Accessibility and Section 508: Designing User-Friendly Digital Experiences

 What is accessibility?

Accessibility is the inclusive practice of removing barriers that prohibit people with physical disabilities, situational disabilities, and socioeconomic bandwidth and speed limitations from interacting with or accessing information, activities, and/or environments.

Accessibility makes sure that all digital content, activities, and environments are appropriate, meaningful, and usable by as many people as would be feasible.

Although the term "accessibility" may have different meanings to different people, there is general agreement that it may be broken down into three categories: emotional, functional, and technical.

When creating user-friendly digital spaces, it is of the utmost importance to make sure that the spaces are accessible from each pillar's standpoint both separately and collectively.

This is what inspired the development of standards that offer check lists to assist in achieving the accessibility criteria sought in a particular market. For instance, the US Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was amended to include Section 508, which establishes the accessibility requirements for digital products and services that US federal agencies and organizations receiving federal funding may purchase.

What is Section 508?

Section 508 is a US federal law that requires all federal agencies to provide people with disabilities equitable access to electronic information and data comparable to the access that is made available to those without disabilities, unless doing so would place an excessive hardship on the agency.

How to design Section 508-accessible, user-friendly digital spaces

Digital spaces are open and continuous liminal locales where people can easily plug in, form social groups, and disseminate data and information.

More analytically, digital spaces are the non-places where people perceive themselves to be when they use electronic tools to interact with other entities. The spaces essentially provide a way to connect and unite people and communities from a variety of ideological strains.

Digital spaces have been evolving swiftly. Currently, they consist of social media, virtual reality platforms, virtual worlds, online retail platforms, and many more. They offer a chance to spread digital content to more people, but they could also be used to discriminate against individuals with disabilities by preventing them from accessing the spaces' discourses and their capacity to find information there.

It is advised to keep user interfaces simple and to employ the user interface elements consistently while creating digital spaces that are user-friendly. Additionally, you must layout your pages with purpose and use color and texture in meaningful ways.

The use of topography to provide hierarchy and clarity, ensuring that the entire system conveys what is happening when someone interacts with the space, and being aware of the system's defaults are all recommended practices for developing user-friendly digital spaces.

Section 508 accessibility requirements will provide you with very useful insights you can rely upon when designing digital spaces that are both user-friendly and meet the Section 508 compliance requirements to enable them to be procured by federal agencies.

Why your digital space should comply with Section 508 accessibility

Section 508 compliance should be one of the factors that guides your digital space design efforts if you don't want to restrict US users' access to the space. That is due to the fact that, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), one in every four people living in the US has a disability. You don't want to exclude the US population, which includes a sizable portion of people with disabilities, from using your digital space.

Compliance with Section 508 assures people with disabilities equitable access to digital spaces. You can meet the needs of people with different kinds of physical and mental disabilities by using the Section 508 accessibility guidelines. This is because they require designers of digital properties and developers of information and communication technology products and services to embed special accessibility features in their products and services.

Although Section 508 does not apply to private businesses, digital accessibility has been widely acknowledged by the global community, and US federal courts now consider it a legal obligation.

Lawsuits dealing with businesses whose digital spaces have access barriers have become an increasing threat to many private businesses, with some having to cough up large amounts of dollars in legal fees and compensation to petitioners.

Get help designing digital spaces with Section 508 user-friendly experiences

The ADACP can help you make sure that your digital space not only offers superb user experiences but also complies with every point on the Section 508 checklist to protect your company from potential ADA-related lawsuits and make the product available for purchase by federal agencies.

Call ADACP at (626) 486-2201 for more information on how they can help you protect your digital space from lawsuits while setting it up for procurement by the federal agencies.