Accessibility and inclusivity

Accessibility is the result of inclusive design. Agencies must work to meet the basic level required to provide a better experience for people using your services.

Our users

We need to include and learn from people with different perspectives and abilities. We will then be able to design ways for them to access our services, so no one is excluded.

Factors like age, disability, linguistic diversity and literacy level all impact on whether our customers can access information and use the service.

Our users include:

speakers of other languages, who may be using translation software
users with low literacy levels
users with a disability
users on mobile or tablet devices
users with poor internet connections
users who are unable to access or act on digital information
time-poor users who need an answer to their question.

Who's responsible

Digital inclusion isn't the responsibility of one person. We should think of our users as people of all abilities, while the product is still a concept.

Product and project managers should factor in accessibility and inclusivity in the service design from the start.

Each person on your team needs to understand how they might avoid making something inaccessible. User researchers and usability testers can uncover accessibility problems, so the rest of the team can remove them.

Why you need to do this

The NSW Disability Inclusion Plan aligns with:

National Disability Strategy
our obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, all agencies must provide information and services in a way that is accessible and doesn't discriminate. We need to make it easy for everyone to be able to understand our services and interact with us online. We need to give fast and clear access to all our users at any time, on any device.