Accessibility is a smart thing to do. It is all about equipping anyone to access, use and take advantage of a product, service or the environment. Making your digital content accessible helps you to grab new business opportunities and at the same time lets you avoid costly litigations that may crop up from failing to comply with accessibility solutions. Accessibility solutions help businesses and organizations enhance their software and online documents so that they can be used by people with disabilities.
Accessibility is a quality characteristic of software and web applications. Companies providing accessibility solutions make sure they pay head to it while designing these solutions. Why? Because they know every single individual deserves to know, learn, explore and grow in any arena of life they wish to. If you will do a search, you will still find many companies who are not aware of accessibility solutions. Though a lot has changed in the past 10 to 15 years, still a lot of improvement is required.
It is a general practice to develop web application by keeping the normal user characteristics in mind. But while designing software for users with wide range of disabilities and abilities, the concept of universal design for software comes into the picture. Universal design is a bunch of ideas which can apply to a product or an environment so that the information is easily accessed by people with or without disabilities.
The process of universal design for software includes an advanced level of understanding of software and its components. Understanding of the software where you would like to use the process of universal design is important for its success. It is good to involve end users in this process, starting from development, implementation and evaluation of the process. Make sure your application development identify guidelines and standards and integrate them with other best practices. There are some countries where accessibility standard solution is a legal obligation. For example, if you are developing a web application, you should follow Web Accessibility Guideline (WAG) and other guidelines. In the meantime, you should customize and deliver training and support to stakeholders with emphasis on accessibility solutions.
The service providers of accessibility solutions follow some important features while designing accessible web applications. They make sure the design is useful to users with diverse abilities and provides good business opportunities. The design should be simple and intuitive regardless of the user experience, knowledge, and skills. It should reduce hazards and the unfavorable results of accidental or unintended actions.