At INTIX 2025, Caspian Turner, Director of Accessible by Design, delivered a dynamic session packed with real-time demos and actionable insights. In “Making Digital Accessibility Business As Usual,” he moved beyond theory to show how accessibility, or the lack thereof, directly impacts user experience. Attendees saw firsthand how websites function for people using tools like speech-to-text and screen readers, gaining a deeper understanding of the barriers some users face and how to begin removing them.
The session opened with a discussion on accessibility in the news, why it is good for business and the importance of having inclusivity embedded in your organization's mission, vision and values. “These are all statements of intent, commitments to everyone in these communities that these organizations serve,” he said. "We are going to move on and talk a little bit about digital accessibility because while all of these organizations are making a commitment to inclusion and accessibility, currently around 98% of web pages are inaccessible to some audiences.”
Considering that one in four Americans, Brits and Canadians have a permanent disability, it makes strong business sense to ensure people with disabilities can access your websites. Many others will experience temporary medical issues during their lifetime, which may impact their senses or mobility. Beyond the collective buying power of this group, making all audience members feel welcome from their first interaction with your organization is simply the right thing to do.
“When we talk about digital accessibility, we are ensuring that people with disabilities can use the internet independently. We're making sure that no one is excluded, and making sure that people can find information or complete a task independently in a similar amount of time, regardless of the technology being used to access a website,” Turner explained. “Digital accessibility is encompassing auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical and speech and visual impairments. It is about providing content in a way that meets the needs of users rather than expecting everything to work exactly the same for everyone. We should be considering digital accessibility as part of the design, the code, the website structure and the content of a website, digital platform or email marketing. It is an ongoing consideration, not a checkbox task.”
He continued, “Every time we are putting a new event live, sending out a new e-flyer, or sending a pre- or post-performance email, we should be considering the text that we are publishing, the images that we're publishing and whether or not there is alternative text, and whether or not video or audio files have alternative formats like transcripts or captions or audio description. Accessibility is best achieved through being considered a part of business as usual, a part of organizational culture and a part of everyday life.”
Using VoiceOver, the screen reader built into Apple devices, Turner demonstrated how someone who is blind or has low vision might navigate his local cinema’s website. Many buttons lacked labels, making it difficult to interact with the website. An edited video of the session is available for those who want to hear the experience live.
“Because of the lack of labels, it means people using a screen reader … are unable to know what those buttons control. So, you can't, with confidence, make a decision on what to do next. Additionally, if you are a speech-to-text user — and you might be a speech-to-text user for a few different reasons, [such as] if you have a neurodivergent access requirement or if you have limited mobility — you may use software that also relies on buttons having accessible names in the programming. The labels need to match up what is displayed visually to what's in the code in the background. That's not happening right now.”
This is a barrier that can prevent a consumer with access requirements from booking their own tickets to this particular cinema.
“Barriers create a sense of othering, and when faced with barriers, it is giving people a message that they are different or not part of the same group or not welcome,” explained Turner. “Barriers are unfortunately created by the design decisions we make. While it is very unlikely that people are consciously or intentionally deciding to include content that would present barriers, it is important for us to make a shift to be intentionally and consciously inclusive rather than unintentionally or unconsciously exclusive.”
With this in mind, understanding and applying accessibility standards is a foundational step in creating inclusive digital experiences, and much of this work is guided by globally recognized frameworks.
“Around the world, most legislation references the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, sometimes referred to as WCAG, and as of October 2023, the recommended standard is version 2.2. There are three levels, level A, AA and AAA, and 86 success criteria make up those three levels. Most organizations and most legislation suggest that people should meet level AA at a minimum,” Turner explained.
He said, “Just because your website does meet those guidelines doesn't mean that it's necessarily usable for everyone, but they are a good starting point to making your website more accessible. There is legislation in the EU, the EN 301 549. There are international standards for audiences in or serving European markets. There's the Equality Act in the UK of 2010, which has protected characteristics. There is an ongoing duty to make anticipatory reasonable adjustments. So, we should not wait for people to come to tell us that our website does not work for them. Because about 25% of our audience probably have some form of disability, we should make sure that our website meets those audiences’ needs.”
Turner covered accessibility in employment and recruitment as a crucial but often overlooked area of inclusion. In both the UK and the U.S., people with disabilities face significantly higher unemployment rates than their non-disabled peers. According to Turner, this disparity is largely due to barriers in the recruitment process itself. So, inaccessible websites do not just impact consumers seeking to purchase tickets. They can also prevent organizations from reaching a wide pool of qualified candidates. “If I can't access a job ad to be able to apply for a job, then I can't get to the next stage of being interviewed,” he said. “If there are … barriers, it means that we are stopping people from being able to apply for jobs in the first place.”
He said, “Are you sharing your interview questions in advance? For many neurodivergent applicants, that can be very helpful to be able to perform well in an interview. Having the pressure of having to respond to every question doesn't necessarily tell you whether an applicant will perform the duties of the role very well because unless the job is saying perform well under pressure right now, it might not be the best test.”
Creating an inclusive workplace starts with proactive accessibility, not reactive accommodations. Organizations should strive to make access features — like accessible documents, inclusive language, and disability awareness training — standard rather than exceptions. For example, does your team know that PDFs are “notoriously inaccessible” and that alternative documents like Word are infinitely more so? Asking employees to continually request accommodations can create a sense of exclusion, shared Turner. Instead, embedding accessibility into everyday practices, such as sharing information in accessible formats and involving staff with disabilities in decision-making, fosters a more inclusive culture. As the saying goes, “Nothing about us without us.” The most effective way to meet access needs is to ask, listen and act.
Building a foundation of inclusion internally paves the way for more accessible digital experiences externally.
An accessibility scanning tool can reveal an overwhelming number of website issues, sometimes in the tens of thousands, but many can be resolved with a few key fixes. Creating a prioritized roadmap helps teams focus on what matters most, whether that is design, third-party tools or in-house content updates. It is also worth auditing whether outdated or time-sensitive content still needs to be live, as removing unnecessary pages can instantly reduce barriers and lighten the workload.
Once your prioritized roadmap is in place, the next critical step is implementation. Progress can stall without clear ownership, so assigning responsibilities across teams based on their roles and systems access is essential. From there, accessibility should be an ongoing process: repeat, adapt and iterate.
“Sometimes perfect is the enemy of good, and it is often also the case that we shouldn't necessarily think, okay, we will fix all of the accessibility issues all in one go, because if you were to resolve one issue today, that could be removing a barrier for one of your fans and audience members,” said Turner. “Progress is better than perfection. Fixing things a little bit at the time can make everything just that little bit more accessible as you go.”
So, what can ticketing professionals do right away? Turner recommends forming a cross-organization access working group if you don’t already have one, planning and putting together your roadmap, using tools to run tests on your website and recruitment web pages and working with a third-party specialist if you need help.
To support ongoing improvements, Turner recommended pairing manual reviews with these helpful tools:
He added, “One of the most impactful things you can do is fixing the content authoring workflow. If you're introducing new issues on [your website on] a daily basis because your style guide doesn't address some accessibility barriers, that is one of the key things that you can fix straight away and have a huge impact.” This may include how to manage alternative text, the approach to link text, not using phrases like “click here” or “read more” because they don’t provide much specificity, visual identity such as color palettes and more.
“Something else you could do would be to book training,” said Turner. “If you don't already have training programs in place, book disability awareness training or accessible content creation training [and make] sure that your internal documentation is up to date. [That way] … when you're onboarding new team members, this is all passed on and isn't something which only stays in the brains of the people who are at the organization at the time it takes place.”
Turner also showed live examples of trying to book a ticket and viewed websites suggested by workshop attendees using a screen reader and speech-to-text. You can hear these demos in our conference session video.
“Accessibility is everyone's responsibility … If you are a marketing professional, a ticketing professional, or a content specialist, you are responsible for accessibility. If you are a budget holder, you should be budgeting for accessibility. And if you are a social media user, you are responsible for accessibility.”
- Caspian Turner, Director of Accessible by Design
Turner’s final message rang loud and clear. He said, “ Accessibility is everyone's responsibility … If you are a marketing professional, a ticketing professional, or a content specialist, you are responsible for accessibility. If you are a budget holder, you should be budgeting for accessibility. And if you are a social media user, you are responsible for accessibility.”
“Accessibility is essential for some, but beneficial for everyone.”
- Caspian Turner, Director of Accessible by Design
He concluded, “Accessibility is essential for some, but beneficial for everyone. Around 70% of disabled users click away from an inaccessible website each year. In the UK, that's displacing £17 billion of revenue. People take their spending money and spend it with more accessible organizations, so accessibility is good for business. If your website is more accessible, it is also inherently more usable and performs better, and with better structure and content, your website will be better indexed by Google. So, it's likely there will be fewer page loads needed because your search engine optimization is up to scratch, which then means you are reducing the environmental impact of your website, because less data transfer is required to get to the content … But most importantly, an accessible website prevents further exclusion and welcomes everyone.”
Editor’s Note: An edited video of the session is available for those who wish to explore the topic in greater depth and experience the live demonstrations firsthand. We highly recommend giving it a watch.
You May Also Like
Want news like this delivered to your inbox weekly? Subscribe to the Access Weekly newsletter, your ticket to industry excellence.