Government regulations for accessibility both in Europe and in the UK are requiring educational websites to relook at their online learning offering. With solid experience in building accessible applications, Software Country is committed to making the world of digital learning attainable to all.
European laws set requirements for governmental and educational websites to be accessible by people with different disabilities. Most of the educational websites have to comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 AA level.
At the same time in the UK, where 1 in 5 people have a disability, to meet government accessibility requirements, digital services must comply with WCAG 2.1 AA level as a minimum. Accessibility not only promotes inclusivity and independence for the disabled but also helps private sector companies to potentially expand their audience by 20%.
For people with visual, hearing, motor or cognitive disabilities, assistive technologies such as screen magnifiers, screen readers, text readers, user input options, and speech recognition tools make all the difference when it comes to usability.
As a well-known leader in e-learning and digital assessments solutions, Software Country has been at the forefront of developing the most advanced custom software for decades.
‘Besides employing assistive technologies in order to present content in an understandable and easy to use manner, there are dozens of standard success criteria and techniques that we utilise routinely when building a digital assessment platform.
‘For example, to consider all the major categories, building different navigation options is important when only keyboard usage is possible; use of colour ratios, bold or highlighted elements for the visually impaired; descriptive text and prompts for test items are some of the things that we always look at,’ explains Dmitri Adov, Technical Director at Software Country.
Considering the complexity of specialised applications and the potential to increase users, educators should consider accessibility as a priority in the web design process.