility on your website. One of the first things Ally raised is the importance of having prominent Accessibility information. Not a tiny ‘accessibility’ footer link, but proper header, main-navigation Accessibility.
Whether we are sensory-story telling, or building an accessible website, the same care and attention in placing objects is needed. In both instances, our audience have specific sensory experiences – so let’s start by foregrounding Accessibility info.
Multiple sensory experiences
It’s great to see many venues take this a step further. For example, building genuine accessibility features into key points of a ticket purchase path. It’s not just about scattering ‘Access Info’ links everywhere. It’s about considering how to make each feature accessible for multiple sensory experiences.
Multiple user journeys
Providing well-thought-out multiple routes to accessibility helps people with varying sensory experiences, but also with varying user experiences. A user might just want to check if a venue is accessible. A user might just want to buy accessible tickets. A user making a group booking might come across a reminder of someone’s access requirements. A user who doesn’t consider themselves disabled might come across an access facility that makes all the difference.
Once upon a time…
This may sound complicated – a matrix of different sensory experiences and different user journeys – but ‘complicated’ UX is not great. In fact, for many users simple UX and accessibility go hand in hand. Some accessible solutions are in fact simple – but making simple, accessible web components can involve more complex code adjustments behind the scenes. I’m not trying to suggest a ‘magic solution’ – but in Dr Joanna Grace’s sensory story-telling there is a lot of consideration given to how the simplest object will be presented. I think this is already part of designing a website – so perhaps it’s just a matter of considering accessibility from the beginning, at each stage of each thing we do.
But lets agree – a tiny, secret ‘Accessibility’ footer link is not enough.