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Accessibility and Inclusion Must Be Core to Digital Solutions
In an increasingly digital world, technology plays an essential role in how we interact with services, from paying taxes to accessing healthcare, finances and even buying groceries. Far too often these digital solutions exclude some of the very people they are designed to help. Accessible and inclusive design is imperative and not just a nice-to-have. It ensures that products and services work for everyone, including people with disabilities, older adults and communities historically left behind.
Accessibility and Inclusion by Numbers
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 16% of the world’s population live with some form of disability. These range from visual, auditory, motor impairments, cognitive and neurological differences. The following figures from the ONS highlight the percentage of people in England and Wales who belong to communities historically left behind in a digital world. Among them: 19% are over 65 years old, 16% are from minority ethnic groups, 8% live in households with at least one person who is or has served in the armed forces, 19% are single-parent families, 10% are unpaid carers for relatives, friends, or neighbours and 21% are living in poverty. Shockingly, 43% of children in single parent families and 31% of all children overall, are living in poverty.
Turning Numbers into Action
Addressing accessibility and inclusivity in designing services and solution goes hand-in-hand with tackling the broader digital divide. Affordability of devices and connectivity remains a barrier for many households, while digital skills gaps prevent people from confidently using digital services. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide a solid framework for designing digital accessibility and inclusivity, focusing on four main POUR principles:
- Perceivable: Information and user interface components must be presented in ways users can perceive, such as providing text alternatives for images or ensuring sufficient colour contrast. Important messages, buttons or data visualisations must always be supported by text labels, patterns, or icons to assist those who are colour blind.
- Operable: Interfaces must be navigable and usable, for example, by allowing keyboard navigation and avoiding content that triggers seizures.
- Understandable: Content and interfaces should be clear and predictable, using simple language, consistent navigation, and helpful instructions. Clear and simple language is essential for non-native English speakers and those with dyslexia. Using straightforward wording, avoiding jargon, and breaking information into manageable chunks ensure that everyone can understand and engage with digital products.
- Robust: Content must be compatible with various assistive technologies and platforms, ensuring longevity and adaptability. For example, websites and apps should be tested with screen readers and be fully functional across different browsers and devices, including mobile phones and tablets.
Recognising the fundamental importance of accessibility and inclusivity, it has been enshrined in English and Welsh law through key regulations that govern digital services including the Equality Act 2010 and Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018
Universal by the Numbers
Designing services and solutions for diversity improves user experience universally. What assists some one with a permanent disability, may also assist people with temporary impairments or those in challenging environments, such as someone using a mobile phone in bright sunlight or with one hand. (the Interaction Design Foundation)
Accessibility and inclusion must be embedded from the outset, not retrofitted at the end of a project. Leaders, architects and designers should treat accessibility and inclusivity requirements with the same importance as security, privacy and performance. This means involving diverse users in research and testing, setting measurable accessibility and inclusivity criteria and holding suppliers to clear standards. We must ensure fairness, dignity and equal access to opportunity for all.
Bio: Jane Bailey, Security Managing Consultant, Fujitsu
I am a Security Managing Consultant specialising in secure-by-design, cyber risk and security architecture in complex enterprise environments. My work focuses on embedding proportionate, threat-informed controls that enable delivery while protecting users and data. I am particularly interested in accessibility and inclusivity within digital services, shaped both by my professional experience and my lived perspective as a mother to a neurodivergent child and as someone with a physical disability. Through my work, I aim to champion security and design practices that are practical, inclusive and human-centred.
About the campaign
techUK’s TechTogether campaign continues with a focus on ‘equity by design'. Our insights this week focus on the importance of inclusive design in product development, creating technology that is accessible to people with disabilities, tackling affordability, connectivity, and digital skills gaps through cross-sector partnerships and community-led initiatives, and, ensuring public services are co-designed with disabled, ethnic, and older users.
TechTogether - Week 3
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