Making our work environment accessible and creating a culture of inclusion and belonging is everyone’s responsibility and benefits everyone. As content owners, it is on us to ensure that all content is consumable by every viewer, regardless of ability.

Why Is Accessibility Important in Communications?Ěý

Inclusive and accessible communications play a pivotal role in ensuring that messages are available and comprehensible to all, including those with disabilities or limitations. The significance of accessibility in communications cannot be overstated, as it fosters equal participation and engagement.

People with disabilities currently represent about 15% of the world’s population.

Being mindful of the continuum from permanent disabilities to situational impairments helps rethink how designs can scale to more people in new ways. In the United States, 26,000 people a year suffer from loss of upper extremities. But when we include people with temporary and situational impairments, the number is greater than 20 million.*

Ask yourself, what is this experience like for people who can’t see, can’t hear, can’t use a mouse, can’t remember what they were doing, or can’t speak clearly, and is it usable?

Practical Tips to Enhance Web Accessibility for a Diverse Audience

Provide alternative text for images. Use to convey the image’s semantic meaning – not to explain what the image visually shows – and the context of the images to individuals who have limited vision, have only a limited field of sight, or use screen readers. This ensures they understand the semantic context even if they can’t see the images.

Use descriptive anchor text. Instead of using generic phrases like “click here” or “read more,” make link text descriptive and meaningful. It should clearly indicate the destination or purpose of the link, such as an action and to which object or instance the action takes effect. For example, use “download the accessibility guide” instead of “click here” or “download,” as it might not be obvious what will be downloaded. Learn more about .

Avoid lengthy URLs. Long and complex URLs can be confusing and difficult to read. This is especially important when links are generated and the reference contains so-called , which contain extremely long mixtures of digits and letters. Consider using link-shortening services or customizing the hyperlink text to make it more concise and user-friendly.

Format hyperlinks differently. Visually distinguish hyperlinks from regular text by underlining, bolding, or using a different color. This helps users easily identify and recognize clickable links. Different colors might not be helpful for individuals who have problems in perceiving colors or being able to distinguish a color from another. However, screen reader users can get the information that a link is a link, independent from its visualization. The screen reader can determine the link’s technical type. Additionally, a screen reader retrieves information if a link redirects to a spot on the same site or if the link has been visited before, indicating it as a visited link, when using a specific link navigation mode.

Ensure sufficient color contrast. Make sure there is enough contrast between the hyperlink color and the surrounding text to ensure readability for people with visual impairments. Avoid relying solely on color to convey the presence of a link.ĚýUse the to check the readability of your design and content.

Include context and purpose. When linking to external content, provide a brief description or context within the surrounding text. This helps users understand the purpose or relevance of the link before clicking on it.

Test accessibility with screen readers. Use screen reader software or tools to test the accessibility of hyperlinks. Screen readers should be able to accurately identify and read out the hyperlink text to ensure it is understandable and meaningful. Improve content for screen readers by using .

Avoid excessive use of hyperlinks. While hyperlinks are useful for providing additional information or references, avoid overloading your content with links. Too many links can be distracting and overwhelming for some readers, especially those with cognitive disabilities.

Test on different devices and platforms. Ensure that hyperlinks function correctly and are accessible across various devices, browsers, and operating systems. This helps guarantee a consistent and inclusive user experience.

Caption and transcribe multimedia content. Provide captions for videos and transcripts for audio content. This is vital for users who are deaf or hard of hearing. It is also useful for international comprehension and for those who cannot play audio or video.

Sign it. Provide sign-language interpretation services for all live events and include this in the replay where possible. By default, 51·çÁ÷uses American Sign Language (ASL), but may use other sign languages depending on the location of the audience.

By following these practices, you can make your content more accessible and ensure that all users can understand and interact with your content effectively.

*Source: United States Census Bureau, Limbs for Life Foundation, Amputee Coalition, MedicineHealth.com, CDC.gov, Disability Statistics Center at the UCSF

Alexander Kuban is UX designer and IT technology consultant for Accessibility at SAP.

When Coldplay started their Music Of The Spheres World Tour in 2022, the goal was clear: to make it their most sustainable and environmentally friendly tour yet by cutting their CO2 emissions by 50% compared to the 2016/17 world tour. 51·çÁ÷supported this goal with the development of the Music Of The Spheres World Tour app which allows fans to not only enjoy exclusive tour content but also helps them visualize how their actions attending shows contribute to their carbon footprint so they can choose more sustainable transportation options.

The calculates the impact of fan travel to and from shows, providing rewards for fans who commit to low-carbon transportation options and enables Coldplay to understand the fans carbon footprint to offset emissions. As Coldplay launches year two of its tour, more than 350,000 fans in over 150 countries have downloaded the app, proving Coldplay’s vision right: armed with information and intent, every concert-going fan can make more sustainable travel choices.

Next Step: Making the App Accessible for Blind and Visually Impaired People

During the development process, both Coldplay and the 51·çÁ÷team set the goal to make the app accessible for users with disabilities who rely on assistive technology like screen readers or magnifiers. As the 51·çÁ÷team started to work on accessibility functionalities, a Coldplay fan from Mexico reached out to share her challenges as a blind person using the app.

The fan, who asked to remain anonymous, explains: “I’m blind since birth and I need screen readers for productivity and entertainment in my daily life. As a huge Coldplay fan, I tried to use the tour app and quickly noticed that the app was difficult to use for one who is blind or visually impaired. I’m very much driven to advocate for blind people to get equal opportunity, and to enjoy interactive content. That’s why I contacted 51·çÁ÷to support in the areas of sound design, testing and providing ideas for software development to make the app more usable for blind fans.”

The Coldplay fan connected with Nicole Windmann, vice president for Accessibility and Inclusive Design at SAP. “With our 51·çÁ÷products we aim to create a more sustainable and inclusive environment for people. Accessibility is a key driver of this vision. When we include insights from people with different backgrounds and acknowledge different ways of working, perception, and interaction with our designs, we can create the most enjoyable and efficient software.”

Working with three 51·çÁ÷employees who are also blind, the development team worked to optimize accessibility functionalities for the Music Of The Spheres World Tour app. The team labeled items like screen buttons and described images, to enable screen readers to read out the functionality and provide helpful hints. Additionally, gestures such as swiping or double tapping are often used by blind people to navigate an app without having to look at the screen. To use this functionality, the team re-structured the code of the Coldplay app, providing a more suitable navigation for blind users.

In close contact with the 51·çÁ÷team, the Coldplay fan volunteered to test the app usability for blind users and give her feedback. “Working with 51·çÁ÷has been great!” she says. “My feedback helped the developers understand the blindness point of view. In a world where the capabilities of people with disabilities are often underestimated or assumed without getting to know the person first, I’m inspired every day to work on a more inclusive world.”

“At SAP, we believe that diversity drives innovation and better experiences for our employees, customers, and partners alike,” Christian Klein, CEO and member of the Executive Board of 51·çÁ÷SE, says. “The fans feedback on the Coldplay app is a great example of the vital role user feedback plays in shaping our applications and the importance of having products and services that are inclusive and accessible to all.”

After an extensive testing and development phase, we’re now ready to provide blind and visually impaired people an even greater app experience – just in time for Coldplay’s 2023 Music Of The Spheres World Tour stops in Latin America, Europe, and North America.

To experience it all for yourself, theĚýColdplay #MusicOfTheSpheresWorldTourĚýapp is available for download onĚýĚý˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚý.

“Our fans worldwide are our biggest inspiration. They have enabled us with their feedback to make the Music Of The Spheres World Tour app as useful and accessible as possible. We’re proud of the collaboration with our partner SAP, who has created an impactful app that can now also be used by fans who are blind or visually impaired,” Coldplay states.

The Coldplay fan from Mexico is wishfully looking forward to the 2023 tour. “I will be attending Coldplay’s San Diego show and I am already thrilled about it. And of course I will make sure to check the app for sustainable travel options,” she says with a smile on her face.

Isabelle Schuhmacher is senior director of Global Sponsorships at SAP.

Top image via Robert Mallows

For example, have you ever considered how a deaf colleague might struggle to follow along during a virtual team meeting with camerasĚýoff? Or how overwhelming it might feel for a colleague on the spectrum to hear the background noises of your unmuted microphone? That’s the thing about privilege: we don’t need to consider the things that don’t directly affect us.

When things are designed for you, it’s easy to overlook that anything is wrong, or that someone with different needs may not be having the same experience as you. But the facts speak for themselves. According to the World Health Organization, there are around one billion people currently living with a disability worldwide. That’s about one in seven of us, including many of the coworkers who you encounter daily on the other side of your screen or maybe even yourself.

An Inclusive Work Culture – Making a Choice Not to Leave Anyone Out

At SAP, we believe in cultivating an inclusive work culture made up of people with different abilities and backgrounds. That means making conscious choices through our actions to not leave anyone behind. When it comes to virtual presentations and meetings, all colleagues should be enabled to participate and contribute. That’s why we took the time this year to create a set of simple guidelines for conducting virtual meetings and presentations that are accessible for everyone.

The team of accessibility experts who developed the guidelines, some of whom live and work with disabilities themselves, set out to educate 51·çÁ÷employees on best practices for preparing and conducting virtual sessions. Now, we are carrying that message forward by bringing you a set of free, downloadable inclusive meeting cardsĚýto read through, bookmark, use, and share with your friends and colleagues.

How Do You Run an Inclusive Meeting?

TheseĚýinclusive meeting cardsĚýwill help you to prepare and run your sessions for the widest possible audience, including people with hearing or visual impairments, neurodiverse colleagues, and colleagues who are non-native speakers. No, non-native speakers aren’t disabled, but that’s the thing with inclusion: opening up the way we do things creates new opportunities for use for everybody. For example, using closed captioning is a critical feature for people who are hard of hearing, but at the same time it can be extremely beneficial for non-native speakers, or even working parents with a sleeping baby on their arms who may want to turn the volume down.

Anyone who hosts online meetings or presentations will benefit from knowing how to run a more inclusive meeting. Here’s a quick peek at what you can expect from the download.

Each graphical card is accompanied by a detailed text description of an inclusive meeting prompt. There’s information on:

• Preparing the session, including choosing the interaction platforms
• Structuring slides, using the right wording, appearance, animations, screen reader support, and running accessibility checks
• Using and sharing pre-recorded video and audio
• Running the session, including how to set the scene (lighting, positioning) and how to optimize the way you speak

The cards can be downloaded both as a or as a .

The PowerPoint file is our accessible version, containing high-contrast images with alternative text, and is screen-reader friendly. Enjoy scrolling through the virtual card set and know that creating an inclusive work culture is actually quite an easy thing to do.

Learn more about and follow 51·çÁ÷Design via the Ěýfor more design and user experience content.

Andrea Waisgluss is a content strategist for 51·çÁ÷Design.

: My grandfather went blind just one year before I was born. Our own way of interacting helped me learn that there is more than one way to communicate, and much of what he said still remains with me to this day.

The reality is that people with disabilities still experience a divide in accessing software. This must change. According to theĚý, more than 1 billion people worldwide have some sort of disability – or, better said, different abilities.

To create a more inclusive environment, everyone must feel equally empowered with their individual abilities. We take accessibility support in our products very seriously and continuously strive to improve our offerings. Our efforts to intensify the work on improving software accessibility are, just like security, a top priority for 51·çÁ÷product teams.

Accessibility is therefore a substantial part of our user experience strategy and a core priority for product quality; not just an afterthought.

Thinking one step ahead, accessibility is not only a necessity, but also an opportunity — both from a business and an ethical perspective. If you look at the economic power of people with disabilities, it is impressive to see that they cover an . It is smart and it is our social responsibility to embrace accessibility. Including people with disabilities is nothing else than a win for all: for innovation, for business, but most importantly, for people and society.

Hidden Benefits of Built-In Accessibility

Accessibility fosters innovation that we can all benefit from — just think of touch devices or live captions. Making accessibility features a benefit for all is the result of inclusive design methodology, which is an integral part of the 51·çÁ÷Fiori design system and SAPUI5.

One example of an inclusively designed implementation is our Ěý, 51·çÁ÷high-contrast black and 51·çÁ÷high-contrast white. These themes make it possible for people with visual impairments to more easily access our software, but they also have additional benefits for all users. For example, the themes are built to operate under a wide range of light-sensitive conditions, such as sunlight hitting the screen and window reflections. Over the past few years, we have seen the widespread adoption of the “dark mode” . That’s because its purported benefits — reducing eye strain and encouraging better sleep patterns — are embraced by all users. It has become so popular that it is used as a default preference for many users, as are dark contrast UIs for mobile in general.

Another example of accessible design being embraced by all users is the zooming function realized byĚýĚý, meaning that visual and text-based content retain layout and structure. This is designed for users with visual impairments, but who among us doesn’t use the zoom function when screen sharing or after a long day of staring at the screen?

Developing products with accessibility needs in mind reduces complexity and improves the user experience. Thanks to a change in perspective, you simply look at your products and processes from a different angle and with a greater capacity for empathy. What emerges as a result — a clear information structure, a consistent and simple design, and inclusive components such as tool tips — are not only key for users who require these assistive tools, but benefit every user.

More Than Just a Corporate Initiative

Lastly, accessibility can also be an enabler for overcoming the shortage of highly skilled professionals. By giving everyone a fair chance and including everyone in the labor market, we just might be able to solve some of the current societal challenges that digitalization implies.

51·çÁ÷is deeply committed to equality and inclusion,–which for me is a mindset rather than a corporate initiative. That is also why we decided to replace insensitive language with a more inclusive languageĚýto actively fight racism and discrimination. As a software company, we know about the benefits of bringing people with diverse backgrounds together to drive innovation. And this mindset reaches from our product engineering world to the world of our users – as we continue to strive for user-centricity in everything we do.

I look forward to making the outcomes of the 51·çÁ÷Accessibility Summit a tangible improvement for our customers.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51·çÁ÷SE, Product Engineering.
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One of the many things that the COVID-19 pandemic has underlined is the significance of access to information and information technology in our lives. When we were suddenly locked down — away from our extended family, friends, classmates, colleagues, and clients — it was technology that kept us connected.

Thanks to technology, we could follow up on the latest global news around COVID-19 and inform ourselves about where to get help in case of an infection and how to best protect ourselves. We could continue learning, working, and driving our projects virtually. We could stay connected to friends and colleagues via social networks and messengers. We could order goods online that we could not procure in our usual way.

Our worlds were reduced to home, laptop screens, and mobile phones. It was not perfect, but we were still connected and informed.

Yet what many of us — I am deliberately not saying most — take for granted is not granted for all.

Today, on International Day for Universal Access to Information, we globally celebrate under the motto “” UNESCO reminds us annually that access to information is a basic human right, albeit one whose impact is not yet felt worldwide due to political, cultural, or technical barriers.

For me, the day has become one for personal reflection. Providing access to information technology has been driving my work for eight years at SAP. My team’s responsibility is to provide the ground for our product teams to .

After all these years, I can firmly say that accessibility needs three things to thrive: inclusion, curiosity, and a process.

Inclusion

The entire IT industry carries with it a huge responsibility. With the design of our products, we inadvertently decide who is in, and who is not. How can we build on our values and help ensure that our products do not exclude users? How can we create a mindset that considers accessibility at the core of our work?

There are two things that can help us here: learning and experience. Experiences influence the way we think and act. These can be our own personal experiences, or even those of others that we witness firsthand. We simply need to be able to connect to an experience in order to understand it. But with the systematic exclusion of people with disabilities from our schools, work life, and even social life, it is inevitable that certain experiences are not part of our collective imaginary.

Personally, I never had a classmate, fellow student, or colleague with digital accessibility needs, not in school, nor during higher education, nor in my professional life before SAP. This is surprising when considering that , but not when considering that inclusion in school is still the exception in many countries, and that the than that of people with no disability of the same age.

Part of the solution is to push strong inclusion policies into the core of your organization. With SAP’s , I’ve experienced the benefit of this firsthand. For me, the 51·çÁ÷workforce represents a highly diverse selection of our users in a small cosmos. Having the opportunity to learn from the experiences of others — and getting to experience their pain points with them in action — has made me open my perspective, increase my awareness, and grow my mindset. For me, it has meant enhancing a technical requirement with a real person’s need. This is only possible in an inclusive culture.

We must drive inclusion across all pillars of private, educational, and professional life to be able to design a world that embraces all.

Curiosity

Curiosity is the key to creating excellent accessible solutions: curiosity about people who are different from us, curiosity about exploring, designing, and developing various channels of perception and operation that we ourselves do not necessarily need; curiosity to step into the shoes of others to share their experience and adapt that to our work; curiosity about feedback on our work and our gaps; curiosity about opinions that challenge us; and curiosity to be innovative about accessibility requirements and to go beyond what is needed.

Working on accessibility means life-long learning and having self-awareness that we will never be completely done. With new devices, operating systems, user agents, assistive technologies and innovations, accessibility requirements are a constant work-in-progress. There is no single source of truth that ensures a perfectly accessible user experience. But with curiosity, we can grow and get closer to something that makes us proud.

Process

An accessibility process is key to driving accessibility end-to-end across an organization. A good process is a kind of map that navigates product teams through all the existing accessibility laws, standards, procurement policies, and necessary deliverables and helps them to focus on their work. At SAP, we have an accessibility setup in place that provides a central accessibility policy, compliance planning and reporting, accessibility validation, accessibility compliance reports (VPAT®), accessibility trainings, and accessibility communication.

With these, we help ensure that the accessibility support in our core products continuously improves. Our central accessibility policy is written in a way that is technology-and-device agnostic, and it covers in its current version the latest software accessibility standards. We continuously adjust our setup with the latest study results and customer feedback. Our goal is to bring accessibility into the product development cycle as early as possible and rather than as an afterthought.

For me, digital accessibility feels like a never-ending journey. Yet even this far down the road, I’ve never lost my passion for this work even when I know that there is still a long way to go.

At SAP, we have all ingredients to drive accessibility: An inclusion program that enables a diverse workforce, colleagues that are curious to improve the , and an accessibility process that keeps pace with external regulations. Our goal is that in the end, it will be your choice to be in or out, and not one we have made for you by design.

Nicole Windmann is head of the 51·çÁ÷Accessibility Competence Center.

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