Lack of accessibility silences vital voices in our community

More than 1 in 4 adults in the United States have some type of disability. This group includes people with hearing, vision, cognitive, walking, self-care or independent living difficulties. Millions more experience temporary disabilities. These voices often go unheard in participation processes.

‍According to research reported on by Government Technology, these very people also cite frequent barriers on government websites that hinder the accessibility of receiving important services.This leads to abandonment and lost opportunities for engagement.

Furthermore, a UK study revealed that accessibility barriers can have a profound emotional impact on disabled individuals. Over half of respondents mentioned feeling "frustrated," "annoyed," "anxious," "stressed," or "deflated" due to inaccessible websites. It can leave people feeling "upset," "angry," "stupid," or even "isolated." One respondent summed it up perfectly: "Isolated. Excluded. Alone. Frustrated. Unimportant to society."

By neglecting accessibility, you know you’ll lose invaluable perspectives that could shape more effective and representative decisions. Accessibility is a gateway to a richer, more comprehensive dialogue that benefits everyone and ensures collective decisions reflect the needs and aspirations of your entire community.

Essential accessibility features to guarantee inclusive engagement

When searching for a participation platform or reviewing your current solution, you should ask yourself whether the following functions are guaranteed to make it easy for users to navigate your digital spaces.

• For deaf people, this can include subtitles for videos, easy-to-understand language, or even sign language interpreters (for example, in live-streamed sessions).
• For blind people, compatibility with screen readers is just as crucial as captioning images and buttons through the so-called alternative text.
• For people with visual impairments, in addition to screen readers and alt text, it helps to ensure sufficient contrast between foreground and background colours and to guarantee text size adjustment.

Easy language and keyboard-operable links and buttons are also important so all people can navigate your content barrier-free.

Go Vocal is committed to accessibility and inclusion

At Go Vocal, accessibility is a cornerstone of our commitment to making public decision-making more inclusive and responsive. We're proud to have achieved the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) AA certification (2.2), demonstrating our unwavering dedication to making our platform accessible to as many people as possible.

WCAG is an internationally recognized set of standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The guidelines’ sole purpose is to make internet content accessible to the widest possible audience.

“Accessibility is essential for empowering every community member to engage in participatory democracy. I’m proud to be part of a team that prioritizes removing barriers and enabling governments to create truly representative and inclusive spaces for all individuals.”

Edwin Kato, Front-End engineer

Our comprehensive accessibility framework encompasses a range of practices to ensure compatibility and user-friendliness: 

• Manual testing by inclusion experts
• Leveraging advanced technology like browser extensions. 
• Actively seeking feedback from users with disabilities, using their insights to improve our platform continuously. 

To promote accessibility beyond our platform, we share our knowledge through workshops and training courses internally and externally.

Despite our best efforts, achieving and maintaining full accessibility is an ongoing challenge. We remain committed to identifying and resolving any issues that may arise.

An ongoing commitment

Ensuring engagement is barrier-free is not a one-time thing. It’s important to stay on top of it and regularly check who your visitors are and what difficulties they might have interacting with your website or participating in your projects. 

Age, education, language skills, and cultural differences should also be considered when making further changes to your platform and content. Conducting an inclusion survey within your community can provide valuable insights for tailoring your platform and content to meet diverse needs.

Our dedicated Government Success Managers work closely with clients to navigate these challenges, offering expert advice on implementing and maintaining accessibility measures. They guide you through the process of continuous improvement, helping you identify and address potential barriers to ensure your engagement efforts remain inclusive and effective over time.

In Go Vocal, you’ll have a partner with inclusion and accessibility in its DNA

Recognizing and removing barriers to engagement is a step towards equality. Web accessibility is one way of giving people more independence, choice, and control.

Like you, we understand the importance of WCAG and accessibility compliance. In a rapidly evolving digital world, where everyone relies on the internet to navigate their daily lives, we cannot afford to leave anybody behind.

Solutions, like Go Vocal’s community engagement platform, can simplify the job with WCAG compliance checks included as a standard practice and our Government Success Managers provide expert guidance on inclusive process design.

Book a demo today to find out how you can improve your residents’ participation experience.

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