Captions were made for deaf viewers. Yet most people watching your video with the sound off are not deaf. They are on the MRT, in a meeting, or lying in bed at midnight.
That is the pattern, and it holds almost everywhere. Good contrast helps people with low vision, and it helps everyone reading a phone in the sun. Bigger buttons help people with tremors, and they help anyone tapping one-handed while carrying groceries. Plain language helps people with cognitive disabilities, and it helps every customer who is tired or in a hurry.
Design for someone with a disability and you nearly always make things better for everyone else. This is not a trade-off between doing good and doing well. It is the same work, and it shows up in the numbers you already report on. Every barrier you remove is someone who finishes the checkout instead of abandoning the shopping cart, watches the whole video instead of scrolling past, or fills in the form instead of giving up on it.
Most of us agree with this. Fewer of us have checked our own websites.
Digital for All built a self-audit framework to close that gap. It runs to 40 items, takes half an hour, and you can work through it without a specialist.
Four Things to Look At
The audit asks about your website, your social posts, your campaigns, and how you talk about people in your work. The questions are plain ones. Can a screen reader get through your site? Are your videos captioned? Does accessibility come up in the brief, or only at the end.
Name Your Stage
You then place your team on a four-stage scale, from Awareness to Leading.
Most companies will be at Awareness. That is a fine place to start. Name your stage, then pick one thing to fix.
Use what you already have
Word and PowerPoint have accessibility checkers built in. Canva and Figma handle alt text and contrast. Chrome can audit a page in about a minute. Most social platforms will caption a video for you, though the captions need checking before you post.
The Size of It
Cynthia Dayco, who chairs Digital for All, puts it this way: “Digital accessibility is not corporate social responsibility. Hindi siya CSR. Hindi siya charity. It’s an area for growth. You always look for the underserved customer segments, and when you consider that 16 percent, that’s a huge segment.
The World Health Organization estimates that about one in six people worldwide has a disability. In the Philippines, the Philippine Statistics Authority found severe disability among 12 percent of Filipinos aged 15 and older. That share rises with age, so it grows as your audience does.
Workshops
Digital for All also runs disability sensitization workshops for members. After all, the audit questions are easier to answer once you have heard from people who use inaccessible sites every day.
Accessibility is not about perfection. It is about the first step.
Ready to see how accessible your marketing is?
Scan the QR code below or visit runitbydia.com to take the 30-minute Digital Accessibility Self-Audit.
