What is Accessibility in UX?

What is Accessibility?

Accessibility is the concept of whether a product or service can be used by everyone—however they encounter it. Accessibility laws exist to aid people with disabilities, but designers should try to accommodate all potential users in many contexts of use anyway. To do so has firm benefits—notably better designs for all.

Accessibility vs Usability

Since they have similarities, accessibility is sometimes confused with?usability. Both overlap and are vital parts of?user experience (UX) design, but there are also key distinctions between them. Usability is concerned with whether designs are effective, efficient and satisfying to use. Theoretically, this means that usability includes accessibility, since a product that is inaccessible is also unusable to someone with a disability;?practically, however, usability?tends not?to specifically focus on the user experience of people with disabilities.?Accessibility, on the other hand, is concerned with whether?all?users are able to access an equivalent user experience, however they encounter a product or service?(e.g., using assistive devices). Unlike usability, accessibility focuses on people with disabilities.

Accessible Designs Help Everyone

Accessibility is not only the?right thing to do, but often also?brings benefits to?all?users. That’s because accessibility features that help people with disabilities often help other people, too. For instance, video captions that help people with hearing difficulties also help a person who is watching the video on mute (e.g., in a social media feed). Legible, high-contrast text that helps people with vision difficulties also helps people with perfect eyesight who are using the app outdoors in bright sunlight.?Many users—whatever?their abilities—will face challenges due to demanding contexts. When you design for?all?ability levels, you can create products and services anyone can use and enjoy—or at least find helpful or calming.

Although accessibility is a critical factor that impacts design, many brands overlook it. Based on a 2011 World Health Organization report concerning disability, however, you’ll exclude about 15% of Earth’s population if you don’t make your design accessible. Furthermore, many jurisdictions—including the E.U.—have penalties for failure to create accessible designs. However,?designing for accessibility makes sense on more than a legal level; it brings?benefits, including these:

• Improved SEO from semantic HTML
• Opportunities to reach more users on more devices, in more settings/environments
• Enhanced public image for your brand

Types of Accessibility Issues

You should?consider the?number?and?types?of potential accessibility issues users will have. These are common barriers:

• Visual?(e.g., color blindness)
• Motor/mobility?(e.g., wheelchair-user concerns)
• Auditory?(hearing difficulties)
• Seizures?(especially photosensitive epilepsy)
• Learning/cognitive?(e.g., dyslexia)

Ability barriers can also?arise?for?any?user:

• Incidental?(e.g., sleep-deprivation)
• Environmental?(e.g., using a mobile device underground)

The possibilities are virtually limitless regarding who might be trying to access your product/service.

“When UX doesn’t consider ALL users, shouldn’t it be known as “SOME User Experience” or… SUX?”

— Billy Gregory, Senior Accessibility Engineer

Practical Guidelines for Accessibility

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) stipulates standards for accessible design in its latest Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). You can follow these essential points to accommodate users with diverse abilities:

• Use a content management system (CMS) supporting accessibility standards?(e.g., WordPress). Whenever you amend any pre-used template, ensure themes were designed for accessibility.
• Include?personas?with varying abilities.
• Use header tags in text?(optimally, use CSS for consistency throughout). Move consecutively from one heading level to the next (without skipping).
• Use alt text on content-enhancing images.
• Have a link strategy?(i.e., describe the link before inserting it – e.g., “Read more about the Interaction Design Foundation, at?their website.”?Offer visual cues (e.g., PDF icons), underline links and highlight menu links on mouseover.
• Improve visibility with careful color selection and high contrast.
• Reference shapes to help guide users?(e.g., “Click the square button”).
• Consider how screen readers handle forms. Label fields and give descriptions to screen readers via tags. Make the tab order visually ordered. Assign an ARIA required or not required role to each field (know how to use?ARIA). Avoid the asterisk convention.
• Use proper HTML elements in lists. Don’t put them on the same line as text.
• Present dynamic content carefully,?including slideshows. Consult ARIA standards for overlays, etc.
• Validate markup using the W3 standards site to ensure?all?browsers can read your code.
• Offer transcriptions for audio resources, captions/subtitles for video.
• Make content easily understandable?– simpler language reaches more users, as do effective information hierarchy, progressive disclosure and prompting.
• Try using your design without a mouse. It can be hard to scroll.
• Use tools such as WAVE and Color Oracle to test your design’s accessibility.

Naturally, you should test for accessibility on?users?themselves. Note that while it’s impossible to cover?all?use cases, your efforts to reach all users can yield many rewards—sometimes in unexpected areas.

Literature on Accessibility

Here’s the entire UX literature on?Accessibility?by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Featured article

Global Accessibility Awareness Day: Towards a More Inclusive World

Over?1 billion people across the world have disabilities?and are affected by inaccessibility, according to the WHO. We hear the term?accessibility?a lot in?UX design, but it’s often used as a buzzword, bandied about to give the appearance of inclusivity and doesn’t hold up in practice. How do we change this, make our products more accessible and hold each other accountable??

For those of you who are unfamiliar with accessibility, it can be defined as: the practice of designing products and services so that they can be used by everyone, regardless of disabilities. Designers should strive to accommodate all users, their unique situation or restrictions notwithstanding.??

The question still remains, why are accessibility considerations low priority and one of the first things to get cut from projects when resources or time become scarce?

The reality is many people simply don’t know where to start. Accessibility hasn’t been integrated into the design and development process so it’s repeatedly overlooked. In 2022, WebAIM analyzed one million home pages for accessibility issues and found that?96.8% had home pages with at least one WCAG 2.0 Failure?(WCAG, the?Web Content Accessibility Guidelines?2.0 provide recommendations to make web content more accessible).?

These are the most common accessibility failures:

Low contrast text is the most common accessibility according to the WebAIM analysis, but what does this actually mean for the people who are affected? For people with low vision, cognitive impairments or?color?blindness the website text will only be able to be read slowly, if they can read it at all.?

Global Accessibility Awareness Day?

Accessibility is a human right so it should be a prerequisite in the?design process, not a nice to have.?You can’t have a great user experience if the design is inaccessible.?Empathy?is an important skill in UX design, and if it’s actively practiced, inaccessibility should become a thing of the past.?

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) was launched in May 2012 and is observed every third Thursday in May. It targets developers, designers and other creators to put a greater focus on digital accessibility.?

? Mindymorgan, CC BY-SA 4.0

GAAD was originally inspired by a single blog post written by a web developer, Joe Devon, over 10 years ago, in 2011. In it, he called on developers to come together and work to bridge the accessibility gap by raising awareness and global standards.

? Teo Yu Siang and the?Interaction Design?Foundation, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Usability and Accessibility

“When we design something that can be used by those with disabilities, we make it better for everyone.”?

-Don Norman

Frank Spillers, instructor of IxDF’s Accessibility: How to?Design for All?course, talks about the connection between accessibility and?usability, and how it affects?SEO.?

Towards Accessibility

The current state of accessibility leaves a lot to be desired, but if each person, whether you’re a designer, developer or user, took it upon themselves to advocate for accessibility, we’re that much closer to a more inclusive future. Conduct an accessibility audit of your product, your company’s products or products you use. There are many free online resources that can help get you started with an accessibility evaluation.?

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C?). W3C was launched in 1994 to “develop common protocols that promote the evolution of the World Wide Web and ensure its interoperability.” W3C is the global standard in web technology and WAI in web accessibility.?

WAI pursues accessibility through these five activities:

• ensuring that web technologies support accessibility.
• developing guidelines for accessibility.
• developing tools to evaluate and facilitate accessibility.
• conducting education and outreach.
• coordinating with research and development?

It’s important to be aware of web standards and regulations in your country not just for accessibility, but for legal reasons too. If your website isn’t compliant, you could face legal consequences. If you’re in any doubt, check out the WAI. Commit to accessibility and use the WAI guidelines and resources to develop policies, implement strategies and design inclusive products.?

Over one billion people worldwide have disabilities, keep this figure in your mind, practice empathy and consult the international guidelines when designing or using a product. Celebrate GAAD. and become an accessibility advocate today and everyday. On our own we can make a difference, but as a community, we have the power to make the world (and World Wide Web) accessible.

References & Where to Learn More

Learn more about how to design for accessibility in our course,?“Accessibility: How to Design for All”.

Read up about?Global Accessibility Awareness Day.

Check out WebAIM’s annual?report.

Explore the?Web Accessibility Initiative.

Learn how to conduct an accessibility audit?here.

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