Background to digital communications

• Digital formats
• Inclusive websites
• Mobile phone

The advantages of digital formats

Digital formats have revolutionised how some disabled people interact with each other, the wider community and organisations that affect their lives. Technology can remove barriers and create a level playing field of opportunity for people with a variety of impairments.

For example, video calls using online telephony services mean people who use sign language can communicate with each other in their native language.

Technology can also enable organisations to communicate with people in the way they are most comfortable with. For example, text messaging is a quick and efficient method of reaching out to many people in the deaf community, some people with neurological or mental health conditions, as well as other groups with communication impairments.

Financial incentives for inclusive design include:

• Accessible web pages tend to be lighter (physically smaller), which reduces bandwidth costs and improves page response times - leading to an improved customer experience.
• Increasingly, people will be able to access services and information online, representing a reduction in costs needed for ancillary resources such as call centres.
• Ongoing maintenance and hosting costs can be significantly reduced.
• Providing one website that supports multiple audiences is more efficient than running multiple websites for multiple audiences.

The disadvantages of digital formats

The major disadvantage of digital formats is that they are not universally available to the whole of society. Not everyone has access to the internet, let alone the technical ability or resources to download and use the applications available on it.

Use of technology often follows socio-economic trends. Poorer people tend to have less access to technology. When they do have access, it tends to be outside the home. This means that they have less opportunity to change or tailor the way they receive digital formats to their own needs.

In addition, many digital formats contain significant in-built access barriers. Some are obvious: interactive voice response (IVR) telephony does not lend itself to use by people with hearing impairments.

Although this is also true for many hard formats the access barriers inherent in the design of technologies are often more pernicious - because they are difficult to identify by the end-user. For example an interactive voice response (IVR) telephone information service might appear to a person with a learning disability as a way of getting support. This will be undermined if the person with a learning disability is unable to access the information because of the complexity of the system.

For practical tips, visit the top tips section of this guidance.

For other information resources, go to the resources section of this guidance.

Page last reviewed: 11 August 2008