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As audiovisual (AV) continues to become more prevalent in business communication and presentations, it is essential for AV designers to ensure their templates are compliant with accessibility regulations and guidelines. With the right templates and approaches, AV solutions can be developed that are inclusive of all audiences regardless of ability. This blog discusses key considerations for creating AV design templates that meet accessibility and compliance standards.
Understanding Accessibility Regulations and Guidelines
The first step in developing compliant AV templates is understanding the regulations and guidelines that apply. Some of the key standards that relate to accessibility in digital content include:
Section 508: In the US, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act outlines regulations for making electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. This includes things like ensuring multimedia has captions and audio descriptions.
WCAG 2.1: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) published by the W3C provide best practices for making web content more accessible. While originally aimed at websites, many of the Success Criteria also apply to digital documents, presentations, etc. Meeting WCAG AA standards is a good target for comprehensive accessibility.
CVAA: The Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) regulates access to communications services like video programming. This impacts things like ensuring live events have sign language interpreters.
ADA: The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits discrimination based on disability. While focused on the built environment, digital platforms and services must also be fully usable.
Understanding key compliance points in these regulations helps inform template designs that are inclusive from the start.
Template Design Considerations for Accessibility
With an understanding of regulations, here are some specific design factors to incorporate into AV templates:
Alt text for images: All images need text descriptions that convey the same information to someone who can't see the image. Templates should make alt text a required field.
Text alternatives for non-text content: Anything conveyed with sound or video, like narration or demonstrations, requires a text-based alternative like captions, transcripts or audio descriptions.
Focus indication: Users need to know where they are on a page through keyboard navigation alone. Templates can indicate focus visually but also with sound.
Color contrast: Sufficient color contrast between text and background is necessary for users with low vision. Templates enforce minimum contrast ratio standards.
Keyboard and screen reader support: Templates must be fully operable without a mouse through keyboard commands and readable by screen readers in a logical, meaningful order.
Text size adjustability: Content needs to be viewable and operable when text size is increased for low vision users. Templates allow font size customization.
Simple designs: Overly complex or busy templates can make content inaccessible. Simpler, cleaner designs increase usability for all.
By addressing these types of design considerations, AV templates become inherently accessible and compliant when used.
Additional Compliance through Captioning and Descriptions
While templates ensure structural accessibility, content within them still needs text alternatives. A key part of the compliance process includes:
Automatic captioning: For any audio or video content within templates, automatic captioning software can generate text that just needs human editing for accuracy.
Audio description templates: For any visual content that conveys important information, blank templates provide structure for describing relevant details that someone who can't see would need.
Descriptions for diagrams/charts: Data visualizations like graphs or diagrams require text explanations of trends and conclusions. Templates prompt for this additional context.
Translation templates: Multilingual audiences benefit from content being simultaneously delivered in other languages. Translation templates maintain structure.
By incorporating spaces and guidance for text alternatives, AV templates streamline the process of making rich digital experiences accessible to everyone. Content producers have appropriate tools and context to comply.
Testing and Continuous Improvement
Initial compliance is just the beginning. For ongoing accessibility, a testing and feedback process helps evolve templates over time:
Manual and automated testing: Templates undergo both human and programmatic testing against standards to surface any issues.
User testing: People with varied abilities provide feedback on real usability and understanding of content produced within the templates.
Accessibility reviews: Third party reviewers skilled in compliance regulations assess templates and example content.
Issue tracking: All bugs and areas for improvement get logged in a tracking system to facilitate continuous improvement.
Policy development: Formal accessibility policies inform appropriate development, testing and remediation approaches for AV design templates.
With ongoing cycles of testing, review and refinements, AV templates become progressively more inclusive and compliant designs that empower creators to consistently produce accessible digital experiences.
Conclusion
By building a strong foundation of accessibility directly into AV design templates, compliance with relevant regulations becomes a natural byproduct when the templates are used to develop rich multimedia solutions. With the right template designs, testing procedures and content production practices, inclusive experiences can be developed from the start that work for audiences regardless of ability. Templates are a key lever for facilitating appropriate compliance across entire organizations.
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