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What is an accessible digital service?

Authors and date

• Submitted on: May 25^th 2021
• Pascal Guitton; professor of computer science and researcher in the Potioc team (Inria, University of Bordeaux, CNRS)
• Jessica Boutault : consultant and trainer in digital accessibility

Disability and accessibility

There are more than one billion people with disabilities in the world. The disability can be sensory (vision, hearing), motor (movements) or cognitive (attention, memory, emotions). Sometimes cumulative, it may be innate or acquired following an accident or illness and may evolve with age. We speak of a disability situation to take into account the importance of the environment in the impact of a disability on a person's life. For example, a properly designed ramp may allow a person with reduced mobility unrestricted access to a building, whereas the presence of stairs will condemn him or her to a situation of disability.

Figure 1: Look for the mistake ! Drawing by Luc Tesson - Extract from www.dessinateurdepresse.com

This example illustrates the notion of accessibility perceived mainly for the access to buildings: governed by laws and regulations, it is controlled during the instruction of the building permits of buildings receiving the public and taught in the schools of architecture. But it is in fact multifaceted and affects many other subjects, such as access to transportation (bus, train...), understanding a film that is not subtitled for people with impaired hearing, or crossing a roadway when the traffic lights only display a red or green pictogram for a pedestrian with vision problems.

Let's go back to the definition proposed by S. Rocque in 2012: "Universal accessibility is the character of a product, process, service, information or environment that, with the aim of equity and in an inclusive approach, allows any person to carry out activities independently and to obtain identical results". In this definition, "inclusive" means without discrimination, "autonomous" calls for respect of the person's self-determination and "identical" refers to the usefulness, usability and acceptability of the solution concerned.

Digital accessibility

Digital technology concerns all facets of our private and professional lives. It is therefore essential to take into account the exclusions generated by equipment, software or documents that are not accessible to people with disabilities. For example, to perceive information or instructions for people with sensory impairments, to type and/or manipulate a mouse or a smartphone with motor impairments, or to understand the main information on an overloaded web page with cognitive impairments. It is clear that these situations inevitably lead to discrimination and exclusion from social life, access to training and employment, information, entertainment... This observation is all the more frustrating as digital technology, when accessible, is a potential source of improvement in the quality of life of people with disabilities.

It is therefore essential to develop digital accessibility and it is easy to list the main motivations for:

• individuals: to increase self-determination and overall quality of life;

• society: to contribute to making it truly inclusive by fighting discrimination;

• companies and organizations:

  • increase potential profits by increasing the number of customers or visitors to a site, previously excluded from the target market;
  • enable their employees to work and train in conditions of fair efficiency by providing them with an accessible work environment;
  • improve its image (we speak of e-reputation); conversely, there are blacklists of companies refusing this evolution that associations encourage to boycott;
  • respect national and European legislation and directives that will increasingly impose digital accessibility on all actors.
  • teachers: contribute to offer reasonable working conditions to pupils/students and thus to fight against school failure and the exit of the educational system.

Figure 2: Percentage of students with disabilities in the mainstream environment - CNESCO Conference 2016

Regulations

There are many laws and regulations that concern the consideration of disability in our societies. First of all at the international level, France has ratified the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities¹ adopted in 2006 by the UN and which commits states to provide all fundamental rights and freedoms with explicit mention of access to digital systems and the Internet.

Then, at the French level, we have to mention the different Handicap Laws², especially the one of 2005 on equal rights and opportunities, participation and citizenship of disabled people. We can appreciate an evolution from a logic of insertion (at the expense of the person in a situation of disability) to a logic of inclusion (also at the expense of the society). It deals with the problems of accessibility (registration, knowledge, buildings...) as well as the principle of compensation (AVS support...).

Finally, let's mention the General Rules for the Improvement of Accessibility³ (RGAA) composed of two parts: first the obligations to be respected which are addressed to the authors of web pages and services and then a list of operational criteria to check the conformity. Initially reserved for the administration, this regulation is gradually being extended to some private actors.

A study⁴ conducted in 2014 by the BrailleNet association demonstrated the inaccessibility of a very large majority of websites of French administrations and communities that were in violation of the 2005 law and its application decrees. Only 17.6% of a representative sample of 600 public structures (ministries, prefectures, municipalities...) complied with the obligation to provide a self-declaration of conformity and among those who offered a certificate (3.7%), only one offered a homepage without any error. Even if accessibility has progressed since this study, we are still very far from an acceptable situation.

How to improve digital accessibility

It is of course impossible in a short sheet to detail all the existing solutions; however, several important levels should be distinguished.

Let's start with interface equipment by grouping them around their main objectives:

• inputting information (commands, text...): adapted keyboards, voice recognition, motion capture (head, tongue, eye), and tomorrow perhaps brain-computer interfaces;

• restoring information (text, image, sound...): Braille display, voice synthesis, effort feedback devices...

Figure 3: Unidextrous Keyboard -- © Maltron

Figure 4: Mouth-to-Wand Keyboard -- © Maltron

Figure 5: Braille page -- Credit S.Delorme -- WikiMedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

Let's continue by stating some simple principles like:

• increasing the signal (magnifying glasses, font size, adapted colors and contrasts...), possibility of sequentially typing a sequence of usually simultaneous characters (e.g. Ctrl C), scans of lists;

• facilitate comprehension, for example, by slowing down the flow or by removing distractors of attention.

Now consider the operating systems of computers, including those of smartphones; they all offer features to improve digital accessibility: keyboard alternatives (to replace a complex command to type), magnifiers, signal substitutions (replace a beep with a visual message), screen readers that render the textual content of a window by its voice synthesis... Examples: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android... So many tools often unknown but which are freely available and which, if they were used, would open the access to the digital systems for many people in situation of handicap.

Then, there are many software that now offer adapted functionalities, from office tools to web browsers, including video games and social networks. For example, FaceBook uses artificial intelligence to detect the main elements in a photo; a voice synthesis of their description allows a visually impaired person to read them and react like his friends.

Last but not least, we must insist on the accessibility of the digital content. Indeed, you can use an accessible web browser but if the content of the page you are visiting has not been designed in an accessible way, you will not be able to use it. This is why, since the genesis of the web, a reflection has been initiated within the W3C⁵ (consortium that manages its development) which led to recommendations, including the WCAG⁶ (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) whose latest version (2.2) was published in May 2021 and which form the basis of the GAAR. They are based on a dozen simple rules respecting 4 principles - to be perceptible, usable, understandable, robust - and describe the most common mistakes not to be made. In addition to web content, we are constantly using digital documents (texts, spreadsheets, presentations...). In order to make them accessible, it is necessary to apply some simple principles, for example:

• use the styles provided by the editors to structure the text (headings, sections) in order to make it easily usable by a screen reader;

• provide an alternative text to describe an image or a video;

• name each column/row in a table in an informative way;

• provide a description for urls (especially those constructed with long meaningless strings).

In a similar way to web pages, there are accessibility checkers that will, for example in Microsoft Word, detect errors, explain their origin and propose their correction. And so, in the same way that it is no longer acceptable today to produce documents with spelling mistakes when there are a large number of automatic correctors, it should no longer be tolerable to produce and/or distribute content that is inaccessible when we have effective assistance at our disposal.

Digital accessibility and eco-design

Accessible web design is much more eco-responsible than most current design and development practices.

HTML and text : accessibility is light

The “accessibility layer” itself adds very little weight to the website, as it is primarily based on text and HTML.

Alternatives, ARIA, structure

Alternative texts (or text alternatives) transcribe the meaning of non-textual content, such as images, infographics, tables (data cross-referencing), interactive maps and multimedia.
ARIA (a set of HTML attributes specifically designed for accessibility) conveys via text the semantics conveyed by CSS formatting to sighted users. For example, ARIA can be used to specify whether a menu is “main” or “secondary”, or to indicate whether an accordion is open or closed (if it's closed, the user isn't supposed to perceive it: the assistive technology won't communicate its contents).
Accessible structuring of the page relies primarily on the use of appropriate HTML tags and attributes, in particular title levels (<hx>) and specific elements (such as <nav> for a navigation zone), rather than generic ones (such as <div>, whose semantics must if necessary be specified by means of an ARIA attribute).

A slight drawback

Only the recommendation to provide visual alternatives to text content, aimed at people with cognitive disabilities, may significantly increase the weight of a website.
Nevertheless, such content is often already integrated for the general public, for example in the form of video tutorials. What's more, easy-to-understand images (icons or simple diagrams) are often all that's needed.

Comfort through simplicity: accessibility lightens the load

Most digital accessibility recommendations lead to a more sober design.

Understanding

An accessible website tends to be simpler and clearer.

Pages are more homogeneous with each other, requiring fewer templates (and therefore a shorter CSS specification). Their internal structure is logical and coherent. Sober in content, they don't overwhelm the user with sensory and cognitive stimuli.
These features make it easier for disabled users to process information. A blind person cannot discover the page at a glance, but must have its content and structure described by his or her assistive technology, which is time-consuming and tedious. A person with a cognitive disability is likely to feel lost in content that is too rich. The information overload and the effort required to understand it can be distressing.

No unsolicited activity

Ideally, an accessible interface only manifests itself if the user requests it to.
Movements and sounds should only be triggered by the user's action (the activation of a button, for example). Otherwise, they must be very short (5 seconds maximum), or the user must be able to control them.
This is because a video that starts by itself, or an animation that cannot be stopped, can be very disturbing for a user suffering from attention deficit or over-emotionality.
Refresh procedures should also be used with parcimony and, if possible, avoided, as some users need a lot of time. The recommended time between refreshments is 20h.

Concise, consistent HTML

An accessible HTML code - and one that complies with the HTML 5 standard - is less verbose.
Redundancy (of hypertext links in particular) should be avoided, as it adds to a processing of information that is already lengthy and complex.
Unnecessary multiplication of tag nesting levels is a bad practice, as are duplicate attributes - a source of misinterpretation by assistive technologies.
HTML code is not supposed to contain visual indications (attributes or “style” tags). Formatting must be applied via an external style sheet (CSS). However, some frameworks generate code in which each tag contains not only a class (which calls up a styling defined in the CSS sheet), but also a “style” attribute (which specifies a styling directly in the HTML code). More cumbersome than necessary, this code is also less accessible, as the styles included in the HTML code may conflict with an extension that would allow the user to apply custom styling (such as different colors).
Finally, the page should not be dynamically generated with JavaScript, as this is a good way of multiplying accessibility issues - and JavaScript has a significant energy cost.

Interoperability: accessibility frees users

An accessible resource is compatible with any user agent, including older or less common ones.
By “user agent”, we generally mean “web browser”, but the term also includes assistive technologies for disabled users, such as screen readers. The requirement for robustness and interoperability is aimed above all at hardware and software that is often rare, complex and very expensive. It also favors the long-term use of mainstream user tools: even with an old computer and an old-generation browser, the digital resource remains easy to use.

Additional resources

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative website, the international reference organization. Available at w3.org site [26/02/2025]

To get started : [Accessibility Fundamentals Overview, by the Web Accessibility Initiative. Available at w3.org site [31/03/2025]

HTML: The Living Standard [26/02/2025]

Accessibility, on Mozilla Developer website [31/03/2025]

Tim Kkadlec. The Cost of Javascript Frameworks. 2020. Available at author site

Conseil National du Numérique. L'accessibilité numérique, entre nécessité et opportunisme - Une obligation légale vis-à-vis des citoyens, un levier stratégique pour les acteurs, Rapport 2020 [en ligne]. Available at site la CNUM [16/06/2021]

FIPHFP. Ressources Accessibilité numérique]. Available at site FIPHFP [16/06/2021]

Pascal Guitton. Pourquoi il faut développer l'accessibilité numérique [en ligne]. Blog binaire - Le Monde, 10/07/2018. Available at site Binaire [16/06/2021]

Pascal Guitton, Hélène Sauzéon. Accessibilité numérique]. MOOC Available in french on FUN plateform[16/06/2021]

Sylvie Rocque, Jacques Langevin, Hajer Chalghoumi, Abir Ghorayeb. Accessibilité universelle et designs contributifs dans un processus évolutif [en ligne]. Revue développement humain, handicap et changement social, 19(3), 7-24, 2011. Available at site docplayer.fr [16/06/2021]

YouTube, Liste de vidéos sur l'accessibilité numérique

Sources

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1. Convention internationale des droits des personnes handicapées. Available at site des Nations Unis [16/06/2021] ↩

2. Loi du 11 février 2005 pour l’égalité des droits et des chances. Disponible sur handicap.gouv.fr [16/06/2021] ↩

3. Règlement Général d'Amélioration de l'Accessibilité . Available at www.numerique.gouv.fr [16/06/2021] ↩

4. Ce que les sites Web publics nous disent de leur accessibilité (Mars 2014). BrailleNet. Available at www.braillenet.org [16/06/2021] ↩

5. Pascal Guitton. W3C invente la nouvelle manière de concevoir les standards du numérique [en ligne]. Blog binaire - Le Monde, 10/05/2018. Available at lemonde.fr [16/06/2021] ↩

6. https://www.w3.org/Translations/WCAG20-fr/ [16/06/2021] ↩