When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, many disabled people in India were unable to access crucial government updates. They faced similar challenges when the government demonetised 500 and 1000 rupee notes back in 2016, which forced hundreds of millions of people to exchange old notes for new ones.
“During those times, all governmental announcements were so important," digital accessibility specialist, Prashant Rajan Verma shared during Media Rumble, a journalism conference by Newslaundry and Teamwork Art. "What to do, what not to do, what are the restrictions… So all those used to come through the digital means. And many of our friends and colleagues were not able to get that information. They were having to depend on others.”
The media wasn't much more helpful, Prashant and other panellists shared. Indian news portals were filled with pop-up ads and many other features that made it hard for people who use screen readers and other assistive technologies.
“I don’t think media ever considered people with disabilities as their consumers," Shakul Sonker, founder of digital accessibility organisation I-Stem, said. "This is the biggest problem because they don’t see them around. The way the media portrays people with disabilities is completely different.”
Watch the 'How to Make News Accessible' panel from Media Rumble 2023
While many countries have laws that require websites to be accessible, these laws are not always enforced. Some countries, like India, don't even define what "accessible content" is, according to the Bureau of Internet Accessibility.
Still, newsrooms don't need laws to be in place in order to make news available. There are many things newsrooms can do to build accessibility into their websites. That's what Newslaundry, one of the organisers of Media Rumble, did. Their website and app is accessible via screen readers, users have the ability to change the colour, contrast and font size based on their needs, and they can access transcripts and subtitles for videos and podcasts. To learn more about how they built their accessible site, we sent Chitranshu Tewari, director of product and revenue at Newslaundry some questions.
Here is the interview, edited for clarity and brevity:
InOldNews: You did a panel on ‘Why newsrooms should view accessibility as a default setting, not an add-on’ last year. Do you plan on doing more outreach like this? And if so, how?
Chitranshu: Yes, we are also developing a podcast series about accessibility that will feature accessibility experts, journalists, legal scholars, and product leaders. We are also exploring an event and a research report on accessibility.
One of the biggest reasons products are not accessible in India is the lack of awareness around the subject and the absence of people with disabilities and their issues in the media [organisations]. Through our work, we want to push the conversation around accessibility to mainstream media. The more readers and users know about it, the better we will demand from our products, including news websites and apps.
One of Newslaundry's strengths has been reporting and commenting on the media. News professionals are one of our key audiences. We hope that through our work and engagements, we can encourage more publishers to consider accessibility.
InOldNews: What are some things that newsrooms can quickly do to check if their websites are accessible?
Chitranshu: If you have to check whether your website is accessible, or if you’re not sure, chances are that it’s not. Accessibility has to be baked into design and product development; it’s not something that happens by accident.
However, there are a lot of resources one can use to test/check for accessibility. The most comprehensive one being Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). If you’re a new publisher, you can always compare and refer to the accessibility guidelines of the likes of BBC and the Washington Post. There are a bunch of plugins and websites, too that score your website on accessibility, but most of them are not reliable and not accurate.
InOldNews: What accessibility features were a priority for you and why?
Chitranshu: Accessibility is not a feature per se. It’s a process and product in itself. A good product is, by default, accessible and usable to not just a select group of users but everyone. That’s what accessibility is all about.
We made several structural changes to accessibility. First, we looked at screen reader compatibility and keyboard navigation. Both help users with visual disabilities and require front-end code refactoring to ensure compatibility with screen readers across phone and laptop operating systems.
InOldNews: How did you make sure your accessible features were actually working?
Chitranshu: Testing and iterating based on feedback are central to any product development process. Organisations usually have dedicated Quality Assurance teams that test and work with engineers to ensure proper user testing before a product rollout.
At Newslaundry, we are a small team and don’t have a dedicated QA team—all my colleagues double up as testers, and we test it comprehensively among ourselves. But accessibility is different. Because we didn’t have any disabled person on the team, we couldn’t simply replicate their experience or test it on their behalf.
Throughout the development and even while drawing out the scope, we reached out to people from the disabled community and a bunch of disabled Newslaundry readers who had written to us in the past. We have a group of 50+ users and accessibility who not only helped us with understanding accessibility but also took the time to test out the app and website, and give us valuable feedback.
We released a beta version for all of them and spent close to two months iterating and working on their feedback. So many of them took their precious time to sit with us or sent us detailed WhatsApp notes about their experience, feedback, and suggestions.
We are indebted to them. They pointed out nuances and details we would have needed help figuring out independently. Big companies do this by hiring companies to do accessibility audits and testing. We could never afford them, but we could do it because we had a community of readers and users who stepped up.
InOldNews: Were there any mistakes or challenges you faced that others can learn from?
Chitranshu: So many. Accessibility is not rocket science. If you are setting up a new website or app, it’s actually quite simple to implement. What you need is the intent more than anything. But if you are dealing with a 12-year-old tech stack with a mix of SAAS products and third-party services, it can be a nightmare.
A lot of work for accessible design is foundational. Things like how you write the code, what kind of design choices you make, and how you structure content, for example, are crucial. If you have not done that, it’s like going back and trying to replace a pillar of an existing bridge.
This was the case with us. Our tech stack is over 12 years old and is a mix of in-house custom solutions and third-party services. One of the biggest challenges was refactoring the entire front-end code for accessible design.
Secondly, because we rely on many third-party products (like CMS and subscription management systems), while accessibility may be a priority for us, it’s not for these companies. So, for many things, we had to go around and make our fixes to circumvent these third-party products.
InOldNews: Based on your experience, why do you think many newsrooms haven’t made this a priority?
Chitranshu: It’s a mix of multiple reasons. One of them is that most newsrooms, especially large news organisations, prioritise all their engineering and tech talent for things like SEO and speed and care less about users. Ads are how you make money. It also doesn’t help that most newsrooms have websites that have been around for decades – often running on outdated systems and platforms. Making those systems accessible requires a lot of hard work and foundational work – something that won’t happen unless those responsible for running the product see the need or the business case for accessibility.
Another big reason is the absence of people with disabilities across organisations. Our newsrooms hardly have people with PwDs, and our stories hardly cover them. If they do, it’s mostly those feel-positive stories about how a PwD succeeded despite all odds.
This ensures that newsrooms lack any experience or knowledge of how people with disability access the internet. I am sure if we survey newsroom professionals, most of them will be so out of touch with reality that they would think people with disabilities can’t access internet anyway.
Learn more about their journey to product accessibility by clicking here.