Beginner’s guide to designing for accessibility

It is every designer’s goal that their products are accessible and usable by their users. In fact, many people on the internet talk about how their products are accessible to many users and it brings excitement. Hence, there is still more to accessibility than usability alone. Over time, there has been great work done to design and build products that can be used by not just the able alone but people with disabilities also.

Accessibility has been mentioned a few times in the introduction and it’s best to figure out what it really is and how it has helped to solve the need of people with disabilities. Accessibility cannot be discussed without the mention of the design frameworks, inclusive design and equity focused design. The two are similar and closely related. Inclusive design is designing with gender, ability, gender, age, economic status and race in mind, creating solutions, thus, extending to many others. Equity-focused design is a specific design for historically underrepresented and ignored groups, putting them front and center.

WHAT IS ACCESSIBILITY

Accessibility is an aspect of inclusive design necessary to building a successful product. It is designing products, devices and services, even environments for people with disabilities to benefit, navigating the products without challenges. Accessibility is also popularly known as A11Y in the industry, ‘A’ and ‘Y’ representing the first and last letter and ‘11’ representing the sum of the characters between them.

According to statistics, over 1billion people out of a population of approximately 7.8 billion people have at least one disability. This shows that up to 13% of the world’s population suffer one disability or the other. Even so, this does not give 100% accuracy especially since many decide to conceal their disabilities, while many others go unnoticed. Inaccuracy of the status is imminent because some disabilities are temporal or seasonal (example is allergy that comes with seasons and asthma). Another adding factor to this inaccuracy is age being a lead factor to disability.

DESIGNING FOR DISABILITY

Disabilities strongly affect, even limit the way a user engages with a product, be it a hardware(device), a software(services) or otherwise. Therefore, anyone building a product has to make an effort to understand how important it is to make a product available to a variety of users with disabilities. This further goes to show that when there are issues relating to accessibility on the internet, it affects everyone, however, it is severe for people with disabilities, affecting them dramatically. In the reverse case, when a product is built with the disabled in mind, everyone benefits from it.

Every designer should know the concept of accessibility while creating products for underrepresented groups. No two users can have exactly the same disabilities and this makes the solutions to these disabilities vary.

There are 4 major kinds of disabilities which are often considered while designing for people with disabilities. They include; Auditory, Mobility/Dexterity, Visual and Cognitive disabilities. It is also important to take into cognizance that disabilities can be permanent, temporal or situational or caused by aging.

Disability can be strongly influenced by aging.

THE 4 MAJOR DISABILITIES AND HOW TO IMPLEMENT ACCESSIBILITY

Disabilities come in different forms. As mentioned earlier, it varies so much that no two persons may have the same disability. Learning about these major disabilities makes accessibility for people with disabilities a success. The disabilities are;

1. Visual Disability: This can come in the form of legal blindness, or vision or color blindness. When one is legally blind, this means their vision is 2/200, for low vision, their vision is 20/70 and one who is color blind is unable to identify colors. These tend to pose issues whilst they use products/devices.

Legal Blindness. Picture from Pch vector(Freepik)

When a text is too small, a call to action/ button is identified by color alone, the contrast of a screen is terrible or it makes it difficult for these individuals to access and navigate the products without challenges.

Elements such as call to action or other navigation buttons should not be identified by colors alone. Screens should not be saturated by bulky text, small chunks of texts and short paragraphs are more appropriate. In severe cases of total blindness, assistive technology such as screen reader, voice recognition and more are applied.

2. Dexterity & Motor Disability: When a user is paralyzed or has limited motor control, using a lot of products and devices are difficult. Since many individuals who have motor disorders can barely control a mouse, a product should be made available to be navigated by keyboards.

Assistive Technology for Motor disability . Picture from Pch vector

Assistive technology such as voice recognition(Apple’s Siri, Google’s google talk, amazon’s Alexa, etc.) has been a great help to access devices.

3. Auditory Disability: This can be total deafness or a hearing impairment. It is also very strongly affected by aging. Products such as hearing aids have been specifically made available to manage this disability.

Hearing Disability. Picture from Pch vector.

However, a further effort has been made over the years to enable them access basic products and services. Assistive technology such as close captions are currently available to aid these individuals.

4. Cognitive Disability: this is a learning disability, distractibility, difficulty in remembering a large amount of information. They sometimes experience inability to maintain or keep focus.

Inability to maintain Focus. Attributes; Vectorjuice(Freepik)

Numerous/long texts on screens can get them uninterested or even distracted. Using pictures , short chunks of texts and paragraphs, less ambiguous words are also a good way to implement accessibility and a good user experience.

ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY

Proper help for the underrepresented/ ignored and people with disability cannot be complete without mentioning and implementing the use of assistive technology.

They are devices, products, services, equipment and systems that are used to enhance and improve the general living of people with disability and this includes their working, learning, even their entertainment.

Assistive technology covers smartphones, computers, lifts, hearing aids, wheelchairs and many more. Basic products such as phone holders that keep phones in place during a call, meeting or even for a picture. It can be of help to people with motor disorders. It can also be an aid to one who wants to multitask or is busy with their hand or just tired of holding the phone.

Assistive technology goes deeper than these. They include;

1. Screen readers: They read out the texts on the screens, they can also read out functions like buttons, navigation, call to action, picture captions, and microcopies.
2. Voice control/recognition: This identifies the user’s voice and helps them navigate the devices or products. It helps people with motor disability. Examples ; Apple’s Siri, Google’s Google Talk, Amazon’s Alexa, etc.
3. Speak to text: This feature converts spoken words to texts to reduce stress of typing. It also assists users with motor disorder
4. Color modification: This feature increases the contrast of the screen. This is a useful aid for people with visual disabilities such as color blindness and low vision. The high contrast can either be white or black.
5. Attentive text: This carefully uses images to explain texts. People that suffer from cognitive disorder find this aid useful. Its use can also be extended to users who cannot read or do not understand the native language.

Other technologies include braille display, magnification tools, close captions, etc.

IMPORTANCE OF ACCESSIBILITY

• Accessibility shows empathy and solutions to their problems gives room for more users to use the product and this is what every product needs.
• Discovering the users’ challenges before hand reduces cost of user research
• When more users use a product before their various needs are met, it leads to more presence , increases sales and literally booms the business.
• Implementing accessibility in design not only benefits the specific users but extends to others, thus giving them a good user experience
• When no user is left out in a product, it tilts towards being a good product (usable, enjoyable)

HOW TO GET BETTER IN ACCESSIBILITY

• During the research phase, the groups in the team, from the designer to the developer should make sure to reach out and relate with users with disabilities. Discussion with them helps figure out what they really need.
• Attending Webinars, events and meetings with experts and people versed in the study and implementation of accessibility is a great step to working it out.
• Familiarizing with the principles that put accessibility front and center will be a major step.
• Accessibility settings on products should be put where they are visible and should be seen as a critical feature and not just a passing checklist. It helps get meaningful feedback from the users.

Accessibility has become one of the very important aspects in User experience design. In fact, it should be considered by Designers, Developers and Product managers looking to build any product. Implementing accessibility in design benefits not only the disabled but also extends to others giving them a good experience while using the products/Devices.

Sources:

An Introduction to Accessibility and Inclusive Design

https://www.coursera.org/learn/foundations-user-experience-design