I’ve often advocated for accessibility considerations of support services like for example help desk – as it’s often the first point of contact when things don’t work for us. Even if service or product is decent when it comes to accessibility and support services are not accessible we stumble upon huge barriers when we need support, right.
European Accessibility Act (EAA) states this about support services:
where available, support services (help desks, call centres, technical support, relay services and training services) providing information on the accessibility of the service and its compatibility with assistive technologies, in accessible modes of communication.
EAA, Annex I, accessibility requirements for products and services, Section I, paragraph 3 (opens in new window).
I like to think about it like this – if we offer support in any way (for example offer ticketing system or online documentation, trainings, help desks, call centers and so on) – and we really should – we need to make sure that such services:
- Are accessible themselves (so basically if we use an online system it has to be accessible in itself, if we provide trainings we need to make them accessible as well and so on).
- Need to provide info about accessibility of the product or service – especially important in what parts may still have accessibility issues and how to get pass barriers, then I would also suggest we provide accessibility conformance reports (ACR) based on requirements (I suggest EN 301 549 as the basis for this report – with all relevant points and details like time-plans on when potentially opened issues will be resolved).
- Provide info about compatibility with assistive technologies (which means we need to know what kind of assistive technologies we support in detail).
Let’s dive a bit more into details, shall we?
Support services must be accessible
As mentioned – lot’s of services and products offer also support services to make the support more effective. This can range from a phone line to email support to chat on the page or even a full blown call center or relay service.
If we have such services and we are in the scope of EAA then we need to make sure they are accessible itself. This fact alone actually extends the scope of European Accessibility Act when we think about it. So it’s not just the banks and e-commerce providers. It will also impact support service providers. Which is a great thing as when support services will finally understand this – the positive effects of accessibility will spill over current limitations and such support services will also at least have the potential to be accessible also for organizations that are not in the scope of EAA at the moment.
Support services must provide information on the accessibility of the product or service
I understand this as a minimum requirement. And believe that having accessibility information disclosed publicly will help with sales. If potential client needs to check for accessibility of a product or service and the information about accessibility is publicly available (like for example accessibility statement) it for sure makes it easy for them to decide. If on the other hand such information is only available through some support service, we only added a barrier.
Anyways – when people need to know how accessible is our service or our product we should make that easy accessible and public – to show our dedication and transparency. But nevertheless our support services need to provide that information as well. Which often means that people that work in support services need to be trained in this and ideally also know a thing or two about accessibility in general.
This then helps with our accessibility culture even more.
Support services must provide information about compatibility of products or services with assistive technologies
This is in my opinion quite a requirement. Because if we want to provide this kind of information we need to first map all the assistive technologies and how they need to work with our product or service. I interpret this quite strictly and immediately see for myself quite a large matrix of different assistive technologies and different versions and how are they supported.
Some might say that would be too much and may also thing about a simple list of most common assistive technologies and if they are supported or not.
I can not say what the authorities will actually demand here. But if you want to be safe you would at least need to do a bit better than just list a couple of terms. Especially when it comes to native mobile applications – we have a lot of assistive technologies built into our phones, and they all have different versions of operating systems and different versions of assistive technologies. So it can be quite a task to check all of the variations.
Personally I would choose something between – not too vague and not too detailed and concentrate on most value for end users and my service or product. It will be exciting to see what organizations will do about this and I hope it will not stay too vague. When I do accessibility audits, I always provide the versions and types of assistive technology used, as it is crucial information for what worked when and what didn’t work when. Things change all the time, so versions can help us with pinpointing the situation in time.
Conclusion
I hope I reminded you of all your support services (if you have them already or if you plan to have them). It is crucial that support is accessible, not just the product or service and I like the fact that EAA includes this.
And I am certain that this will positively impact the accessibility of common support system providers – when they will make their support services more accessible because of EAA and same accessible support services will also be accessible for products and services that are far from the original scope of EAA.
