Campaign: #PurpleLightUp 2022

12/03/2022

On Purple Light Up Day 2022, we want to show our colors.

What's it all about?

Today, December 3, 2022, is International Day of Persons with Disabilities. To mark this day, the annual global campaign Purple Light Up is taking place, in which all participating individuals, organizations, and companies want to send a visible signal for the economic self-determination of people with disabilities.

The campaign was launched by Purple Space and organized in German-speaking countries by myAbility. It was a no-brainer for us to join this campaign, as we have long been aware that accessible access—including in the digital world—is fundamental to an inclusive, tolerant, and progressive society. Accordingly, this is also deeply rooted in our corporate culture and our services.

Our mission

We always think accessible. Behind this idea is the goal of making the web accessible to EVERYONE. But what exactly does that mean?

First, it is important to understand which groups of people benefit from accessible web applications. These are primarily:

People with visual impairments
People with hearing impairments or deafness
People with motor impairments
People with intellectual disabilities or learning difficulties
Elderly

Our task is to work with our clients to include these target groups in their web offerings and to meet their special needs. Many people are still unaware that there are over 15 million people with disabilities in German-speaking countries alone. From a purely economic perspective, it therefore makes sense to provide these people with barrier-free access to their own content.

And for legal reasons, it will also be essential for most companies in the future to address the accessibility of their digital offerings. Read more about this in our blog post on the Accessibility Enhancement Act.

It is clear that this mission is not an easy one. The challenge is to reconcile the different wishes of clients with accessibility requirements. So...

How do we fulfill our mission?

First, it is important to make it clear to clients what digital accessibility actually means in detail. The 7 pillars of digital accessibility in web design are a useful tool for this.

Our entire team took part in internal accessibility workshops for training purposes. Our goal was to get all employees on board with digital accessibility and create a balanced level of knowledge. Our designers were also provided with target group-specific dos and don'ts, additional checklists, and helpful tools and software.

This enables us to create accessible web applications from the ground up, while also providing comprehensive support for testing existing applications and helping our clients achieve their goal of obtaining certification.

You can find more information on digital accessibility and how we work in the following blog articles:

Our project examples

If you are interested in specific project examples, we have the following references where accessibility was a central component of the client's requirements.

Outlook

We hope this article has helped you understand the importance of digital accessibility and the reasons behind our commitment to it. Our primary mission is to create accessible web applications. However, we also believe it is particularly important to raise awareness of this issue. We want to encourage people to get involved, look out for one another, help each other, and work together to ensure a tolerant and inclusive future.