29 Jan 2021

Web Accessibility Series: Part 1 - Colour Accessibility

Kicking off Part 1 of Catch’s new web accessibility series exploring the different ways we can make the internet accessible for everyone.
 

This month the Experience Design (XD) team at Catch is kicking off the first segment of our Accessibility Series, aimed at positioning accessibility as less of a challenge that needs to be tackled, and instead encouraging designers to embrace accessibility and view it as an integral part of their process. Each part of the series will provide an overview of our main learnings and provide relevant resources and advice to help you stay on top of accessibility. Part 1 covers how to address colour accessibility in our work.

 

Alt text: visual of overlapping circles in different colours and patterns

Overview 

Before we answer that question, we first want to provide a brief overview of the history of Accessibility Guidelines. 

In 1999, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) created a set of guidelines called the “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines” as part of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). The mission of the WAI is to lead the Web to its full potential of usability, enabling people with disabilities to participate equally on the Web.

Alt text: image of cartoon cat with words like inaccessible? Wow? Huh? Floating around them

What is colour accessibility?

Colour accessibility is the inclusion of enough contrast between the foreground text colour and the background colour to ensure text and iconography is easily recognisable. 

It also includes guidelines on how to distinguish between elements with colour, for example, in bar charts. Choosing different colours for different elements is not enough though. Anything that is indicated by colour should have a secondary way for it to be distinguished, for example a pattern, like in the example below.

Alt text: image of a bar chart with the appropriate colour contrast and patterns on each element to show how to be accessibility compliant

Why do we follow these guidelines?

We follow these rules to make the internet more accessible for people with a decreased ability to see colour, or a decreased ability to tell colours apart from one another. Colour blindness is more accurately referred to as Colour Vision Deficiency (CVD) and occurs in 8% of males and 0.5% of females worldwide, constituting a significant portion of the population.

(Source: Geri Coady, “Color Accessibility Workflows”)

Three Main Learnings

 

1. Guidelines are great, but also user test when possible

Despite all intentions to ensure guidelines match real user’s needs, this is not always the case. Take the example below. At first glance, you may think that there’s no way the white text over the busy and colourful background is legible. But according to the Accessibility Guidelines, in the below image “all texts meet AAA colour contrast requirements.”

Alt text: image of text over a busy colourful background that doesn’t seem accessible but according to the guidelines passes, showing a discrepancy

This is because “when background images are used, automated tests aren’t reliably able to check for minimum contrast of text against the image - especially if the image is a photograph or drawing where the text is placed over the image, and (2) situations in which depending upon context such as text becoming incidental because it is part of an inactive user interface component or is purely decorative or part of a logo” 

(Source: Challenges with Accessibility Guidelines Conformance and Testing, and Approaches for Mitigating Them). This reveals a limitation of available accessibility testers online and a need for making improvements.

User testing for accessibility is a good solution to solving the issue of guideline discrepancies in what’s said to help users and what is actually helpful.

2. We have a lot to learn. 

Despite the introduction of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines in 1999, there is still a long way to go in terms of ensuring the internet is fully accessible. For example, 86.3% of home pages in February 2020 lacked sufficient colour contrast. Keeping in mind the percentage of males and females that have Colour Vision Deficiency (CVD), totalling around 300 million people, we know that those in need of accessible websites are not receiving the best user experience possible across the internet.

Alt text: illustration of a blind man, a voice command logo, and a cell phone

3. We should all be champions of accessibility. 

 

Accessible Sites have improved performance

Accessible websites are inherently more usable, providing a better experience for your site visitors. This is crucial given that 88% of users are less likely to return to a website after a bad user experience (Source: UXCam) Lower bounce rates, higher conversions, and less negative feedback likely associated with a more accessible website should in turn rank your site higher in search engines, thus increasing your chance of reaching more people. 

 

It’s a financial liability

Lawsuits have been brought against multiple organisations that did not provide accessible websites. An article titled “Companies are Losing Web Cases: Spend Money on Web Access, not Lawyers,” court cases were filed by blind people against Blick Art Materials, Five Guys, Winn-Dixie, and Hobby Lobby crafts. In all of these cases the plaintiffs won significant compensation from these organisations. The article title says it all. It’s worth investing in your site’s accessibility. 

 

It’s the right thing to do

The last, and most important reason for improving your site’s accessibility, is that everyone deserves access to the internet in a way that supports their needs. This is echoed in a statement by the United Nations which recognises the access to information and communications technologies as a basic human right.

Alt text: illustration of a guy giving a thumbs up and “you’re a okay” spelled with three a’s before it, next to him

Conversations around accessibility should be had frequently when kicking off new projects with both internal teams and clients to ensure everyone is invested in creating the best possible user experience. The W3C has resources to help you make a business case for improving your organisation’s accessibility that you can find here. 

Our team at Catch has expertise in designing and building accessible websites, having worked at the highest level of WCAG accreditation. We’ve worked with Scope (the pan-disability charity), accredited by The Shaw Trust for AAA accessibility, to design and build a range of products and are currently working with the Royal National Institute of Blind People to reimagine their digital presence with accessibility as a key focus. 


If you need help starting conversations around accessibility or are ready to get to work, please get in touch. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram for more accessibility related content!

 

 

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08 Mar 2020

International Women's Day 2020

International Women's Day is once again upon us! To celebrate, Helen, our Delivery Director, spent six minutes with six of Catch's irrepressible women from across each of our teams, discussing their experience as women in the tech world and get their views on the future. 

  • Cindy, Design Associate 
  • Michael, Strategist 
  • Omnia, Senior Developer 
  • Gabriela, Developer
  • Gayleen, Senior Project Manager
  • Becca, Delivery Lead

Six Minutes with Six Women

Previously I wrote a post mulling over my thoughts and feelings as to how we try to ensure a safe, democratic and egalitarian working environment at Catch. At the time, the #MeToo movement was garnering momentum and brought the discussion of what it meant to be a woman living an agency life roaring into studios everywhere, including ours. 

For International Women’s Day this year, rather than me waxing lyrical on my own views, we caught up with women from each of our teams, all from wildly different backgrounds and with a variety of agency years under their belts. 

At Catch we focus on working out what drives each team member, so we can help them attain their goals and reach their full potential. For women, often faced with an additional layer of challenges, working out what drives us is key to ensuring we overcome those challenges, so we asked our team about the challenges they feel they’ve faced in the industry and how they overcame them.

There are challenges that I face as a developer but my passion for learning keeps me moving forward

Gabriela Savova, Front End Developer

Gabriela described her first days in the industry, thinking about what’s kept her working in tech for seven years, “I kept thinking ‘Is this for me?’ And, of course, it was. I really enjoy the fact that I work in a dynamic environment where every day I can learn different things. There are challenges that I face as a developer but my passion for learning keeps me moving forward.”

One day, the idea that women need to find a way to push themselves forward should be anachronistic, but, for now, one of our strengths is in the ability to self-motivate, to take strength from adversity. Senior Project Manager Gayleen told us about falling foul of the gender pay gap, noting: “As frustrating as it was, that experience taught me the best way to overcome that sort of challenge was through being extremely prepared to highlight and explain how my contribution has positively impacted the business. I know some people may think ‘you shouldn’t have to work harder for the same reward’, but at least now I am more confident in openly discussing my achievements whenever I need to.”

“I guess the challenge was to be heard and acknowledged in a company which was predominantly staffed by men,” Cindy, the newest member of our Strategy and Creative team said, thinking back to her previous experience.

Twelve years into her tech career, Omnia echoed Cindy’s thoughts, positing that building trust helps ease the way, “I have been working in tech for around twelve years now, and I think it’s always a challenge to work in the tech industry as a woman - it’s still a male-dominated field. You’ll always have to prove yourself, but once you gain trust, you can excel.”

I would love to see more people in senior positions (both men and women) who want to mentor females starting out in their careers. This is critical as we know the positive impact a good mentor can have

Michael Reiss, Strategist

Michael and Becca both touched on the impact of mentorship on their careers, with Becca stressing how important it is for her to pay that support forward to her team, “I’ve had the privilege of being mentored and coached by numerous inspiring and strong women and this has been instrumental in building my career and instilling a sense of self-belief so I feel a great responsibility to provide the same support to my team, to encourage their self-belief and allow them to grow in their careers.”

Michael notes that availability of mentors is one of the underlying issues, “Speaking with other female professionals, availability of mentors is an area where many women face challenges. I would love to see more people in senior positions (both men and women) who want to mentor females starting out in their careers. This is critical as we know the positive impact a good mentor can have.”
 

Despite the bad rap the tech industry (sometimes deservedly) gets, as Gayleen notes, there are massive advantages to working in an industry that’s still fairly young, “Digital agencies often don’t have the same legacies of gender or race inequality so my ambition has been nurtured and always encouraged to the same extent as everyone else in the business, irrespective of gender or race.” 

Change isn’t something that happens overnight, neither is it something that can be tackled on one front only. “Women’s status in the industry cannot be fully addressed by just focusing on the workplace,” Michael says. “How society raises women, from the subjects we’re encouraged to study to the way we’re educated about finance and the social clubs we’re encouraged to join has to improve for us to gain true equality in every industry.”

Two years on from my last post the idea of representation - of equality - in agencies has taken on a much wider context than just the heteronormative gender divide. Equality means equality for everyone and we’re all responsible for making our industry a better more welcoming place for anyone who fancies joining in. With a greater number of events and meetups fostering more open conversation on the issue of equitable treatment of everyone than ever before, we’re seeing an uptick in tangible change and in the hope for more.  

When asked whether she feels the industry is improving for women, Gayleen muses, “I think we’ve still got a long way to go but it’s clear we’re working to take steps to eradicate gender inequality in the workplace and we certainly should keep working towards that because, well, what would the disadvantage of that be?”

To close, we’ll let Gabriela have the last word: “All ladies in tech, be proud of yourselves and happy International Women's Day!”
 

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