How can you incorporate accessibility principles into your digital media design?

2 Plan with empathy

The next step is to plan your design with empathy and user-centeredness. This means putting yourself in the shoes of your target audience and understanding their needs, goals, challenges, and preferences. You can use various methods to research and empathize with your users, such as personas, scenarios, interviews, surveys, or observations. The goal is to identify the pain points and the opportunities for improving their experience and satisfaction. You can also use tools like the empathy map or the user journey map to visualize and document your insights and assumptions.

3 Design with diversity

Once you have a clear idea of who your users are and what they need, you can start designing your digital media product or service with diversity and inclusion in mind. This means considering how your design choices affect the accessibility and usability of your content, such as the layout, typography, color, images, audio, video, animation, interactivity, and feedback. You can use the WCAG as a reference, but also go beyond the minimum requirements and aim for excellence and innovation. For example, you can use contrast, size, shape, or texture to create visual hierarchy and emphasis, rather than relying on color alone. You can also use captions, transcripts, or audio descriptions to make your multimedia content accessible to people with hearing or vision impairments. You can also use progressive enhancement, responsive design, or adaptive design to ensure that your content works well on different devices, browsers, and screen sizes.

4 Test with feedback

The final step is to test your design with feedback from real users and experts. This will help you evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction of your design, as well as identify and fix any accessibility issues or gaps. You can use various methods to test your design, such as usability testing, accessibility testing, heuristic evaluation, or user feedback. You can also use tools like the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAVE), the Color Contrast Analyzer, or the Screen Reader Simulator to check and improve the accessibility of your web content.

By incorporating accessibility principles into your digital media design process, you can create products, services, and content that are not only compliant, but also creative, innovative, and user-friendly. You can also reach a wider and more diverse audience, enhance your reputation and credibility, and contribute to social justice and equality.