Accessibility
Accessibility means ensuring that your business is open to everyone in every way. It is not just about making your office wheelchair-friendly. You should think about accessibility issues as an integral part of your day-to-day activities.
Business premises and other venues used by employees
- Ask disabled people whether they have any additional requirements in advance of meetings
- ensure that disabled parking is available - pre book if necessary
- provide additional transportation when necessary, for example, arrange for a taxi from the nearest station
- ensure that assistance (if required) is available to the person on arriving at the venue
- when necessary, access by lift must be readily available
- accessible toilets should be available within close proximity
- ensure that the meeting room or any syndicate rooms are sufficiently large enough to accommodate attendees (including any support workers)
- if possible, sound enhancement equipment such as a table microphone system and a induction loop should be available
- all emergency exit routes should be checked and appropriate additional arrangements be made available to enable evacuation, if necessary.
Company documents
When producing documents, the recommended minimum standard is:
- 14 point text in a sans serif font, such as Arial
- no block capitals
- left, rather than full text justification
- dark text against a plain contrasting background
- cream or off white paper is preferable to brilliant white
- matt rather than glossy paper
- content written in Plain English. See the Plain English website for tips on how to write clearly
Presentations
All presentations should follow the same guidelines for documents, and:
- be uncluttered
- not use text on top of an underlying graphic or pattern
- keep the amount of information on screen to a minimum
- not use "animation" in presentations
Website
If you make sure that your website is accessible, more people, in more situations, will use it.
- keep pages simple and consistent throughout the website
- use HTML as the default information format
- keep the number of images to a minimum
- do not rely on colour to convey information
- text colour should always contrast with the background
- use only clear, commonly used fonts
- use a consistent text navigation bar along with a skip navigation link
- other forms of navigation should be available for users who cannot use pointing devices
- all web pages should comply with the requirements of the World Wide Web Consortiums Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) "A" Standard.
