Staff Accessibility Training: Customer Service by Phone

Customer service communication often comes in three forms: phone, email, and chat. Your customers with disabilities will likely encounter your service through all these channels, so it’s critical that your team is prepared to meet their needs. Here are some expert tips that can help elevate your customer service accessibility to the next level and improve compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Customer service by phone

The U.S. Department of Justice noted that:

People who have vision, hearing, or speech disabilities (“communication disabilities”) use different ways to communicate. For example, people who are blind may give and receive information audibly rather than in writing and people who are deaf may give and receive information through writing or sign language rather than through speech.

The ADA requires that title II entities (State and local governments) and title III entities (businesses and nonprofit organizations that serve the public) communicate effectively with people who have communication disabilities.

Covered entities must provide aids and services when needed to communicate effectively with people who have communication disabilities.

The Department noted that the aids and services needed may look different for people with various disabilities, as detailed below.

Aids and services for callers who are deaf, deafblind, or hard of hearing may include:

• A qualified note taker.
• A qualified sign language interpreter.
• Oral interpreter.
• Cued-speech interpreter.
• Real-time captioning.
• Assistive listening systems and devices.
• Real-time captioning and closed caption decoders and devices.
• Telephone handset amplifiers, hearing-aid compatible telephones, text telephones (TTYs), videophones, captioned telephones, video relay services, video remote interpreting, telecommunication relay services, and other voice, text, and video-based telecommunications products.

Qualified interpreter means someone who is able to interpret effectively, accurately, and impartially.

Aids and services for people with speech disabilities may include:

• A “qualified speech-to-speech transliterator (a person trained to recognize unclear speech and repeat it clearly).”
• Extra “time to communicate with someone who uses a communication board or device may provide effective communication. Staff should always listen attentively and not be afraid or embarrassed to ask the person to repeat a word or phrase they do not understand.”

Aids and services for customers who are blind or low vision may include:

• Videotext displays.
• "Video descriptions and secondary auditory programming (SAP) devices that pick up video-described audio feeds.”
• "Accessibility features in electronic documents and other electronic and information technology that is accessible (either independently or through assistive technology such as screen readers).”

Overall, the Department encourages customer service people to ask the person with a disability which aid or service they prefer if at all possible. Your team must also decide which aids or services to use based on “the nature, length, complexity, and context of the communication as well as the person’s normal method(s) of communication.” Furthermore, a customer service team should consider the way in which their customer communicates.

Customer service by email

Email marketer Litmus offered many suggestions for making your email-based customer service more accessible for blind or low-vision users.

They suggested that customer service people:

• “Tailor the written content in your email to deliver the main message. Also, consider how compatible your design is with popular screen readers such as JAWS or Window-Eyes.” This is because “while sighted users can visually scan or skip over non-relevant content, blind users must listen to the entire content of the email, one email at a time.”
• Use email text that is size 14” or larger.
• “Set an appropriate line-height on text to make it easier to read for all. We recommend choosing a line-height that’s 4 pixels more than your font size.” This is because “For some, it can be hard to read paragraphs and blocks of text where the lines of copy are spaced close together.”

Iterable writer Jessica Bolton recommends that customer service people:

• Avoid abbreviations or jargon, because a screen reader may be unable to process these phrases.
• Do not rely on colors to display information, because those who are color blind may not be able to see some colors.
• Refrain from showing GIFs that are too fast, dizziness-inducing, or heavy on blinking or flashing. This protects people from experiencing seizures, headaches, or other medical challenges.
• Have alt-text, text which describes images for blind people who use screen readers.

Meanwhile, Sellbrite told readers to provide:

• White space, because “without ample whitespace, a person with dyslexia will have a hard time focusing on your email copy.”
• “Hyperlink on the relevant text instead of a generic text such as ‘Click here’. This way when someone reads the email using a screen reader, the subscriber will understand what they stand to earn when they click the hyperlink.”
• Legible fonts.

Customer service by chat

Maxability remarked that:

• “All the user interface elements must be keyboard accessible. Users who depend only on a keyboard must be able to move between all actionable elements. These include the UI elements on the widget as well as the buttons or links that are part of the conversation.”
• “Users with assistive technologies such as screen readers need proper labels for all user-interface elements. If the platform does not provide accessible labels or labels themselves, content authors should provide them. The labels for the buttons convey the action associated with them.”
• “Add captions to the documents, images or videos uploaded by the user.”
• “Majorly the user interacts in the chat history pane and the message text box. A screen reader user should be given an opportunity to switch between these two panes easily and quickly. It can be a simple tab and shift+ tab or by using access keys.”
• “Provide access keys to read recent messages for a screen reader user.”
• “Screen reader users must be able to navigate as they need in the history panel. The text navigation commands such as left arrow, right arrow, control left arrow, control right arrow, up arrow, down arrow etc should work as usual in the history panel.”
• “Many dynamic changes happen from the time the user initiates the live chat until the conversation is ending. No matter where the screen reader user's current focus is, these dynamic changes and updates need to be informed to the user. Some of these changes may also be only visual changes but convey important information to the user.”

Conclusion

If your staff implements the above simple fixes, you can be pioneers of inclusivity. You can be a leader in accessibility who your customers truly trust. When your customers trust you, it will positively impact your bottom line.