1. Finding your way: The accessibility considerations for Digital Signage and Wayfinding
November 2018

2. Today Recent Digital Signage Project
Legal requirements with Digital Signage
Accessing Digital Signage in the physical world
How WCAG 2.0/2.1 can relate to Digital Signage

3. Digital Signage Digital signage has been around for a long time.
It’s been creeping it’s way into many public buildings, such as shopping centres, libraries, Fast food or other complexes.
Interactive Digital Signage and wayfinding has become more common in recent years, but I’m from Perth so we’ve probably had it for the last few decades here in Sydney!
The Centre for Inclusive Design was provided the opportunity to assess the accessibility of an organisations digital signage, and this presentation will share what we learned.

4. The Project Vertical Kiosk Horizontal Kiosk
CFID was contacted by a local government in Victoria to assess the accessibility of their Digital Signage and Wayfinding in one of their main community hub buildings.
Touch-screen kiosks were already put in place, which allows attendees to learn about events and receive navigation on where to find them.
They had two kinds of kiosks.
The Vertical Kiosk was located next to the reception, and was intended to be used while standing. The horizontal kiosk was in a lounge area, and designed to be used while seated. Both Kiosks could perform the same tasks.

5. Initial Questions How do people interact with the kiosks?
Specifications of the Kiosk?
Are there any legal requirements in Australia for accessible interactive digital signage and wayfinding?
How do people interact with the kiosks?
(touch-screen only, buttons/keyboard, do you have to use the kiosk, or can you bring your own device?)
Specifications of the Kiosk?
Hardware specifications, Software Specifications. What is this Kiosk capable of doing?

6. Disability Discrimination Act
Yes. Signage must be accessible.
“Unjustifiable Hardship”
No specific guidance around accessible signage.
Yes. Signage needs to be made as accessible as possible, unless the effort generates “Unjustifiable Hardship” for the organisation.
The DDA does not provide specific guidance around accessible digital signage, unlike the American’s with Disabilities Act.

7. Initial Findings Kiosk Interface is HTML Touch-screen only
No speakers/audio input
Kiosk positioning is static
The Kiosk interface is a HTML website.
The Kiosks were touch-screen only, and could only be used via the Kiosk.
- You couldn’t use your own device, cannot bring your own assistive technology.
- Any assistive technologies had to be built into the Kiosk.
The Kiosks had no speakers for audio output, or microphones for audio input.
The Kiosk positioning was static, but could be moved into a different static position, with effort.

8. 1 2 3 Proposal An on-site physical accessibility review of the Kiosks
WCAG 2.1 Review of the Interface 2
Usability testing 3
The following slides will be the highlights of the on-site assessment and WCAG 2.1 review.

9. Height On-Site Assessment
Due to the tall height of the vertical Kiosk, an Accessibility button had been enabled to which moves the screen down.

10. Glare On-Site Assessment
As the Vertical Kiosk was facing windows, Glare would appear on the screen.
The glare in this case made the home and back buttons very hard to read.

11. Labelling Maps On-Site Assessment
Grey lines were being used to label different parts of the map, which were identified as being hard to follow and read.
This was something that was quick to resolve.

12. Labelling Maps v2 On-Site Assessment
The grey lines were replaced with a legend, meaning people did not have to rely on following lines.

13. Use of Colour On-Site Assessment
The “Room Bookings” text in this example is a link, but it’s hard to see and the link itself is fairly small.
In WCAG, it would be recommended to at least underline your links, but for a touch-screen kiosk the size of navigation options matter as well. It may be tempting to use a normal link when building your kiosk in a HTML website, but ideally big pressable button links should be used instead.

14. Use of Colour WCAG 2.1 Review
An Event Calendar was present in the Kiosk, and they showed days that have past by changing it’s text to a light grey.
Due to this, the days that had passed were difficult to read, and it would be difficult for low vision users to tell the difference between a past date and an upcoming date.
Rather than making the past days harder to see, make the upcoming dates stand out more.

15. Colour Contrast WCAG 2.1 Review
Several colour contrast problems were found.

16. Pointer Gestures WCAG 2.1 Review
The Carousel required path-based movement to change the slides on their carousel. This can be challenging for some people with motor impairments, and so we’ve suggested adding some single-touch previous and next buttons to change the carousel slide.
The carousel also periodically moved by itself, and so we suggested added a pause button to give users the time they need to read the content on each slide, and also so they will not be distracted by the slide movement.

17. Non-Text Contrast Before After WCAG 2.1 Review
WCAG 2.1’s colour contrast requirements played a part for icons.

18. Resize Text WCAG 2.1 Review
Much of the text did appear quite small in the website, and while the website was built in HTML, there was no way to access the browser magnification. We recommended that they add their own text resize buttons.

19. This WCAG audit and on-site assessment is all well and good.
Ultimately, we did improve the accessibility of the Kiosks.

20. But don’t you think we could have done so much more?
Going into this project, a lot of decisions had already been made which limited the potential of the project.
At the end of the day:
The kiosks are not accessible for the blind person who needs to use a screen reader.
The kiosks are not going to be used by shy/private people who don’t want people looking over their shoulder while they use the kiosk.
The kiosks are not going to be useful for people who aren’t great at orienting themselves from just looking at a map.
Taking a step back and thinking about those edge cases are important, as it can change the direction of your project and lead to a more inclusive and accessible result.

21. How about a solution where:
Kiosk information could be accessed from any device.
Navigation beyond just the Kiosk, waypoint beacons.
A customizable interface, updates to the users needs.
These are just some ideas that can be revealed by approaching a project with inclusive design thinking and methodology from the start.
By focusing on a user-centered design, your project will be more accessible to everyone.

22. Thank You! Matthew Putland Senior Analyst, Digital Accessibility
@Mattcessability
Sebastian Amado
UX Design Lead
@Seb_Amado