Why Your Organization Needs an Accessibility Guide
Accessibility and inclusion are increasingly important considerations in our modern society, as are equity and diversity. Taken together, inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility, or IDEA, are concepts and strategies that allow organizations to reach more people, whether those people are customers or employees. IDEA creates opportunities.
What is inclusion, diversity, equity, and inclusion (IDEA)?
There is a lot to consider in the areas of inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility. That can make it feel overwhelming or daunting in your efforts to understand how a company can become accessible, or how to train employees to understand and practice these concepts. Let’s briefly explore these terms.
Accessibility and inclusion are conjoined: accessible design leads to inclusion and inclusion requires accessible design.
Image Description: An adult male who appears to have light skin is speaking in front of a small group of diverse young adults who appear to be college or university students. They are sitting on tiered bleacher-style benches in an open space.
Accessibility can mean a lot of different things depending on context. Physical accessibility means ensuring those with mobility disabilities can enter a building and access its different parts by having ramps and elevators. In the context of eLearning, accessibility means ensuring learners who use screen readers or other assistive devices can navigate your course. If a product, service, or environment is accessible, then it is also inclusive. This requires a universal approach.
KnowledgeNow’s Approach to IDEA
As eLearning developers working in a range of fields at KnowledgeNow, we take pride in creating online learning experiences and environments that are inclusive, equitable, and accessible to a wide diversity of individuals, regardless of their learning needs.
To effectively ensure that we, as a company, accomplish our mission of creating the best learning experiences for everyone, we have developed a set of standards focused on accessibility and inclusion.
This means that everyone working at KnowledgeNow has a shared knowledge base.
Image Description: A person with medium-dark skin is using a laptop computer. A digital illustration overlays the photograph showing a checklist above the keyboard and in front of the screen. The person in the photo is shown using a pen to check an item off the checklist.
We extend this knowledge base to our contractors and to our clients, because we prefer to share our expertise and practices with everyone involved in a project. This helps to ensure successful application of our standards.
Now it is true that not every eLearning project has the same needs and goals, but that’s quite alright. Having a guide convey the necessary information for a variety of project types and learning needs helps to foster flexibility and creativity in the implementation of accessibility and inclusion.
Accessibility for your organization
Your organization, too, should have or use an accessibility guide if you wish to successfully implement certain minimum standards or engage in a culture shift toward inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility.
KnowledgeNow’s accessibility guide focuses on eLearning, because that’s what we do.
Image Description: A woman with medium skin is sitting at a table. On the table is a laptop computer and some papers. In the photograph, she is a smartphone.
Your organization might do something else, like develop smartphone apps or plan events. That means your accessibility guide would need to be tailored to your company’s products and/or services.
Consider perusing our accessibility guide if you need a place to get started.
While we have created our own tailored accessibility guide, you don’t necessarily need to do the same thing. You may be able to find a perfectly suitable resource online. Again, it all depends on your needs and goals.
If you're an eLearning professional, we invite you to use our guide as a resource for your professional needs.
In our accessibility guide you can learn more about:
why accessibility is important
understanding barriers to accessibility
accessibility legislation in Canada
foundations of accessible design
universal design for learning
and more!
Our mission is to design the best learning for everyone - we believe that this starts with actionable ways to do so. Having an accessibility guide will set the foundation for your organization and it’s accessibility goals.
