By prioritizing accessibility in the agile software development lifecycles, organizations not only improve the user experience for these individuals but also generate more intuitive and user-friendly applications for everyone.
This blog will delve into the significance of accessibility in software development, its multifaceted benefits, legal and moral considerations, and the best techniques for creating a more efficient digital experience.
Role of accessibility in software development
Accessibility in software development implies designing products, services, devices, and environments so that people with disabilities can utilize them. It considers various needs, like visual, movement, hearing, cognitive, and neurological challenges. It involves ensuring that individuals with different abilities can access secure mobile applications, websites, and online content.
This concept is critical for ensuring that all users have equal access to data and services in the online world. Accessible mobile apps or software have inclusive design thinking, are customer-friendly, and offer equal access to information and functionality.
Importance of accessibility in software development
Accessibility in software development is beneficial for both users and developers. In addition, accessibility ensures that the software is in the right hands and prevents unauthorized access. Here are the major reasons why accessibility is so important in the software development lifecycle:
- Legal compliance: It is not just an optimized practice but a legal requirement, and you need to follow accessibility lawsuits and compliance. Many countries, like the United Kingdom and the United States, require accessible software for public sector websites and applications. You will face severe fines, penalties, and reputational damage if you do not comply with these legal obligations. You also need to adhere to specific regulations by the European Accessibility Act (EAA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
- Enhanced user experience: It can enhance the user experience. The more easily people can access your website, the more they will navigate it. This will improve the user experience by enhancing the traffic and visits of potential customers to your website. It basically ensures that the users can access it without any disabilities by presenting them with more precise navigation, better contrast, and more straightforward and accessible user interfaces.
- Future-proofed software: Accessible software is often more adaptable to platforms and new technologies, ensuring cooperation with emerging technologies, scalability, and longevity. You can use the software efficiently for a long time.
- Inclusivity: By creating customized software development that prioritizes accessibility, developers can reach a wider audience, including those with visual, motor, and cognitive disabilities. This inclusive design thinking promotes equal access to data and services, helping everyone participate in society.
- Market advantage: Organizations prioritizing accessibility in software development can differentiate themselves in the market. This can lead to enhanced customer loyalty and a positive brand image. Engagement with the diverse user base can help you gain valuable insights and feedback, leading to better product development.
- Collaboration and team dynamics: Fostering inclusive design principles encourages several diverse teams, which leads to more innovative IT solutions and better problem-solving. Some teams prioritize accessibility and often share best practices, helping in continuous enhancements.
Advantages of executing accessibility early in development
You can perform accessibility testing in software development, get an accessibility audit, and offer developer accessibility training to the employees to access these apps. Incorporating software accessibility best practices in early software development stages offers various benefits.
Here are the major advantages of the implementation of accessibility in software development:
- Streamlining the development process: Recognizing the accessibility issues in the initial stage of software development saves time and money. By including accessibility from the start, you can allow the automated accessibility testing phases to run more smoothly, decreasing the incidence of errors.
- Prevent accessibility lawsuits: Maintaining web accessibility standards is critical to preventing legal issues and lawsuits. Following the already established digital accessibility guidelines from the initial stage and conducting regular tests for accessibility while software development can significantly decrease future lawsuits’ costs and risks.
- Improved product accessibility: Utilising accessibility design principles assists in making the products more scalable. This makes adapting to several devices, user preferences, and screen sizes easier. Therefore, this model with screen reader compatibility can decrease the development costs associated with scaling.
- Save resources and accelerate time: Mending the accessibility problems afterwards can cause the web and mobile application developers to work twice as hard and require expensive design changes, which can majorly affect the project budget. This proactive model can significantly avoid the extra expenses and decrease the need to rework or restructure the ultimate products. Accessible application development also minimizes the required testing iterations, saving resources and speeding up the market time.
- Expand user base and enhance satisfaction: Implementing accessibility in the early stage of development assists in preventing barriers. This implies excluding disabled users, which can cause user dissatisfaction. Accessible applications and websites adopting an inclusive design methodology are better developed to meet diverse user requirements. This results in longer retention and higher satisfaction.
Understanding User Needs Based on Disability Types
For user satisfaction, you need to determine how they use the software and what they expect. Here are the major types of disabilities considered while incorporating accessibility in software development, which can help overcome these disabilities:
People with cognitive impairments: Cognitive impairments consist of various disabilities ranging from intellectual to physical ones, like ADHD and dyslexia. Besides mental illness and diverse conditions, people with cognitive challenges often face similar challenges. These challenges include complexities in understanding the content, remembering the tasks, and confusion with inconsistent layouts. You must consider the following practices to aim for accessibility-first development for people with cognitive disabilities:
- Develop content for several platforms, such as text-to-speech or video.
- Utilize precise and plain language for easy understanding.
- Use familiar design layouts, such as underlined blue links for unvisited pages and purpose links for those who have already navigated.
- Decrease distractions like unnecessary content or ads.
People with hearing impairments: Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals experience varying degrees of hearing loss, ranging from mild to profound. Some people use assistive technologies integration, but they are not widely adopted. It is essential to provide them with text substitutes. In addition, because of high language deprivation levels in the DHH (Deaf or Hard of Hearing) populations, simplifying the texts can be advantageous. To ensure access, videos must have audio content.
People with mobility impairments: Individuals with movement disabilities may face physical changes like paralysis, limb loss, or neurological disorders that can impact limb control. They can also arise from hardware limitations or aging, like having a mouse. It is very important to ensure that all controls are accessible through keyboard navigation features in web development.
People with visual impairments: There are people with visual impairments, consisting of those who are blind, have lower vision, or are colour blind. Many people utilize screen magnifiers, which can be physical devices or zoom features in most browsers and operating systems. Some users also depend on screen reader compatibility, software that reads online content out loud.
Introducing the accessibility feature in the initial stage will help you make more scalable and flexible products and allow easy adaptation for various user references and screen sizes. Accessible software is a strategically good decision that provides long-term benefits. Early accessibility integration lays down the foundation of future adaptability and scalability. Understanding accessibility in software development, its benefits, and its importance will help you make better decisions.
Fastcurve, as a leading IT service solutions provider, offers services for software development practices. Their services range from preparing the software design to deploying, testing, and quality assurance to create an app or software that is totally worth it for your business.
FAQs:
What are common accessibility mistakes?
Common accessibility mistakes include failing to provide substitute text for images and not ensuring keyboard navigability for disabled users. In addition, the lack of clear headings and poor color contrasts disrupts the usage of individuals with visual impairments.
How to test software for accessibility?
To test the software for accessibility, utilize the automated tools such as WAVE or Axe to recognize issues, and conduct testing with screen readers and keyboard navigation to ensure easy accessibility.
What tools measure software accessibility?
Various tools, including automated and manual testing tools, are available to measure software accessibility. Automated tools cover Axe, WAVE, and SortSite; manual tools cover NVDA, JAWS, and Google’s Accessibility Scanner.
What are WCAG 2.1 guidelines?
WCAG 2.1 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) provides a set of standards focused on making web content more accessible to individuals with several disabilities, be it auditory, visual, or cognitive.
