• A young female speaker in an elegant black dress stands facing the audience in front of four rows of comfortable, upholstered armchairs. Around a dozen people are seated in the armchairs, they are displayed from behind. In the last row, in the center of the image, a person in a wheelchair is amongst them.
  • A young female speaker in an elegant black dress stands facing the audience in front of four rows of comfortable, upholstered armchairs. Around a dozen people are seated in the armchairs, they are displayed from behind. In the last row, in the center of the image, a person in a wheelchair is amongst them.

Accessible communication – added value and benefits

Accessible communication creates a new understanding for accessibility. Under certain circumstances, anyone can be affected by barriers to communication. The target groups for accessible communication may vary, but accessible products and services offer benefits for everyone. This in turn benefits society as a whole, as is illustrated by the following facts and figures.

Sensory barriers: Some people’s sense of vision, hearing or touch is impaired – either from birth or due to accidents, illness or age.

In Austria, there are approximately 300,000 people with visual impairments (blind or visually impaired), and approximately 460,000 people with hearing impairments (10,000 people in Austria are deaf, and 456,000 are severely hard of hearing).

Cognitive barriers: This barrier means that a text is too complex in terms of language and content.

In Austria, 89,000 people with learning difficulties or dementia are unable to understand texts due to such cognitive barriers.

Motor barriers: Motor barriers: Pages in brochures that are too thin or websites that cannot be used without a mouse prevent users from accessing information.

Around 476,000 people in Austria face such barriers on a regular basis.

Language barriers: It is difficult to truly understand and use a language.

In Austria, 15.1% of the population speak German as a second or foreign language.

Expert knowledge barriers: People experience expert knowledge barriers if they lack technical skill or knowledge. After all, no one can be an expert in everything. That’s why, depending on the context, technical jargon can be difficult for all of us.

In Austria, 20% of all people are considered “weak” readers.

Technical language barriers: Who hasn’t faced officialese, legalese and medicalese peppered with technical terms and sentences that sprawl over an entire page?

Adult readers in Austria have an overall average reading score below the OECD average of 260.

Cultural barriers: There is a reason why we say, “It’s all Greek to me.” when we encounter customs, attitudes and media that we are unfamiliar with because they are customs, attitudes and media from other countries, groups or generations.

Around 2.45 million people with an international background live in Austria, which means that they may potentially be confronted with cultural barriers in their daily lives.

Media barriers: Chinese characters could just as well be drawings. The spoken text in videos cannot be heard due to ambient noise. An app and its functions are new and unfamiliar to users.

The seven most frequently unmet criteria according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for digital texts are related to all aspects of the four core-principles of accessibility: “perceivable”, “operable”, “understandable” and “robust”.

Motivational barriers: Boring texts, unappealing graphics or information that is nearly impossible to find – there are many reasons why an unclear presentation of content may frustrate users.

This happens to all of us.

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