Our latest thoughts from the world of technology in education & the workplace

Texthelp Blog - Our latest thoughts from the world of technology in education & the workplace

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As more and more vendors double down on a digital-first approach, people with accessibility needs such as visual impairments have struggled to access online services. To keep customers engaged and provide an inclusive approach for those shopping online, businesses need to focus on accessibility.  

Those who don’t have accessibility needs can often forget the importance of an easy-to-understand, and simple-to-navigate website. 

Recent research indicates that less than 1% of website home pages are likely to meet standard accessibility requirements. Pair this with the knowledge that nearly three quarters of disabled online consumers will leave a website that they find difficult to use. 83% of disabled users will only shop on sites that they know are accessible. This means that UK retailers could be missing out on online sales of around £17.1 billion a year.

It’s important to remember that accessibility isn’t just about the technical aspects of your website either. It also encompasses the language that you use and how easy your content is to understand.

If you’re not addressing the inclusion on your website, then you are cutting out a significant proportion of your market. The NHS estimates that approximately 1.5 million people in the UK have a learning disability. Beyond this, there are approximately 2 million people in Britain living with sight loss that is severe enough to have a significant impact on their daily lives. Approximately 1 in 8 of adult males and 1 in 200 adult females have some form of colour blindness. In total, there are approximately 13.9 million disabled people in the UK, including 19% of working age adults.

These numbers are significant but they only include those with diagnosed disabilities. Uncaptured by these statistics is the fact that the average reading age for adults in the UK is roughly nine years old. If your online shop window has language that is hard to understand, you could be excluding an enormous pool of potential customers. If your UX is not accessible, struggling users will simply not reach the checkout. 

The importance of this cannot be overstated. The 2021 WebAIM Million report found that 86% of websites contain low colour contrast text. This could be enough to prevent the groups with vision impairments listed above from being able to use these websites with ease. Despite access to guidelines such as the WCAG, many e-retailers do not consider the accessibility needs of their customer base - taking a sledgehammer to their own revenue stream as a result. It wouldn’t be acceptable for 86% of public buildings to have no special access measures for those with physical disabilities. It is not acceptable that 86% of websites fail on at least one accessibility measure. 

User experience is a consideration at the forefront of many online retailers’ priorities. But what is often forgotten is that accessibility is a key part of that process. 

When using analytics to examine the UX there is more of a focus, particularly in e-commerce, on the journey that the user takes. Data around time spent on particular pages, or where people are dropping-off take the focus. To understand why this is happening, most look at the product, or at the interactions between these pages, for answers. In reality, vendors should also consider the complexity of language on each page and whether disabled customers can use them properly. It could be that these two factors are in fact driving customer drop-off. 

For a website to be fully accessible, then it must be possible to navigate using only the keyboard. For this to be possible, the website must have a clean and precise layout - making it easier to navigate for all. 

Having transcripts and closed captions for audio and video content is helpful not just for people with disabilities. It is helpful to a wide group of users. In the instance of a slow internet connection - the text will load faster and minimise frustration.  

Audit and improve accessibility with technology 

Making the UX as accessible as possible may seem like a monumental task, but it doesn’t all have to be managed manually. Technology has come a long way in auditing and providing insight on the accessibility of your site. 

Pages can be scanned for errors in seconds and issues can be prioritised for your team. Authoring tools can support content creators to write in an inclusive manner. Reading age can be measured, jargon words identified and suggestions for improvements easily made.

Utilising this tech should be a consideration for any vendor keen to prioritise online inclusion. 

Building brand reputation and customer engagement

Aside from engaging with a wider audience and building an inclusive brand, there are many other ways in which having an accessible website can benefit companies. 

For example, accessibility and SEO are linked very closely. Providing transcripts and closed captions for web content is a requirement for meeting web accessibility standards such as WCAG. As Google and other search engines provide search results based on matching search text with web text, they cannot search through your audio and video content. So, closed captions and transcripts help your SEO because the text enables your website to be discovered by search engines. 

Consumers are also increasingly prioritising spending their money with socially-responsible businesses.  Brands which disregard consumers with accessibility needs will not be attractive to the ethically minded consumer. Consumers will appreciate a brand which makes a demonstrable commitment improving the experience of customers with accessibility needs.

Accessibility measures are not just ‘nice to have’.’ They are essential if we are to strive towards a society that is accepting and accommodating of everyone, regardless of ability, illness, or special educational needs. Your website is now your shop window - you should make sure it’s as inviting and inclusive as possible. 

Accessibility is not only the ‘right’ thing to do in terms of making the lives of people with accessibility needs easier. It is also the ‘right’ thing to do in terms of maximising your businesses’ revenue. If a website is not easy to navigate and understand, dwell time on that website will drop, consumer engagement will decrease, and thus fewer sales will be made.  

As more and more vendors double down on a digital-first approach, people with accessibility needs such as visual impairments have struggled to As more and more vendors double down on a digital-first approach, people with accessibility needs such as visual impairments have struggled to access online services. To keep customers engaged and provide an inclusive approach for those shopping online, businesses need to focus on accessibility.  

Window shopping: drawing people in to your online store

Improving your online store's user experience with accessibility 

In the past year, lockdowns have meant we are spending more time online. This has forced many people to become more tech-savvy, but there are some who have been left out in the cold.

The Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge has flagged an impending review of the education sector, arguing that further reform is necessary to reverse declining academic outcomes and return the nation to the top of the global rankings by 2030.

As someone who has worked in the education sector for over thirty years, I know that there are a lot of factors at play. Here are some of the issues that we will need to address when reviewing our national curriculum.

Both parents and students are expecting more and more feedback from their teachers. However, the problem is that teachers have limited hours in their day to devote to feedback in great detail. Thus, they are increasingly turning to technology to help meet this growing demand.

The ‘red pen’ approach with formative assessment has long taken up too much time, forcing many teachers to depend on summative assessments or pass/fail assessments, even though they may not believe this is the right approach for their students.

Hence, I am finding more teachers are leaning towards technology and tools such as WriQ, which helps cut down on the time spent marking work as well as reducing subjective judgment. These tools can also enable a greater marking consistency in writing across age levels by using rubrics. The automation element of these technological tools helps to generate score writing indicators such as grammar, spelling, vocabulary maturity and punctuation.

Assistive technology is like giving the student the option of a ramp or the stairs to reach a new floor.  Although not every student would require the ramp, it should be available for those who do and accordingly, assistive technology tools should be implemented throughout our curriculums.

Over the past ten years, digital transformation is only growing faster, and the same must be applied to our education sector. Technology should be integrated into all Australian schools. Outside of school, we need to be equipping our students for the realities of the modern working society.

It’s no secret that the pandemic has accelerated the rush to online learning, and thus environment for swift and rapid innovation. Both principals and schools had to quickly test what did and did not work for teachers and students in completely foreign environments. Despite students returning to the classroom this year, we’re witnessing more schools moving towards a permanent hybrid model of teaching that places greater emphasis on technology.

As an educator, I paid little to no attention when I was teaching large mathematical topics. My experience over several years interacting with a variety of grade-level students was that most adopted curriculums would take large topics and would funnel multiple maths learning objectives into large content areas.

However, I recognised that students need to be foundationally sound in their thought process and had to learn to acquire maths language and be good problem solvers. Increasingly, there is a growing body of evidence that teachers are seeking new methods to integrate the periodic assessment approach over a final, finite test into their classrooms.

It is also common for students, and even adults, to openly express a ‘hatred’, or undermine their proficiency in maths. We have a collective and prevalent distaste and indifference towards maths as a subject in this country and that’s a big problem that we need to address.

The reputation for maths and science being a difficult subject has been routinely stigmatised and continues to be perpetuated when younger students hear phrases such as “I am not good at maths” or “I hate maths”, from both their teachers and parents.

Fundamentally, the subject being taught to students is not the problem. Students will not learn before developing a good relationship with their instructor or teacher. Relationships should be the principal focus and the forefront of learning in classrooms.

Originally appearing in Education Today in April 2021, our AsiaPac Education and Technology Lead, Greg O'Connor shares his thoughts on the issues we need to address to future proof education in Australia.

Making a nationally relevant curriculum for 2021 and beyond

Our AsiaPac Education and Technology Lead, Greg O'Connor recently shared his thoughts on the issues we need to address to future proof education in Australia. And as we celebrate 200 years of Catholic Schools in Australia, we need to make sure we're taking the time to look to the future, as well as celebrating the legacy of Catholic Education. Originally appearing in Education Today in April 2021, you can read Greg's thoughts below.

We’ll be taking a whistle stop tour to the virtual shores of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. And we’ll be exploring DE&I Beach with a specific focus on hidden disabilities and neurodiverse talent.

Travel with confidence through DEI with the first of Texthelp’s Guided Tours

We’ll be taking a whistle stop tour to the virtual shores of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.And we’ll be exploring DE&I Beach with a specific focus on hidden disabilities and neurodiverse talent.

Sometimes in life we need to take a step back to recharge, rethink, reassess and all of the above. That’s what holidays are for, right? Well at least, that’s what helps us to hit refresh.

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We’ve taken everything our customers love about Read&Write, and created a brand new version, just for the Workplace.

Read&Write has graduated. Introducing, Read&Write for Work

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We’ve taken everything our customers love about Read&Write and created a brand new version just for the workplace.

Top 4 tips for creating engaging math online using Google tools

Long time friend of Texthelp, Eric Curts takes us through some of his favourite ways to teach math online. Eric shows some great math tools in the webinar he recorded with us and links to lots of helpful online math resources that you can download. But to get some quick tips, check out the pointers below:

As businesses return to a new sense of normal, they need to recognise how they can make life easier for their customers. Discover why accessibility matters.

Speaking plainly: The value of accessibility on your company website

There’s no denying that 2020 was a tough year for businesses. Between keeping customers happy, staff employed and the lights on, it's understandable that areas such as accessibility, user experience (UX), and design haven't been a priority. While the lockdown roadmap is well underway, customers will continue to access information, products and services online more than ever. This is particularly true for the older generation of consumers, who are now more comfortable with browsing and shopping online than ever before. 

Blog

Window shopping: drawing people in to your online store

Making a nationally relevant curriculum for 2021 and beyond

Travel with confidence through DEI with the first of Texthelp’s Guided Tours

Read&Write has graduated. Introducing Read&Write for Work

Top 4 tips for creating engaging math online using Google tools

Speaking plainly: The value of accessibility on your company website

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