Web Accessibility: An Essential, Equitable, and Inclusive Aspect for Everyone

Montevideo, December 3, 2020.

The web is an extremely important resource for many aspects of people’s lives, including job searching, continuous education, commerce, entertainment, health, and more. Therefore, it is essential that the web be accessible and universal so that anyone, regardless of any disability, can access information equitably and with equal opportunities.

Web accessibility plays an important role in society, as its primary goal is to ensure that websites can be used universally by anyone, regardless of any disability, including visual, auditory, physical, cognitive, neurological, and speech impairments. It must provide opportunities for everyone to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the web. Accordingly, various international guidelines have been developed to explain how to create accessible websites that provide equitable access to information.

Since 1992, the United Nations General Assembly has declared December 3 as the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, according to resolution 47/3, aiming to promote the human rights and well-being of people with disabilities in all areas of society and development, as well as raise awareness of the challenges they face socially, economically, culturally, and politically.

For 2020, the theme selected by the United Nations is "Participation and Leadership of Persons with Disabilities: 2030 Development Agenda", focusing on empowering people with disabilities to achieve inclusive, equitable, and sustainable development, in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which commits to "leave no one behind" and considers disability as a cross-cutting issue in implementing and achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Through the following interview, Lic. Mariana Caffa, Design Lead and Project Coordinator at Sofis Solutions, shares what web accessibility is, the importance of WCAG, and how Sofis Solutions has worked within its sphere of influence on this topic.

What is web accessibility?

It is the ability for web resources to be used satisfactorily by the largest number of people, regardless of personal limitations or environmental constraints. These limitations may include physical, mental, educational, familial, or socio-economic factors.

What is WCAG?

"WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, created by W3C, an independent international group that defines web protocols and standards."

The accessibility guidelines are based on four key principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Specific guidelines and objectives are defined to ensure accessibility.

Each guideline also has concrete and testable requirements called conformance criteria, classified into three levels: A, AA, and AAA, which define the accessibility level of a system."

Why is WCAG important?

"Accessibility not only provides benefits like improved usability, search engine ranking, and content reusability, but is fundamentally a basic element for equal opportunities and non-discrimination.

From my perspective, it is the most important because it guarantees equal access for everyone: older adults, people with disabilities or temporary limitations, low-literacy users, speakers of other languages, new or infrequent users, or people in challenging environments (noisy surroundings, devices with black-and-white screens, outdoors, low bandwidth, no mouse, etc.)."

What has Sofis Solutions done regarding this topic?

"Web accessibility involves several components that must be accessible: accessing a computer or device, which may require personalized technical assistance such as a screen reader or magnifier; the browser, which must be compatible with assistive technologies; and finally, the web content itself. Sofis Solutions, as designers, developers, and editors, are responsible for ensuring accessibility in this last component.

Actions taken include training for company staff, including a course by the Uruguayan Institute of Technical Standards (UNIT), internal knowledge transfer sessions to raise awareness of the importance of accessibility, and ensuring our team understands how to improve website and application accessibility.

There are different phases for evaluating web accessibility. It begins with automated evaluation, the fastest and most objective method using evaluation tools, followed by manual evaluation, where a person assesses issues that cannot be evaluated automatically. Filtering techniques and user testing are also used.

At Sofis Solutions, we generally perform automated evaluations and aim for AA conformance. When possible, we reach this level and validate it with automated tools, as done for the Electronic Agenda System, the INE portal, SIMPLE, and other projects.

We have also worked more deeply on sites like the Uruguayan Postal Portal and SIGES (Salvadoran Educational Management System), going through all evaluation phases. For projects where evaluation is limited, certain accessibility criteria are already incorporated into our design and development processes, applied almost automatically at the design level."

According to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, over 1 billion people, around 15% of the global population, have some form of disability. Projections indicate this number will increase due to population aging and the growing prevalence of non-communicable diseases. People with disabilities face disadvantages, which vary depending on geography, equity, access to healthcare, education, and employment opportunities.