This Thursday is Global Acessibility Awareness Day, which is about promoting digital accessibility. So, how does digital accessibility help seniors? What tools should we be looking for or utilizing ourselves when making digital products like this blog?
Large or Customizable Text
Having text that can be adapted to people who struggle with impaired vision or vision loss. The Global Accessibility Awareness Day page lists a 2020 study by WebAIM that found low contrast text as the number 1 failure that they encounter when evaluating the accessibility of home pages. There are a number of features in operating systems or browser extensions that could aide in this, like text-to-speech readers. However, the other adaptations could be very simple to implement as well and would not require user install.
Alternative Text Image Descriptions
One of the ways we practice accessibility here on the blog is by making sure that our images have alt text descriptions. Alt text for images is caught by text-to-speech software and read out loud. This means people who cannot see the images still get the context that those images attempt to convey. Sometimes I may miss a descriptor on a few images, but I try my best to make sure all our images have them.
Accessibility is an important part of inclusion. There have been numerous technological tools made for that purpose, like adaptive keyboards for people with limited vision or mobility. Unfortunately, many people who are not disabled aren’t educated on accessibility features or options. Let us know below what features you have experience with using oe observing someone else use.
Written by Brigid Stakelum
