How Notarize Addresses Digital Accessibility

Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day! At Notarize, digital accessibility is incredibly important to us, as we constantly strive to create a culture that is kind, inclusive and accommodating. We also want this to be reflected within our product, which is why it’s our goal to create an inclusive digital experience that is great for everyone.

What do we mean by accessibility?

When we say digital accessibility, we mean that websites, tools and technologies are designed and developed so that users with disabilities can easily utilize them. When sites and applications are correctly designed and developed, it enables all users to have equal access to information and functionality.

How we’re tackling accessibility

Our UX team is driving forward an internal accessibility program. We created an Accessibility Council, made up of people across all of the functions within Notarize. The Council meets monthly, with the goal of keeping accessibility top of mind by sharing best practices and updates, and building a team of accessibility advocates.

To ensure accessibility is top of mind early in the product development process, we have internal training in place for our product, design, research and development teams. This makes accessibility a focus throughout the product cycle — from preliminary design through development and launch.

Additionally, we’re working with a digital accessibility partner to conduct an audit of our accessibility practice and to ensure that we’re reaching Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA compliance. But we want to go beyond WCAG compliance and create a great user experience for everyone, so we’re kicking off user research by conducting usability testing with folks with disabilities and those using assistive technology.

As part of our goal to launch more accessibility-enhancing features, we have just recently introduced In-Meeting Chat. This brings enhanced accessibility to those who might have hearing and speech impairments or other disabilities and need to communicate in writing in order to be best understood.

Other enhancements we’ve made, with thanks to Notarize Software Engineer, Razelle McCormick, include informative page titles for each screen, the ability to zoom to 200% without losing horizontal real estate, and font contrast features.

Our plan for the future

We will continue focusing on building features within the Notarize platform to improve accessibility for all of our users. Our Accessibility Council, internal training programs and ongoing user research will help inform product decisions to create the best experience for our customers who rely on Notarize for their most important life moments.