A person with a hearing impairment will never be a satisfied customer if the only way to communicate with your organization is by phone. While a person with a visual impairment does not want to receive information from you via a video. But people without a disability can also encounter problems in contact with your organization. For example, a customer who does not own a smartphone but is dependent on your app.
Ultimately, it's about every customer, with or without disabilities, being able to contact your organization via their preferred channel.
Content:
1. Digital accessibility is not functionality
2. An omnichannel approach to digital accessibility
3. Digitally accessible communication tools
4. Where to start?
5. Self-service portals accessible?
6. The WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Digital accessibility is not functionality
Accessibility is not a feature that is on or off. It is not black and white, but a shade of gray. No document or website can be 100% accessible to everyone, and no document is useful if it is not accessible to anyone. So your goal should be to provide the best shade of gray for your target audience. Is your target audience older and do you know that they are not digitally literate? Then you focus on paper communication, for example.
An omnichannel approach to digital accessibility
Suppose your customer wants to contact you, but is on the train and would rather not call. Then it is nice for your customer if he can switch to a chatbot or form. But as soon as your customer gets off the train, he might pick up the phone faster to get an answer to his question (by phone). This also has to do with digital accessibility.
Let customers decide how they interact with your organization
Successful, profitable organizations let their customers decide how and when they want to receive information. Do customers want to receive information via a personalized video, a digital PDF/UA, a voice message or via a WhatsApp message? By offering your customers multiple options, you ensure that there is something for everyone. And that makes your company (largely) accessible. Accessibility therefore requires an omnichannel customer contact strategy. Whether someone has a disability, is young, old, digitally illiterate or is digitally strong.
Digital accessibility: for 3 out of 100 people, navigating websites, reading a contribution in an email or requesting information is not self-evident.
Digitally accessible communication tools
But… for 3 out of 100 people, navigating websites, reading a contribution in an email or requesting information is not self-evident. They need adapted communication channels to be able to read or hear the information. You can think of using digitally accessible PDFs, one of the most chosen communication tools for people with a disability. But you can also think of other customer contact channels. Think of a personalized, interactive video with subtitles for people with a hearing impairment. Or a voicebot for people with low literacy. Or enlarging buttons in your app. There are various solutions and possibilities to make multiple customer contact channels accessible to people with disabilities.
Where to start?
You can't set up an accessible omnichannel customer contact strategy in one day. In fact, you probably won't achieve it in one year either. If you want to make quick steps in making your communication with customers accessible, you can start by using accessible PDFs. In an accessible PDF, you can create important structures, such as reading order, headings and titles, meta information about images and table markers. But also adding voice elements. You don't have to do all this manually, there are handy tools about which we can tell you more.
Self-service portals accessible
But… PDFs are increasingly shared via self-service portals because it is not allowed to share personally identifiable customer data in emails. A self-service portal is a good platform on which you can share your accessible PDFs with your customer and reduce the pressure on your customer service.
But is the self-service portal accessible to every customer? That is not always the case and that is why you should try to comply with the WCAG guidelines when you start working with a self-service portal (or website). Do you need advice? Then contact contact us.
The WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
The WCAG provides guidelines for the accessibility of web content aimed at people with disabilities. Following these guidelines also makes your web content more accessible for web browsers and devices with limited functionality such as mobile phones.
For governments and institutions from the (semi-) public sector, compliance with digital accessibility is mandatory. They must meet the requirements of WCAG 2.1, level A and AA. Update: in the meantime there are recommendations with WCAG 2.2. Not yet in the business community, although there is the Equal Treatment Act, which states that both the government and the business community must make their goods and services as accessible as possible.
The WCAG focuses on four principles: perceivability, operability, understandability, and robustness.
-
- OBSERVABLE: people should be able to experience and use the website (and elements on the website) with the senses available to them.
- OPERABLE: People should be able to find and use content on the website, regardless of how they use it.
- COMPREHENSIBILITY: It is important to ensure that people and software can understand the content and how the website works.
- ROBUST: It must be ensured that the content can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents.
The WCAG tries to make organizations think about the different ways in which people deal with web content. For example, the possibility to change default browser settings so that content becomes more readable. Or that some people only use a keyboard instead of a mouse. The WCAG is regularly adjusted because of the rapid developments that the web is going through. We therefore recommend that you focus on the guidelines of the WCAG, among other things, when you want to make your organization more digitally accessible.
Want to know how to create digitally accessible PDFs and/or an accessible platform? Then contact us contact us.
