Accessibilty is essential in today’s digital world.
If you have a website, have you considered if it’s easy for people with visual impairments to access?
Have you used colours and fonts which are difficult to read? Or challenging language that might be hard for someone to understand if English isn’t their first language?
Technology is incredible and screen reader software helps people who are blind or partially sighted people navigate their way around websites.
But that’s only possible if the website itself has been properly set up.
www.rnib.org.uk has some advice on accessibility and both the UK and Scottish Governments have too.
Among the steps you can take to make your content more accessible is to be sure to include ‘alt text’ on any images you have on your website that means the screen reader software can tell the user what the picture is that they can’t see and if you publish podcasts or videos you should generate transcripts and captions for them.
Devices themselves are also helping - many smartphones offer text to speech translation and automatic captions on any video or audio material played through the phone.
Chromebooks all have a built in screenreader called ChromeVox - access it by pressing CTL ALT Z, then close your eyes, and get some insight into what it’s like to visit a website and have to rely on additional support to understand what’s going on.