Over the past 24 hours, 28 speakers from around the world came together to speak about accessibility. At the Northern Bear, we attended these sessions to help us understand more of what we can be doing for accessibility, and also to learn more from lived experiences.
Key takeaways
Accessibility isn’t…
Throughout all the talks is the running theme that relates to the mantra ‘Nothing about us, without us‘. This means that the ideas, solutions and policies that drive us forwards, should always consider the people that those policies and decisions are centred around or impact. The speaker ‘Samuel Osei’ for the ‘Advancing Accessibility Through Community and Open Source‘ made a great statement during his talk, about the growing development in the tech space, but those in charge of these developments, do not have in mind accessibility and diversity that’s being left behind with these advancements.
Accessibility:
- Is not a checklist
- Is not an after thought at the end of a project
- Is not a legal policy to follow to avoid being sued
- Is not optional
In 2025, the world is connected in many ways and everyone deserves to access the content in a barrier-free way. It should be something considered throughout decision making and processes.
Disability mindset
The word ‘Disability’ seems to come with heavy assumptions. That a user with a ‘disability’ is not the average user, or that having users with disabilities up bring a minefield of legal issues. This is not the case. Disabilities can fall under 3 categories:
- Permenant – Think blindness, deafness, and physical limitations
- Temporary – Think a temporary arm injury, ear infections that can dull hering
- Situational – Think being in a crowded place and can’t hear fully, if the sun is out and you can’t quite see your phone screen
This is why accessibility is key throughout your entire process, not just as an afterthought. It encompass users with permanent disabilities, but also those with temporary and situation. This is why it’s important to be as inclusive as possible when creating on the web, whilst also offering accessibility tweaks for the individuals.
Check out this blog Why accessible charity design is NOT for everyone, which talks about the difference of ‘Accessibility vs Inclusivity’, and how we implement it to our process.
Lived experience
When considering accessibility, it’s easy to see the check lists and policies and see them as a to-do list and as long as you hit them, it’s fine. It’s important to take into consideration lived experience. Talking and learning about real world examples and people’s experiences with their own disabilities. A few speakers at the WordPress Accessibility Day have lived experience of requiring accessibility on the web, for example: Being a Colourblind Designer – Matt Roberts, a colour blind designer. Build for Everyone or Build for No One – Elaine Shannon and Kevin Andrews, Why Accessibility Matters: From A Blind/Visually Impaired Perspective – James Warnken, and many more.
Kevin Andrews sums it up well that an inaccessible site can turn ‘Main content into a endurance excise’ and we couldn’t agree more. It gives less of a focus on the content or action you wanted to complete, and more about if you can sit with the frustration of not finding what you need, and working through it, which most users wont do, they will close the tab, and find somewhere else that requires less cognitive load.
Accessibility at Northern Bear
We believe that accessibility isn’t optional. We’re determined to make the world a more accessible place through inclusive design as standard and adaptations for accessibility. We make sure to educate our clients, and see that the work we put out is accessible to as many people as possible.
Our process
The work for accessibility starts from the beginning of any project, not just at the end.
For a website, the User Experience phase is all about setting your website up to signpost and make sure users get to where they need to go. We consider Google Analytics, Workshops – both internal and external. With NDTi for example; we hosted workshops including people with additional access needs, to co-develop the new website – and Surveys, to make informed decisions about your new website.
At User interface (UI) and Branding phase, we make sure your brand is compliant with contrast standards, and make recommendations if your brand needs some tweaks or suggestions to make sure your website is compliant.
At Build stage, we use Elementor Page builder, which is constantly updating and evolving to meet WCAG Compliancies. We also offer plugins such as ‘Accessibe’ and ‘Ally by Elementor’ to enhance accessibility for individual users, but from a base level we aim to make our websites as inclusive as possible. This can be making sure from a page structure wise, titles follow the correct hierarchy and semantic HTML is used within the page builder.
Educating about accessibility
We make sure to educate our clients, so not only their websites are accessible, but the knowledge as well. Throughout the process we will educate and inform when necessary, to make sure you’re equipped to use your website and educate your team where needed. We also make scribes, and hold training sessions to teach our clients how to competently use their new website, offering our tips and guidance to ensure you have the knowledge too.
In our journal, we have multiple blogs on the top of Accessibility:
- Our starter guide for website accessibility
- Demystifying digital: Accessibility on the web
- Why accessible charity design is NOT for everyone
- How can your charity make its social media content more accessible?
Educating ourselves
All members of the Northern Bear team are made aware of accessibility and make sure to consider it at each part of the process. We like to attend and view events like WordPress Accessibility Day to make sure we’re up to date on the current trends and discussions without the WordPress accessibility space and always ready to learn more.
We understand that Accessibility does not have to be perfect. Keeping a website fully compliant would be a full time job, it’s why Accessibility Experts exists. With technology developments, and constant changes from WCAG, developers of plugins and page builders, there’s a lot to understand and apply to web accessibility. But it’s important to know that by changing simple things, such as contrast and font-size, you’re already making improvements towards a more accessible website.
In 1997, when the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) launched, the quote from Sir Timothy Berners-Lee – the creator of the World Wide Web – sums up how important accessibility on the web is, and how we should utalise the web to give access to all:
“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect“
