Access is everything

Have you ever struggled to find information or complete a transaction with your bank or grocery provider? Of course, if you are unable to do it on the app, then you complete the transaction online through their website. But what if you can’t use the app or the website and there is no person you can call and talk to who can fix your problem? This is not so far-fetched a scenario for millions of persons living with disabilities for whom emerging technological developments are becoming an impediment to accessing information, rather than the assistive solution they are intended to be.

I am an accessibility advocate, whose main aim in life over the past eight years has been to promote access to the internet — as well as content and technologies — for persons with disabilities. The world over, it has been proven time and again that technology has the power to increase independence and reduce isolation for the disabled. Whether it’s screen readers for the blind, hearing aids for the deaf, speech synthesisers for those unable to speak or memory aids for those with cognitive impairments, technology enables people with disabilities to communicate and participate in society.

The advent of the mobile phone over the past decade or so has taken access possibilities to a new level. For instance, deaf people are now able to communicate through messages and WhatsApp. There are special needs apps to help those with cognitive disabilities and mobile screen readers that enable the blind to use smartphones. There is, however, very little awareness about making technologies accessible to the world’s largest minority, at over 1.2 billion people.

Common perceptions of accessibility still mainly revolve around physical accessibility features such as ramps and curbed pavements (which, unfortunately, are still far from commonplace in our country). However, the ubiquitous use of technology for social, business and administrative communication has opened up an entirely separate and vast domain of electronic accessibility; a critical issue when you consider how cities are increasingly built around technology.

So, what then is electronic accessibility and how do we achieve it?

When any electronic product, service or environment can be accessed, used, navigated and operated by a wide variety of users, including users with disabilities, it is an accessible product/service. This may be completely, partially or totally inaccessible, depending upon whether designers and developers of the product/ service have complied with accessibility standards while creating that product/ service. If standards have been complied with, then a person with disability can access the product in one way or another.

The best example to understand this concept is the website. If a website is accessible, all the content on it should be just as easily available to persons using assistive technology like screen readers to access it. This is possible if the websites are built while adhering to universal design standards. Unfortunately, this is not the case for most websites in our country today.

The global accessibility standard for websites is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. It specifies guidelines such as marking structure, heading levels, providing textual descriptions for non-text objects such as graphics, providing alternate modes of communicating anything, such as subtitles for video, providing colour contrast options and so on. Developers just need to adhere to this standard and their websites would be completely accessible. Unfortunately, this is not the norm in our country and often, people using assistive technology are unable to read the content. For instance, a visual-heavy website cannot be accessed by a blind user unless alternative text is provided, directing the user as to what to do. A website that has a great deal of video content can’t be understood by deaf users, unless the video is subtitled or a transcript is provided. Issues like these are seriously hampering critical communication, since most information sharing today happens over the internet. Even while using apps that access information from the websites, this poses a serious problem. Either apps themselves cannot be used effectively or they point to information or transaction on a website that can’t be used.

To ensure a just and equitable society, we need to start incorporating electronic accessibility in all web and mobile applications. This is essential today, given the rapid digitisation of our world. The inaccessibility of electronic resources/equipment will further marginalise a section of society that is already struggling with existing societal, educational and economic hurdles. E-accessibility also makes sound business sense — here is a user group of around 100 million people in India, who would like to transact online and use apps to meet their day-to-day needs as well, since these have the potential to transform and ease their lives significantly. All they need is access.

Nirmita Narsimhan is policy director at the Centre for Internet Society (CIS)

COMMENT NOW