Why it’s time to design for accessibility — and not “the average user”.
When people click on a website, it takes them approximately 17 to 50 milliseconds to come to a conclusion on whether the visual appeal, or overall aesthetic, of the site is to their liking. To put that time frame into perspective: it takes the human eye about 200 to 400 milliseconds to blink.
This means that someone is judging your platform in less than a blink of an eye.
See, the brain is predisposed to work with 2 different systems: the reactive (fast and intuitive) & the analytical (focused and deliberate). Naturally, the brain doesn’t want to make deliberate, slow decisions all the time, so sometimes it defaults itself into making those fast ones that happen at first glance.
Hm…Okay, but, what even is accessibility?
Accessibility is the level to which a service, tool, or technological product is made user friendly to the greatest number of demographics possible. The overarching goal is for an individual to have a sense of comfortability, ease, and governance over their overall experience.
Accessible design is a process where people with disabilities (impaired vision, hard of hearing, difficulty with motor skills, etc.) are specifically taken into account during the design process. It concerns itself with making sure a variety of services are able to be used by a multitude of people with different abilities.
This term is rooted in removing all exclusionary factors in order to develop technological principles that help with accessibility factors; for example, supplying added visual aid such as Closed Captioning and transcripts for those individuals who are hearing impaired. It’s extremely important for this type of design to remove those boundaries as well as the inherent inclinations that designer’s may have, and produce creations that are more accommodating to diversity.
We should aim to curb exclusion from these levels of design.
Why design for it? Why care?
Without accessibility, a lot of information is in danger of not being understood.
For instance, people who are color blind may not understand that they haven’t filled out a form correctly because the incorrect fields are outlined in a thin, “aesthetic” red. Like the woman above, there may be a difficulty trying to discern colors….
…however, by adding extra identifiers such as exclamation marks, yield signs, or simple polk-a-dots, a designer can produce a much more accessible field!
By providing a design that she can understand, she is more likely to continue to use whatever product has catered in what she feels is specific to her. If a visitor can’t rely on the accessibility of the site, they don’t spend time admiring the innovative transitions or animations, they’re most likely focused on how the site isn’t behaving how they’d like it to. This isn’t the mindset you want a potential user, or customer, to be in. But by developing a site promoting cognitive fluency, these users are able to process other site factors that make it even easier for them to say “This is great!”
However, there have been cases where people have sued corporations for their inability to accommodate different abilities to those who may be using their service (here and here for numbers and Target, Dominos, Fedex for some reads). This is a failure in following Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Section 508 and WCAG
Section 508 was introduced to rid barriers that were in place for those with different abilities when it came to navigating websites. It was an act that required federal agencies to make all of their electronic platforms and information technology available and usable for people with varying capabilities. Similarly, WCAG are guidelines that websites need to follow in improving web accessibility. It’s broken down into 3 levels:
Legally, most sites need to meet Level AA (essentially, a passable accessibility website). Furthermore, WCAG is organized into four principles that a website must meet (POUR):
Perceivable — > Information needs to be presented in a way users can perceive (braille, large print, symbols…)
Operable — > Interface features and navigations need to be operable (up and down arrows to scroll, awareness of seizure triggers, giving substantial time to read on automated scroll…)
Understandable — > The user needs to understand the sites content. The content and usability can’t be beyond the users understanding or working memory.
Robust — > The website needs to be able to adapt to other technologies. This includes assistive technology and maximized capabilities with current and evolving tech.
WCAG has so far been the most reliable means to assure a website meets accessibility criteria. It’s a big and necessary factor that should make a website, if possible, achieve that triple A!
Great! So, what can we as designers do?
To design for accessibility, all of these visual, auditory, cognitive, and motor difficulties need to be taken into consideration. There needs to be an understanding among UX/UI professionals that accessibility (dealing with both issues and construction) falls onto us. By thinking and designing for these users, it’s a small way that everyone’s daily life is made easier.
To give an instance, Closed Captioning. This feature may help someone who is hard of hearing, but it can also help someone who is not hearing impaired by giving them the ability to watch something in an environment where they cannot play a video out loud.
Designing for accessibility is where you push your creative designs even further.
There seems to be the misconception that designing with these abilities in mind will hinder a designers creative process, when in fact, taking the time to produce around these guidelines is what pushes that designer to become even better. It forces designers to take a step back and build visually pleasing platforms that attract and support many other demographics; it encourages a new way of thinking!
“Designing for accessibility is what needs to happen first.”
Not circling back to fix what was missed.
I’m definitely still someone who is improving on my accessibility skills. Even when writing this I had a few “oops…”’s come into mind. But I think what is important is that I’m realizing its gravity and taking steps to go back and iterate on some of my designs as well as implement new discoveries in my future ones. As designers, we really are at the forefront of how people experience a multitude of technological applications and with that we need to be conscious of the accessibility levels released.
Here are some “Best Practices”:
- Don’t use color as the only visual means of conveying information.
- Ensure sufficient contrast between text and background.
- Provide visual indication for focus.
- Be careful with forms.
- Avoid component identity crises.
- Don’t make people hover to find things.
To wrap up, I urge everyone to incorporate both WCAG and Section 508 into your future designs. Or at least read up on them! It’s an important process that shouldn’t be overstepped.
Please check out Annie Jean-Baptiste, Michelle Kim, Pia Zaragoza, and Christopher Patnoe if you want to hear more about inclusion & accessibility. I’ve been following all of them and they have a lot of intelligent, insightful things they touch on!
Interesting fact: 26% of Americans (1 in 4) have some type of disability and 15% of the world’s population live with a disability. That’s over 1 billion people!
Some extra references for accessibility:
