This lecture was work at home which there was a video call by Big Motive covering why ‘accessibility is more important than you think’
I was already familiar with some of these topics however there was still information I did not know and found interesting.
Firstly it was stated that 94.8% of websites are inaccessible, even on bigger sites. This was surprising to me as accessibility is one of the main things constantly brought up in University. It was described that accessibility is not fancy and glamours which it can be a challenge for designers, so they just ignore it.
Then it was mentioned how digital accessibility is enforced in the UK and it is not optional to avoid it. The European accessibility act (EAA), applies to anyone with a EU audience even if you are not directly located in the EU.
Another important fact was how 1 in 5 people are disabled in the UK, this can include something as simple as a noisy environment or older people too. Common ‘disability's’ can include things such as parents who may only have one free arm, a bartender who is constantly moving about and using their hands or even a heavy accent which is something I have experienced multiple times at comic con events.
In design it is important to consider alt text for mages, captions for videos, consider text for the target audience for example avoid jargon for young audiences. Colour contrast and text size both also play a huge role in accessibility which are both things I am very familiar with. Something new to me was that some people use the tab key to navigate through websites and don't use a mouse.
During the call there was a quick task, comparing two screens with one being accessible and the other not. I did very well in this task which I noted down what ones I thought was correct to myself which I got them correct.
Overall this online call was very beneficial to me to both remind me of how important it is, different ways a person can be disabled (to consider how to help this) and new ways to think of acessability design such as how a person may use tab.