The globally increasing trend for accessibility in UX has a background backed up with impressive data. According to WHO, around two billion people (and this makes 37,5% of the world’s population) have a certain kind of disability.
A decade ago, the Internet was practically inaccessible for users with visual, motor, or mental disabilities. They were literally excluded from the world-wide-web not having an opportunity to experience the immense possibilities the modern world offers. If for people inaccessibility means a loss of opportunities to interact with the digital world, for businesses, it means the loss of many potential customers, which they can’t reach out to (at least, online).
In a nutshell, accessibility in user experience gauges whether users with various abilities can easily interact with the product or service. It’s regulated by accessibility guidelines, which determine the set of rules UX designers should follow to ensure that as many people as possible can have a great experience using the product.
Accessibility principles are reflected in universal design that pursues a goal to create a design comfortable for all users regardless of the kind and severity of disabilities they have.
Accessibility is a multidimensional concept that helps people not only with permanent disabilities but also those who experience temporary impairments or situational deterioration of their physical or mental state. For instance, visual impairments can vary from blindness to color blindness and blurred vision related to aging.
Usability and accessibility
Whereas these two concepts can be mixed up, there is one thing they have in common. Suppose the product has significant usability flaws that negatively impact the general audience’s user experience. In that case, chances are high, these gaps will make interaction with a product even more complex for people with disabilities. It should be noted that a product’s inaccessibility may also be related to reasons apart from physical or mental incapability to use the product. For example, the product can be inaccessible for a user due to:
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high price
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specific cultural context
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lack of background knowledge
Accessible design vs inclusive design
As soon as we’re talking about accessibility, the inclusivity also shouldn’t go unmentioned.
If the accessible design is pursuing the goal of creating a “one size fits all” design, the inclusive design aims to create as many solutions as possible to match the needs of a diversified audience. An example of inclusive design can be gender-related questions with customized answers in typical website forms and surveys.
Why is accessibility in user experience important?
From a human perspective, designing with accessibility in mind, UX designers have the power to improve the existence of millions of people struggling with their limited abilities in everyday being. Also, it’s important to remember that making a website or app design accessible will benefit all users regardless of their health condition and life circumstances.
If we look at accessibility issues with practical eyes, making your product comfortable to use for as many people as possible will secure your business from fines and discrimination claims. With a growing human-centered trend in society, the number of inaccessibility-related lawsuits is constantly increasing, and this topic is currently getting hot than ever.
How to ensure your product is accessible?
To help you define whether you’re meeting accessibility criteria in your product design, the sets of standards were elaborated and adopted. The major regulations are WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and Section 508.
WCAG guidelines are commonly used in non-governmental projects design initiatives with no relation to state and federal programs.
According to WCAG, the accessible design should be:
- Perceivable: there should be no difficulties for a user to perceive the information placed on a web resource
- Operable: for example, a user can alter using a mouse or a touchpad by keyboard navigation
- Understandable: a product’s interface should be intuitive and operable, whereas the information has to be easy to comprehend
- Robust: a website’s functionality must be compatible with assistive technologies
As for Section 508, it is a set of requirements the design should meet to be compliant with WCAG guidelines.
To reach accessibility in user experience, ensure you adhere to the following requirements on your website.
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Sufficient color contrast - according to WCAG visual contrast guidelines, the acceptable contrast ratio between text and background should be 4.5 to 1. Before making any changes, you can check the current contrast level using the WebAIM contrast checker.
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Clear layout and simple language - your website’s ultimate goal is to provide users the best experience possible and make their customer journey easier. Concise sentences with distinct value propositions and logical website hierarchy will help people quickly navigate your website regardless of whether they have any disabilities that may hamper the process.
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Visual elements to support color accents - if you highlight important information on your webpage with color only, people with visual impairments and colorblind users may face difficulties recognizing those accents you want them to pay attention to. Instead, amplify the color with bold text, labels, italics, and infographics to make essential information stand out.
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Alternative text for images - people who can’t or don’t want to read the web content use screen readers to perceive the written text aurally. Since screen readers work only with words, webpage images need to have a special description, a so-called alternative text that tells screen readers what a particular picture is about. Alternative text should be written within <alt> attribute giving a concise summary of a related image.
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Big-sized buttons with explicit CTAs - main buttons on a webpage should be visible, self-explanatory, and easy to press. These requirements become especially crucial when working on accessibility in user experience for mobiles, where relatively small screen sizes demand buttons to be quite large to avoid accidental wrong gestures.
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Comprehensive links - make sure you avoid ambiguous links’ descriptions. Users should clearly understand where the link will bring them and what content they’ll see when following the link. The lesser surprises users have interacting with your website, the better customer experience they will eventually get.
In addition to the points mentioned above, here is some more advice on improving your products’ accessibility.
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Conduct UX audit to receive unbiased feedback from third-party consultants who can gauge your website’s accessibility according to WCAG guidelines
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Assign an in-house team member to use your product or service with a fresh eye and point out user experience flaws if any
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Ask outside people to check your product design, gather their opinions, and decide how you can improve your website’s usability and accessibility.
Even though designing for accessibility may seem a tedious task for you, its significance can’t be underestimated. Accessibility in user experience helps millions of people benefit from the web. Besides this humanistic goal, improving your website’s accessibility will shield your business from potential claims and lawsuits and increase customer loyalty to your brand.