inclusive and accessible Archives

Being inclusive and accessible are integral to modern society – particularly so in the third sector. Allowing as many people as possible to get involved is great for everyone. This is something that we aspire to at TeamKinetic – we’re constantly striving to be as inclusive and accessible as possible.

Inclusive vs Accessible – What’s the difference?

A variety of people are pictured, promoting an inclusive and accessible environment.

Accessibility focuses on designing a user experience that meets the needs of everyone in your audience. Ensuring something is accessible is likely to be the difference between a user being able to do something or not.

Accessibility involves a wide range of disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities. Everyone deserves the same levels of access and no one should feel excluded.

Inclusivity, on the other hand, involves creating an experience with a wide range and variety of users in mind. This includes thinking about their various abilities, environments, situations, and contexts.

While inclusivity doesn’t address a specific user need, it does ensure that there are a range of tools and features that help all users feel comfortable. Inclusive measures (or lack of), are likely to be the difference between someone wanting to do something or not.

What are TeamKinetic doing?

With regular system updates, we’re continually looking for ways to improve the inclusive and accessible nature of our features. In the past, we have integrated several key accessibility measures into our system.

Now, our system has in-built adaptive technologies to help open the door for everyone to volunteer, from screen-readers to WCAG 2.1 AA standards.

Our inclusive design looks at how we broaden our appeal so all users have an equal opportunity. We have done this via:

Dual language interface for our work in Wales.
Introducing blind recruitment processes.
Add-ons such as Recite-Me provide tools such as multilingual screen reading.
Site size and colour contrast adjust.
Other site translation (integrating Google Translate).

Organisations must adhere to laws surrounding accessible design, you can read more on the UK law here.

How can my organisation be more inclusive and accessible?

Do you face problems with attracting volunteers from diverse backgrounds?
Does the thought of creating a fully inclusive and accessible onboarding process overwhelm you?
Have you experienced barriers to making changes?

If you find that your organisation is struggling with any of the things mentioned above, the Association of Volunteer Managers (AVM) hosted a great session on this.

Event: Making an inclusive and accessible recruitment and onboarding experience

During the event, we heard from Amy McGarvey (Research Manager) from NCVO who shed light on the effect of the pandemic on volunteering. The key findings were:

Volunteer numbers in general decreased from pre-pandemic numbers. It is estimated that there is around 1/5 fewer people volunteering now in comparison to figures from 2019.
The number of volunteers with a disability has decreased.
Digital solutions are seen as a barrier and an enabler. Some felt excluded by the move to digital methods, whereas it may have opened the door for a more inclusive pool of volunteers.

We also learned that organisations have various barriers to inclusion. These are:

Lack of resources, time, and capacity.
Recognising everyone is different and being unaware of how to cater to every individual need.
Volunteers not being honest about extra support they may need.
EDI not being valued as much as it should be and facing resistance from others in the organisation when trying to make changes.

We learned that the volunteer experience can be made more inclusive by seeing volunteer well-being as a the focus. Cost-effective actions that celebrate volunteers and their differences are seen to be effective, e.g. celebrating a variety of cultural events, using diverse imagery in promotional materials, and ensuring all language is inclusive. Overall, making sure volunteers feel supported is a foundational aspect of improving your inclusivity.

Find out more about the event by going to the AVM website.

You can also read our Is Your Pool of Volunteers Diverse and Inclusive? blog. It includes the latest sector stats as well as advice on how you can improve your own diversity and inclusivity.

Interested in volunteer management tools?

Why not take a look at TeamKinetic? You can even start a 30-day free trial with absolutely no payment details required. Just head over to our website.

You can find TeamKinetic on social media and listen to our podcast:

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Have you enjoyed using TeamKinetic? If you could leave us a review on Capterra, we’d really appreciate it! We’ll even send you a little thank you.

Tom Latchford, Chief executive of Raising IT, discusses how Charity donations should be as easy as ordering from Amazon in this interesting article that looks at Gift Aid in the Guardian. We at TeamKinetic like Tom’s take on Amazon’s business model and what we, in the voluntary sector, should be learning from these internet giants.

We want to know what your experiences have been using “the web” as a voluntary organisation. Has your experience been positive? How can we make using the internet less challenging?

TeamKinetic have worked tirelessly on our own internet-based Volunteer Management system. Although we are very proud of our effort, we are also keen to know what people are looking for online.

Please read on and feel free to comment below.

Donating to charity should be as painless as ordering from Amazon

The confusing process of claiming Gift Aid hinders the often spontaneous nature of text donations and online giving

Impulse donations have to be quick. A pound in the bucket is easier than a lengthy chat with a clipboard-wielding rep on the street – and the same principle applies to giving via charities’ digital channels.

This is why the cumbersome and confusing process of claiming Gift Aid hinders the often spontaneous nature of text donations and online giving. Any attempts to simplify the path to donation must be welcomed.

So it’s promising that the Treasury’s new consultation, Gift Aid and Digital Giving, recognises that advancements in technology, which are boosting charity fundraising campaigns, are being maimed by antiquated Gift Aid processes.

But the Treasury must go beyond recognising the problems. They must resolve them. The danger is that this promising but piecemeal paper will distract from what should be the highest priority right now: properly implementing the two biggest changes in Gift Aid – online returns and the small donations scheme.

Bringing Gift Aid online has not been without its complications so far, and the Government could be doing more to assist technology companies helping charities transition to the new system by September.

The small donations scheme is a wonderful idea but, in this case, small has not meant simple. The entry-level guidance for this was 20 pages long in explaining the scheme. The key to success of Gift Aid reform is layman simplicity. The proposals to cut the declaration by half is welcomed, although not radical.

For radical we just need to see how defective our tax incentives are in comparison to the US. To seriously boost the giving economy in the UK, we need to seriously shake things up, and this paper is too bland for that, but it could still save millions by streamlining the system.

Simplifying the process for staff, not just supporters, is the crux of this. I have watched conscientious smaller charities, fearfully checking the eligibility of donors for Gift Aid, spending salaried time on administration around it.

Sensible steps to simplify the user experience for Gift Aid declarations are important. We should focus on the donations funnel and making this as short, simple and smooth as possible. It’s amazing how easy it is to put someone off giving by asking people for too much detail.

We need to aspire to making the donation experience as painless as ordering from Amazon. For one-click payments, storing Gift Aid status against a donor is critical, whereas other suggestions like a central declaration database seem too far-fetched.

Gift Aid is seen as a huge incentive to boost giving, but Raising IT carried out a simple online experiment, where we removed Gift Aid declarations from a donation form, hence simplifying it, and saw an increase in donations. Gift Aid simply cannot continue to be a barrier to online giving.

JustGiving took advantage of the public’s ignorance of Gift Aid, and to many it seemed they could magically make more money from your donation. There is still plenty to be done to educate people about Gift Aid.

The government is essentially offering circa £15m in tax relief through these proposals, so it’s vital that the sector as a whole provides full and frank feedback to the consultation. Without a full and forthright response, it may be another two decades before donations reach the top of its agenda again.

Tom Latchford is chief executive of Raising IT.

You can find TeamKinetic on social media and listen to our podcast:

Twitter Facebook LinkedIn YouTube Instagram Podcast

Have you enjoyed using TeamKinetic? If you could leave us a review on Capterra, we’d really appreciate it! We’ll even send you a little thank you.

Tag: inclusive and accessible

How to develop an inclusive and accessible volunteer experience

Inclusive vs Accessible – What’s the difference?

What are TeamKinetic doing?

How can my organisation be more inclusive and accessible?

Event: Making an inclusive and accessible recruitment and onboarding experience

Interested in volunteer management tools?

Utilising the power of the internet to improve accessibility for volunteers

Donating to charity should be as painless as ordering from Amazon

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