Web Accessibility: Why It's Important to Tango Card
At Tango Card, our mission is to make rewards easy to send and awesome to receive—for as many people as possible. Millions of people regularly feel frustrated by a lack of accessibility and the realization that many digital products and websites weren’t made with them in mind. We don’t want our solutions to be another source of frustration. That’s why we prioritize accessibility in our reward experience.
1 in 4 people have disabilities
When we think about accessibility in the physical world, we gauge how accessible the environment is for people with disabilities. We're accustomed to seeing ramps or assistive technology that allows people to approach a crosswalk safely or open a door easily. When we think about web accessibility, we judge how usable websites or digital products are by as many people as possible, regardless of disabilities or impairments.
To make our reward experience accessible, our product team recently launched new web updates to our choice products including Reward Link and Promo Link. With these products, our customers can send their recipients a choice of digital gift cards instantly through email.
There are many different guidelines companies can follow in their web accessibility efforts, depending on where they’re located. In the United States, we have the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and section 508 of The Rehabilitation Act. Here at Tango Card, we leverage the WCAG 2.1 standards.
Within the WCAG there are three levels of conformance: A, AA, AAA. We, along with most digital companies, are focused on AA. We're actively working to meet the requirements of the AA level, but we don’t see these guidelines as a checklist to simply mark off and forget. We focus on the principles of the WCAG and use that as a guide to provide an excellent experience for all.
This is an ongoing effort as we launch new features.
We’ve made updates to color and contrast changes, so users aren’t reliant on color to identify what something is or what action to take. We’ve also incorporated the ability to zoom in up to 300% for anyone who may need large text. Our product design team has also tested and improved the ability to use screen readers, allowing recipients who leverage assistive technology to participate in the reward experience. These screen readers include the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver.
To improve the user experience for people with motor disabilities, we’ve made our digital choice products compatible with alternative input devices. Devices like joysticks, touchscreens, and braille keyboards allow users to navigate a digital product or website without a keyboard or mouse.
Advancing our accessibility efforts is always top of mind. We don’t view the WCAG standards as a checklist, rather we use it as a starting point to exceed set standards to provide the best experience we can for all users. Part of our approach to web accessibility is also testing to see if the improvements we make are effective.
We use third-party apps and extensions to perform automated testing on our platform.
Our team performs manual in-house testing using the same assistive technology some users may leverage.
We’re considering remote testing in the future. This would involve a focus group of people who have disabilities and may use assistive technology testing our digital choice product.
Though our focus has been to make our choice products more accessible, we’ll soon expand our efforts from end to end to ensure all parts of the recipient experience are accessible.
"Based on our research, we’re one of the first companies in our industry to publish a web accessibility report of this kind. We see ourselves as industry leaders in making sure we meet the needs of our customers with disabilities.”
— Reginald Curtis, Sr. Product Designer
Our team, led by our Sr. Product Designer, Reginald Curtis, is committed to reaching the AA standing within the WCAG. Accessibility is something we always strive to improve for our users. Some of us may never experience the frustration of a web experience that doesn't work for us due to a disability. We’re committed to ensuring our small part of the web is accessible for all people.
The transition from architect to product designer may not seem obvious, but that's exactly how Reginald Curtis, our Sr. Product Designer, makes it look. His architectural background and experience designing physical spaces have given him an excellent foundation for a human-centered approach when designing functional, beautiful, and simple interfaces. At Tango Card, Reggie is responsible for creating the user experience of our digital products for all customers and recipients. He also leads our web accessibility efforts. He’s passionate about design, web accessibility, design systems, CSS, and pizza dough. Although only recently part of a team of two, Reggie was kind enough to make time for our content team to interview him for this blog.
Learn more about our accessibility efforts here.
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