Is your practice accessible for all?

Professional services firms are increasingly required to think about accessibility from an external perspective as well. In Ireland’s Census 2022, more than 1.1 million people – 22% of the population – reported a long-lasting condition or disability. This means that practices need to look at how they engage with clients, service providers, peers, potential new recruits and the public at large.

Digital barriers

While the pandemic years transformed how we communicate online they appear to have had little impact on the challenge of digital accessibility. US-based WebAIM monitors key issues around website accessibility and its most recent report (see box) found only marginal improvements across the past five years.

In Ireland, public sector bodies are legally obliged to ensure their websites are accessible to those with disabilities, but there is no such requirement for the private sector. This is set to change next year, with the implementation of the European Accessibility Act requiring e-commerce, telecoms, banking and transport companies to meet specific digital accessibility requirements.

A 2023 study by IA Labs found just 27% of The Irish Times top 100 companies to be currently taking steps around digital accessibility. ‘If we don’t make a focused effort to improve digital accessibility, we risk excluding one million people from engaging in everyday activities,’ Chris White, group CEO at the National Council for the Blind of Ireland, noted in the study. ‘Ensuring your website is accessible would make an incredible difference to their lives.’

Companies such as ilikecake provide audits for Irish businesses looking to meeting the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative’s current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0). The company points out that the ‘additional mark up and content used to make a site more accessible also has knock-on SEO [search engine optimisation] benefits’.

A Spanish high court decision earlier this year points to potential reputational damage for businesses keeping their heads in the sand. It fined Vueling Airlines €90,000 for having a website that didn’t comply with the country’s accessibility requirements.

Event management

In the realm of in-person events, progress also seems surprisingly slow. Oddmund Braaten, CEO of event tech company Interprefy, says concerted action is long overdue at an international level, ‘especially when technologies such as closed captions and audio guides can easily help those who would previously have found events hard to access’.

Accessible All Areas is a recently launched UK initiative designed to upskill event organisers on disability inclusion. Co-founder Orla Pearson says that while it’s important to budget for accessibility, ‘there’s a myth that accessibility is expensive; it’s not’. She also points to the value of viewing questions of access from the perspective of those who need support, rather than those who provide it.

‘The question I see on registration sites is: Do you have any access requirements? Instead, we should ask: Is there anything we can provide to help you engage in this event?’ she says.

As professional services firms becomes more diverse, event inclusivity is an increasingly urgent topic. In September last year, the disAbility Legal Network launched a guide to planning and hosting more inclusive sectoral events. Caoimhe Grogan, the network’s vice chairperson, made clear the challenges from her own experience. ‘At every single event I attend, there is without fail a visual aspect to the presentation which is not explained for my benefit or others who may have a visual impairment,’ she says. ‘If I am lucky, a colleague will quietly provide a visual description of what is happening. However, I am often left feeling a bit excluded.’

Boda agrees that it is time for progress and points to ‘many easy, practical steps you can take to ensure your event is as inclusive as possible’ (see box).

The same thoughtfulness could also make all the difference in improving general accessibility, Boda adds. She recommends steps such as using your email signature to highlight the fact you are happy to accommodate client requests around meetings, as well as offering consultations in diverse formats, and creating sensory-friendly environments. ‘Something as simple as dimming the lights can make a big difference,’ she says.

Beyond box ticking

Disability inclusion has, of course, broader political and social dimensions, and the country has some distance to travel, even by the government’s own metrics. Ireland ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2018 but the policies and strategies needed to ensure its full implementation are not yet in place.

As recently as April this year, the DPO Network commented that ‘too often there has only been lip service paid to participation. Often this amounts to little more than tokenism and a box-ticking exercise’.

Reflective of that frustration, the country’s new national disability strategy, currently under development, is ‘expected to be more explicitly focused on outcomes’, according to Roderic O’Gorman, Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. ‘It will also necessarily concentrate on a tighter and more targeted number of ambitious actions that will deliver the most significant change and progress.’

Accountancy firms may not yet be under the spotlight in terms of new legislative demands, but many recognise that it is time to create more accessible and inclusive environments for the benefit of everyone.