By building accessible web experiences we can ensure our goal of building a great user experience for all our user types. That includes users with disabilities. Disabilities may affect how people see, hear, understand, navigate and process information. The following should provide an impression of relevant aspects to build accessible experiences. It is not meant to reflect a complete list of accessibility requirements. Therefore kindly review our Learning and Resources section. You can also refer to SFSF UX Accessibility Resources.

Accessibility applies to all user types, with or without disabilities. Designing for them involves meeting their expectations while exploring all types interactions and navigations possible across devices.

What is Accessibility

It is the practice of designing or producing something meaningful and usable to as many people as possible. It supports inclusion for people with or without disabilities. Accessibility is usually associated to guidelines and standards like the

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) which help us to make our web experience accessible for everyone.

About the WCAG

There are more than 50 success criteria in the WCAG. They are categorized by Level A, Level AA and Level AAA. We aim to fulfil and be compliant with A and AA.

Accessibility vs Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

According to Dr. Theresa Haskins, the DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) strategy is not enough to support diversity beyond race and gender. needs to be part of the equation! Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion will not help people with disabilities unless Accessibility is also addressed.

Still, a designers concerned with user experiences will keep in mind that more than an accessible product, users want to feel that they feel included. A framework of invisible structures approaching a hierarchy of inclusivity makes a parallel to the Pyramid of Maslow and recall essential human needs:

How much energy we want users to spend trying to be seen, to belong and to prove that they matter while consuming SuccessFactors application? The design and user experience in combination with accessibility requirements will contribute to users feeling to be seen, belong and matter.

Accessibility and User Groups

Hidden Disabilities

Not all disabilities are visible. Hidden disabilities are not apparent and people with such disabilities may look healthy. This affects over . It includes neurological, visual or auditory disabilities. Also those with chronic back pain or fatigue. It is not obvious and these people face some type of challenge.

Chart presenting percentages of world population with disabilities: Physical 1%, Speech 1%, Auditory 5%, Cognitive 16% and Visual 20%. And a banner informing that 60% of disabilities are hidden with a quote: "They Look healthy"

Temporary and Situational Disabilities

While disabilities are expected to improve over time, disability are created by the environment or circumstances that affect people.

Example of disability is when a person may be able to access a website or app with no difficulty when they are in a comfortable environment, but may not be able to access it when they are in a noisy or crowded place. Another example is when a person may be able to access a website or app when they have good internet connection, but may not be able to access it when their connection is slow or unreliable.

A disability can refer to a wide range of physical or mental impairments that limit a person's ability to perform their normal activities for a period of time. Examples of temporary disabilities include broken bones, sprains, strains, concussions, mental health issues, and temporary blindness.

Illustrations to introduce Temporary and Situational Disabilities

TEMPORARY

Something in my body is not working properly, but this is a temporary limitation: broken arm, lost glasses, pupil dilation during eye exams, ear infection, etc.

SITUATIONAL

Limitations associated to an environment or a context. It affects or limits the ability to move, hear, see, understand, concentrate etc. Cold, bright, noisy environment; holding a child while using the phone; travelling and making meetings on the go.

Create Empathy

Discover some people that will present you some interesting aspects about disabilities, needs, expectations. There are you should explore to understand the most common types of disabilities.

These people are presented as a list of selected videos made available for you to explore on FigJam. Their experiences will surprise you.

Use Personas and Accessibility Lenses

You may want to be sure that we considered the needs of types of users while designing. The personas' lenses is a simple way to keep all user types next to your heart during the design process.

Acts and Regulations

There are many Local and International Standards, acts and regulations around the World. SAP Compiled most of them to create the SAP Corporate Accessibility Standards.

SAP uses most of these acts and regulations to define the SAP Corporate Standards which is composed of 6 groups, 31 Standards and over 100 Success Criteria. They are available in the Accessibility SAP Space. These standards are mandatory to all SAP Products and are part of the SAP Quality Report.

Accessibility Maturity Level

Just like in design, the accessibility maturity describes the process of designing and developing a product or service that meets the needs of a customer or user. It involves understanding the customer’s needs to design a product or service that in accessible.

A girl uses her band wrist at Disney to access one of many services available to guests after an overhaul user experience that includes website, booking services, hotels, park activities, and much more. Disney achieved a level 5 Design maturity level called Infused Design as proposed by Jared Spool. We believe that the same maturity level strategy applies to Accessibility.

Jared Spool's maturity level developed for design can be easily adjusted to measuring the maturity of an organization's accessibility process. It is based on the idea that design processes should be evaluated on five levels of maturity:

Jared presents these levels as depicted below.

The Accessibility maturity level is adapted from Jared Spool talk Beyond The UX Tipping Point.

What do Companies that excel on accessibility do to be good at this? What about beyond direct competitors of SF and HR solutions? Like Google IBM, Indeed, MS (best of class and breed). Available articles on the internet suggests that what our competitors are doing about accessibility is mostly after development. Because SuccessFactors is addressing accessibility during the design phase, we are in better position to succeed!

Competitive analysis