POUR Into Accessibility 

In my last blog post I introduced the POUR method, shown in Figure 1 below, and some quick ways to get ½ way through it, you can review that post here; now I’d like to cover ways to get the rest of the way there. As a reminder, the POUR method is intended to get small businesses and non-profits implementing Accessibility into their marketing websites quickly and efficiently, setting them up to iterate, and not a long term plan for maintaining accessibility.

So Many Choices

The Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) has four versions in publication as of today, and while they each seek to help folks building digital products, they are not the same. Website owners get a vast amount of autonomy when creating their digital resources, choices sometimes seemingly coming out of thin air, however, when they begin to make decisions, it’s helpful to do so based on data rather than aesthetics or gut feeling.  Experts in the federal accessibility space recommend using WCAG 2.0 for more general and motor abililty affected users while WCAG 2.1 is better suited for addressing cognitive abilities and is backwards compatible to WCAG 2.0.

Figure 1: The POUR method image. 

By addressing the U and R aspects, teams can move up to the PO aspects, which are much more people focused. Now’s when it’s time to bring in folks to test the changes you made in the hands of actual users, especially those with varying abilities accessing the internet. This can be a challenge initially for teams as they don’t have cohorts of usability testers on hand or ready funding as this can get expensive. But no worries, there are some great ways to get insights into usability for free or very low cost. 

It can be easy to assume your audience doesn’t include these folks, however, as a reminder, a person does not have to disclose any disabeling condition to anyone if they do not wish to in the United States. With the CDC reporting up to 1 in 4 American Adults living with some disabling condition that affects their ability to interact with the internet, the likelihood your audience includes these folks is extremely high, and thus MUST be tested in the hands of your audience.

Methods

One of the quickest and simplest ways to get usability feedback from actual humans users is to tap your exsisting resources to complete a quick survey and bonus if you tie and incentive to it! An example of this could be and internal non-QA group, think Customer Success and Account Admin folks, or creating a social media post to your network, asking them to take 5 –10 minutes test the newest updates to your site on different devices and browsers for a discount on a product or service your org offers.

Informing them of your goal and a timeline, for example that you’re specifically aiming to make the experience better for audiences with varying ability levels by the end of the year, empowers folks to affect real change in an area many have just come to accept as NOT being accessible to them. 

For your convience, I’ve created a Google Form that organizations can copy and use as a starting template in their own journeys to execute the final steps of the POUR method. There are nine questions in total, and should take no more than 5 – 10 minutes to complete.  

Next Time…

In my next post I’ll put all of this, resources for the POUR method, into a easy to digest PDF, but first I’d like to ensure it’s also formatted for accessibility. Yes, that’s a thing!

Disclaimer

As a disclaimer, the information provided here is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice.