Accessibility in Content Design: Understanding visual impairments

Content Designer Amelia Cooper highlights the importance of designing accessible content, in this article she considers visual impairments in particular.

While accessibility covers various aspects, I would like to focus on vision and how important it is to consider all types of visual impairments in the Content Design world.

Unlike more commonly known visual impairments such as cataracts or blindness, Coloboma presents unique challenges that often go unnoticed. Having a family member with a coloboma, a condition that affects both peripheral and depth of vision, can lead to missing visual cues at the edges of sight, which can be quite frustrating and sometimes lead to mistakes.

I was fortunate enough to attend a charity weekend hosted by MACS (Micro Anophthalmic Children’s Society), a charity dedicated to supporting young people with visual impairments. This gave me the opportunity to meet families who navigate the world with various conditions including Coloboma and after learning about their experiences, this really brought home the importance of accessibility.

For a deeper understanding of coloboma and how it affects vision, there’s a really useful page to explore all the different types and their impact: Eyewiki — Coloboma.

Challenges in Accessibility

You don’t have to be completely blind to have a visual impairment. Many people deal with partial vision loss or other conditions that can make navigating the internet very challenging and it is really important to recognise that visual impairments come in various forms.

Someone may struggle with rapidly changing visuals or complex layouts, while others with partial vision loss may have difficulty reading small text or distinguishing between different colours.

Consider this: when designing content, it’s not just about making sure it’s readable for those with severe impairments. Even small adjustments can make a big difference for people with less obvious visual challenges.

How do we make our content accessible?

At BT, we are all about making sure our digital content is easy for everyone to use, including those with specific needs.

We know that accessibility isn’t just about meeting standards, it’s about enhancing the overall user experience for everyone.

Our Practices at BT

• We follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to make sure our content works well for a wide range of needs. It’s like our roadmap for inclusivity.
• Using design elements that adapt to everyone. This could be adjusting text size and high-contrast colour schemes. This way, everyone can find a setting that works for them.
• Adding descriptive alt text to images and videos so that those using screen readers can understand what is being shown, even if they can’t see it.
• We don’t just guess what works; we test our content with real people. One tool I have used recently is UserTesting, which is a platform for getting rapid customer feedback on almost any customer experience. This includes identifying pain points, understanding what your customers are thinking/feeling and validating any design decisions before committing resources. You can receive audio and video recordings of real people from your target market, speaking their thoughts as they complete the tasks you specify.
• We ensure our websites and apps are easy to navigate around, so that it helps users with accessibility issues, move around easily.

A few helpful tools:

Colour Contrast Analyser

This Chrome extension can look at any webpage, image, or PDF open in your browser and identify which text elements are not compliant in terms of colour contrast.

WebAIM: Wave

An accessibility evaluation tool, which looks at live websites to provide a detailed list of accessibility-related errors. If your website has an empty heading or is missing any key elements, this will help you discover what may not be accessible to everyone. This is also available as a Chrome extension.

Colour Oracle

This tool simulates colour blindness so we can check if our colour schemes are inclusive. It’s great for making sure our designs are visible to everyone.

If you have any favourite tools or resources for testing accessibility, I’d love to hear about them. Please share your recommendations in the comments below!