Digital accessibility

Digital accessibility means designing digital services and content usable by everyone, whatever their abilities or their situation. It primarily targets people with disabilities (visual, auditory, motor, cognitive) but benefits everyone: an accessible interface is generally clearer, more efficient and more robust. In France, it is governed by law for public services and large companies.

People who are blind or visually impaired (who use screen readers or braille displays), people who are deaf or hard of hearing (who need subtitles and text alternatives to audio content), people with motor limitations (who navigate solely with the keyboard or with alternative devices), and people with cognitive disabilities (who benefit from clear content and consistent structures). But also temporarily limited users: someone with a broken arm, in a noisy environment, or with a slow connection.

Usability aims to make an interface easy to use for the target users. Accessibility aims to make that interface usable by people who have specific limitations. The two are complementary: an unusable interface is not accessible, but an interface that complies with accessibility standards can remain difficult to use. In practice, improving accessibility often improves usability for everyone.

You combine automated tests (tools such as axe, WAVE, Lighthouse) that detect around 30 to 40% of problems, manual tests (keyboard navigation, contrast checking, testing with a screen reader such as NVDA or VoiceOver), and ideally tests with real users with disabilities. In France, the RGAA provides a structured audit methodology and an official criteria grid.

You start with a quick audit using an automated tool to identify the most obvious problems, then you prioritise the fixes by user impact and frequency of occurrence. The level A WCAG criteria are the most critical: without them, some users cannot access the content at all. The most common quick wins are: improving colour contrasts, adding text alternatives to images, and making all forms navigable by keyboard.