The Importance of Digital Accessibility for Hospitality Brands
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When it comes to accessibility, it’s much more than just a buzzword we need to be aware of.
It needs to be at the heart of every decision you’re making.
At Punch, it’s something we consider every time we approach a client project. It’s a consistent part of everything we produce and our strategy for marketing for clients and ourselves.
In the UK, 1 in 5 people live with a disability. When you think about a disability, certain images or conditions may come to your mind. But the actual definition of disability and how common living with a disability is may be much bigger than many people imagine.
In fact, 60% of people underestimate how many disabled people there are in the UK population. That means the majority of people underestimate how many disabled people are guests at their restaurant, are visiting their website, and are seeing their advertisements.
According to the social model of disability, disability is caused by a mismatch between the design and the person. That means that disability isn’t inherently a medical condition, and in fact, design needs to provide flexibility to meet the user’s needs.
Which means we’re all responsible for ensuring that the products and services we provide are enabling, rather than disabling.
What is Digital Accessibility?
There are six main types of disability that affect access to the web:
- Auditory
- Cognitive
- Neurological
- Physical
- Speech
- Visual
But digital accessibility covers more than just these disabilities. Digital accessibility serves more than just people living with disabilities.
Providing digital accessibility benefits:
- People who access the web through different forms of technology, such as phones, smartwatches, smart TVs, and small screens.
- Ageing populations with changing abilities (such as worsening eyesight).
- Temporary disability, such as broken arms that require recovery or adaptation.
- Situational limitations, such as being in environments with bright sunlight.
- Slow internet and limited bandwidth.
Many people access digital accessibility tools. Think about how often you will turn the subtitles on your TV when you’re watching a film at home. Do you do this because you can’t hear? Because there are other distractions? Or because it makes it clearer?
You’re not alone. 80% of television viewers used closed captions for reasons other than hearing loss, according to a 2015 study from Ofcom.
Digital accessibility for Punch means ensuring that all digital products and services are able to be equally and easily accessed by people with a wide range of abilities and disabilities.
Why does Digital Accessibility Matter for your Hospitality Brand?
In basic terms, if you’re not ensuring accessibility, you’re missing out on revenue. The collective spending power of disabled people and their households was estimated to be £274 billion per year on UK businesses in 2029. You can find out more about the ‘Click-Away Pound’ and the cost to businesses of ignoring disabled shoppers on clickawaypound.com.
For hotel marketing (Punch’s bread and butter), the money spent by disabled people and their travelling companions in England’s tourism economy was calculated to be worth £14.6 billion per year.
If you’re a hospitality business looking to drive revenue, you cannot ignore the importance of guests with disabilities and accessibility requirements.
But in addition to this, there are legal requirements for digital accessibility that your business needs to meet.
What are the Legal Requirements for Digital Accessibility?
The WCAG
For many years, WCAG (or Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) acted as a set of internationally recognised standards for making web content more accessible. However, this wasn’t a legal requirement until the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018. This act ensured that public sector body websites and online content needed to meet the WCAG 2.2 Level AA standard. However, this wasn’t applicable to every website published in the UK – just those owned and operated by the public sector. Find out more about the WCAG guidelines on their website here.
The WCAG was created by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium with four main principles of digital accessibility:
- Perceivable
- Operable
- Understandable
- Robust
Their guidelines were split into levels (A, AA, and AAA). These levels are tired, offering more in-depth accessibility support as they scale. WCAG AAA is the highest conformance level and requires websites to provide sign language translations for all pre-recorded video content, which means that many web publishers aren’t able to currently offer this level of compliance. However, in order to create accessible content, brands should strive to reach as many of the criteria as possible.
Essentially, this may be way out of your ability, but here’s where you should be aiming for.
The WCAG has continued to improve its recommendations and guidelines as technology and understanding of accessible needs develop, releasing WCAG 2.1 in 2018 with further success criteria to address mobile accessibility and more.
WCAG 2.2
WCAG 2.2 was first published in October 2023. This latest update is the current recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium for all websites, and as of October 2024, all services across the UK government will be monitored for WCAG 2.2 AA compliance.
The European Accessibility Act was adopted in 2019 to harmonise digital accessibility requirements across EU states and required all member states to align with requirements by June 28th of 2025. This act applies to most private companies, meaning that legal compliance should be on your radar and something you’re consciously working towards if you’re not already hitting if your company is providing goods and services in the EU.
The current guidance and compliance recommendations are that digital products and services, such as websites, conform to WCAG 2.1 level AA. However, since WCAG 2.2 was released, member states and those publishers wishing to meet these requirements must now be working to comply with WCAG 2.2 level AA guidelines.
Other key aspects of UK digital accessibility law
In addition to these guidelines, there are several accessibility considerations businesses should be taking into account when designing and creating all digital products (including apps, websites, and digital assets). The Equality Act of 2010 prohibits discrimination against disabled people. According to this act, organisations have to make reasonable adjustments to ensure accessibility.
Essentially, if your business wants to continue working in line with UK law and providing services to those living in EU member states, you need to be working towards a high standard of digital accessibility!
What are Common Digital Accessibility Failures?
- Contrast: make sure text, icons, and images are distinguishable from background colours.
- Links: Your links should be descriptive and tell the user exactly what to do and what the button or link will result in.
- Sliders or carousels: When creating carousels for social posts or sliders for web pages, symbols such as #pre/net’ can provide more context to the user on how to use the tool and access the content.
- Fonts: sans-serif fonts are widely seen as more accessible for readability.
- Background images: background images should be decorative only and not include text that conveys a message.
- Language: Complex sentence structure and overly technical language can be difficult for screen readers. Abbreviations without clarification can make it difficult for many people to understand or access your information.
- Alt text: Images should be accompanied by alt text for screen readers, for low internet speed, and to provide additional context or explanation.
- Forms: All forms should have clear input labels.
How Can Your Hospitality Business Check if You’re Accessible in the Digital Age?
While you might believe you’re doing everything you can to make sure your website is accessible, there may be more you can do to check you’re compliant before the legal deadline hits.
How to check if your website is accessible?
- Use a website accessibility checker such as these:
- Download a browser extension to easily text the accessibility of any site. Silktide can help test individual web pages quickly and easily. Find out more about the free accessibility checker here.
- Speak to professionals for an audit of your website.
How to check if your design is accessible?
One of the easiest ways to check and see if your design is accessible is to actually showcase it to different people. Just because things are clear and information is easily followed for you doesn’t mean it may be for someone else.
Additionally, there are different forms of accessibility to consider. To ensure its visually accessible to those who may suffer from vision impairment, check and see if a screen reader can easily gather information or use a contract checker tool online to ensure your text and background can be differentiated.
WebAim offers a variety of resources to help educate people about web accessibility, including a contract checker where anyone can insert two Hex values for free and immediately receive an answer to whether it meets WCAG guidelines. You can find out more about the website and use the contrast checker tool here.
Many websites and pieces of software also have built-in tools to check the accessibility of a design. For example, the design website Canva allows you to easily check the accessibility of anything you create on the platform, checking font sizes, colour contrast, and alt text.
You should also simulate different vision types to check if your design is accessible to those who suffer from colour blindness and other visual impairments. This can also allow you to get a better sense of how navigation could be better optimised and designed to reach these customers and guests.
How to make sure your user experience is accessible?
Your user (or guest) experience starts with their first encounter with you – often digital. This may be through your ads, your social accounts, or your websites. As they explore your site, there should be no barrier for entry, stopping every potential guest from being able to access the information they need and convert.
Your brand or marketing team can ensure navigation is accessible by ensuring consistency across your site and your digital presence, testing with keyboard alone and through tools like screen readers.
How Punch Hospitality Can Help You Meet Accessibility Requirements and Beyond?
At Punch, accessibility isn’t just a tick in a checklist. It’s at the core of what we do. Every asset we create, every website we develop, we have accessibility in mind – because if your audience can’t access the marketing fairly, then what is the point of us creating it? Marketing shouldn’t be tiered – it should be available for everyone, regardless of their background or ability.
We know there’s always more to learn, and our developers, designers, and marketers are constantly striving to be at the forefront of innovations and new requirements for not only our clients but also ourselves. It’s a guiding principle. Marketing can be specific, it can be targeted, but it shouldn’t be restrictive.
When clients approach Punch Hospitality, we first suggest an audit of your current marketing and brand to pinpoint your friction areas and see where we can help you improve and drive your revenue growth. Here we can help you work out if you’re lacking in your accessibility and tell you exactly what we can do to help. Then, from the way we develop your site to the contrast on your Instagram carousel, we’ll drive accessibility through everything we create with you. If you want to find out more about our digital services, you can click this link.
If you’re interested in working with Punch and making sure you’re compliant by the deadline, then get in touch today and see how we can boost your accessibility credentials. Drop us an email at [email protected] or visit our contact form today.
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