Tips Of The Week: 7 Ways to improve inclusion with digital signage

Here’s how you can improve the accessibility of your content with the digital signage solutions. Improve your business inclusiveness.

Accessibility is essential when it comes to services and retail business. You’ve got to treat all of your customers well and provide them with equal opportunities. To make sure that people with disabilities gain more opportunities to interact with your digital signage solutions, American government introduced the ADA standards. 

They require business owners and retail digital signage solutions providers to look up to specific guidelines while installing the digital signage. Other countries are working out these requirements as well to put this issue on a spotlight and improve the lives of people with impairments. 

We’ve prepared some tips for you that will help you improve your business inclusion with the digital signage solutions for small businesses or retail services of any kind.

1. Use audio to support your visual content

First and foremost, let’s highlight what digital signage solutions are best known for. They allow you to deliver almost any kind of content to your viewers and allow them to interact with this content. 

While you’ve got a chance to deliver pictures, sounds, charts, etc., you’ve got to remember that some people can have a hearing impairment or vision impairment. To give them equal opportunities for interaction with your digital signage solutions, you need to know how to combine your content types smartly. Each of your messages should be easy to read, hear, and review. 

So let’s say you’re delivering great visual content. Even though it’s excellent, you’ve also got to devote some time to duplicate the same message in audio format. So if you’re running advertising or provide services with the means of visual engagement, you should also put the same messages in audio to make this information accessible for everyone.

2. Always supply subtitles for your audio messages

The same goes for your audio and video content. Whenever you prepare a video for your best digital signage solutions, you’ve got to remember that some of your viewers may not have a chance to hear or view this message. 

It’s not that hard to put the subtitles in your video content to improve the inclusion of your audio messages. As an ultimate solution, you could add the sign language interpretation into your video. 

Thanks to digital signage solutions, you can now use one single screen to cover most of your target groups. This will also help you make your content way more accessible for anyone who wants to interact with your brand.

3. Install the screens according to the world standards (ADA)

As we’ve already stated before, the American government highlighted the essential requirements for digital signage accessibility. Even if you’re running your business outside of the US, these should help you get the general rules of thumb for digital signage solutions inclusion.

Three simple guidelines will ease the life of people with disabilities:

• LCD enclosures cannot protrude more than 4 inches from your wall
• The maximum height off the ground should be no more than 48-inches and with a reach of 10 inches
• Install a 15°-20° slope for the wheelchair accessibility
• Screens should be installed no higher than 27-80 inches off of the ground

Following these basic rules to improve the inclusion of your digital signage solutions.

4. Follow the typography and contrast standards

While keeping in mind the previous guidelines, you should also remember that digital signage is a universal tool that can help you reach anyone no matter the disabilities. However, you should also not forget about the typography and contrast standards to keep your content inclusive and understandable. 

To make sure that people can interact with your digital signage solutions, you’ve got to make your text is readable. It’s not about the blindness that can be a problem. People may have a different kind of vision impairments and have issues with some tones or colors. You should make sure that you don’t mix up the background with the text layer too much and make the message more scannable.

This way, you’ll see that your digital signage will become your best tool for improving the inclusion of your services.

5. Wheelchair accessible PoS can ease the shopping process

Now it’s time to take a look at the real use case of the digital signage software solutions for accessibility improvement. 

Let’s say you own a store and want to make sure that everyone has equal abilities to shop without the need for additional help and hassle. Then you can install the PoS terminals on a convenient height to make the check-out process more wheelchair accessible. 

Digital signage booth or a single screen can ease the life of everyone who wants to shop without boundaries. 

6. Gesture recognition for interactive control

The digital signage solutions comparison shows that more and more solutions include modern technologies like AI, AR, gesture recognition sensors, and other latest developments. 

With that in mind, you can see how useful a digital signage screen can be for your clients with disabilities. In case they cannot type in the required information or do not have a chance to interact with your touch screen, they can use their gestures to interact with your DS. 

7. Use QR codes to make the information portable

Even if you comply with all the ADA standards, some of your clients can have problems with the readability because of having trouble with reading from a distance. 

This is very easy to solve with the scannable QR codes. You can add them and make the text information portable. This means that your user will get the text sent to his smartphone, and he or she will be able to review it closer. 

So why digital signage?

We genuinely believe that digital signage solutions can be your best bet in making your client’s experience more accessible. Since DS allows you to experiment with the dynamic content and different types of messages, you’ll be able to improve the inclusion and, therefore, clients interaction with your business.