Accessible design is for All!

Published in

UX Planet

12 min readNov 11, 2020

a collage of smiling faces of people from different ethnicity, age group and culture. — Image Credit : Johnny Grieg

Over 15% of the world’s population of which more than 1 billion people have disability, shown in a report by WHO (world health organization) and this number will increase to double by the year 2050.

As we are living in a fast-paced world with lots of information without any cost is available at our disposal. The Internet has become a big part of our life, a source of information, where we learn, have fun, interact with people around the world and all the other things too.

Just imagine if you are not able to use your devices to access the internet, because of the new system language, new complex interface design, or just because you don’t belong to a certain group of people. How would it feel to be excluded or just completely ignored from getting access to the information?

If you are wondering why these questions, then if you remember the first line of this article which talks about people with a disability, feel the exact frustration when products, services, and places are not designed to be accessible by everyone.

In this article, we are going to talk about accessibility in digital design.

As described by WAI (web accessibility initiative) accessibility, usability, and Inclusive design are closely related, their guidelines, standards, rules overlap significantly. It’s important to know about these broad terms while designing for Accessibility.

What is Accessibility?

“Can I get access to information?” - Haben Girma, American disability rights advocate.

This quote sums up the definition very well, the aim is to make products and services accessible for people with different abilities.

Accessibility focuses On users with disabilities to perceive, interact, understand, and navigate any technology so they can contribute and use the opportunities and information equally.

Designing for accessibility will not only help people with disabilities but also people without disabilities.

Let’s look at this classic example

screenshot of movie named “the karate kid”, where kung fu master Jakie Chan says to his disciple that “everything is Kung Fu” — Image Credit

Closed captions or subtitles were invented to help people with hearing impairment but now they also help people who are in a noisy environment or who do not understand the language, or simply the people like me who are learning the new language. (Fun fact, I have learned how to converse in English with the help of watching movies and sitcoms with subtitles, as English wasn’t my first language.)

Accessibility is a key component of Inclusive design.

Inclusive design:

“Diversity is our world’s greatest asset, and inclusivity is our biggest challenge”- Jutta Treviranus, head of Inclusive Design at Microsoft.

Inclusive design is all about considering the wide range of human abilities. Designing for inclusivity not only opens up our products and services to more people, but It also reflects how people really are.

While designing for accessibility, A product can technically be accessible but not usable, and that’s where usability comes into play.

Usability:

It is defined as, quality of a product that determines how easy it is to use without facing any negative emotion. As designers, it is our job to provide our users a great experience. Usability is about designing products to be effective, efficient, and satisfying. Usability includes user experience design.

When we talk about how accessibility caters to people with disabilities, and when you hear the word “disability”, what comes into your mind?

It is important to understand what it really means and the assumptions we make about people with disabilities.

Disability:

According to WHO(World Health Organization), a disabled person is anyone who has “a problem in body function or structure, an activity limitation, has a difficulty in executing a task or action; with a participation restriction”.

Disability is the mismatch between the needs of the individual and the environment, service, or product offered.

Disabilities are of three types:

image shows a young women in wheelchair, a man with hand injury, a mom with baby in one hand and bags in another. — Credit: Guardian, Kelleher bros., istock

1.Permanent : (In the left picture, Emma has Cerebral Palsy Spastic Diplegia, It affects mostly the legs and sometimes the arms, making them stiff and contracted.)

2.Temporary : (In the middle one, Man has an injured hand)

3.Situational : (On the right, Women’s both hands are engaged with grocery bags and her baby) As shown in the picture above, all three individuals have a different type of disability but the needs are the same.

It’s a reminder that at some point in our life we will all experience certain kinds of disability and those needs.

Disabilities are not limited to physical impairment, It also contains mental health-related issues such as Learning/Cognitive impairment (E.g. dyslexia, ADHD, etc.).

Some outstanding stats by WHO on disability around the world:

1.3 billion people are affected by some form of blindness and visual impairment. This represents 17% of the world’s population.
466 million people have disabling deafness and hearing loss. This represents 6% of the world’s population.
About 200 million people have an intellectual disability (IQ below 75). This represents 2.6% of the world’s population.
75 million people need a wheelchair daily. This represents 1% of the world’s population.

Some of the common assumptions people make about people with disabilities:

It would be a person with impaired motor function.

These are only some of the misconceptions people have, but as mentioned earlier disability is a broad spectrum, and it is not limited to physical impairments.

Only older people have a disability, because of their age.

It is true that as people grow old they face certain problems like low motor skills (low dexterity), visual impairment, cognitive impairment like dementia. But these impairments are not limited to older people only, even children face cognitive impairments like ADHD and the most common motor disability like Cerebral Palsy.

If people look “normal”, they don’t have any disability.

Disabilities are not always visible. 70 % of disabilities are invisible, and 96 % of people with visible disabilities also have an invisible disability.

People perceive content through different senses depending on their needs and preferences.

E.g. A sighted user will perceive the content through their eyes, whereas a person with vision impairment will perceive the content by other senses, it can be either by hearing(e.g. Screen reader) or by feeling(e.g. Braille).

Technologies that are designed to help people to pass the barrier of inaccessibility are called Assistive Technologies.

Assistive Technologies:

Assistive technology (AT) is any piece of equipment, software program, or product that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of persons with disabilities. Assistive technology helps people who have difficulty speaking, typing, writing, remembering, pointing, seeing, hearing, learning, walking, and many other things. Different disabilities require different assistive technologies.

When people hear the word “technology”, they often associate it with electronic devices and applications but assistive technology is much more than electronic gadgets.

It can be a wheelchair or a cane, the assistive technologies simply help you making inaccessible things accessible. Not limited to digital devices only.

Some Examples of digital assistive technology:

Screen Readers: software that processes content on the desktop and in web browsers, and converts it to other forms such as text-to-speech.
Screen magnifier — software used primarily by people with partial sight to enlarge the content to make it easier to see.
Eye-tracking (sometimes called “eye-gaze”) — a system that monitors eye movement to control the mouse pointer and detects blinking to initiate mouse clicks.
Voice recognition (sometimes called “speech input” or “voice command”) — software that recognizes the human voice and can be used to dictate text or to issue commands to operate the computer.

(Fact: “Globally, only 1 in 10 people with disability has access to assistive technologies and product”-WHO)

Why does designing for accessibility matters?

Two major perspectives are there when we talk about accessibility: Business, and Ethics.

How accessibility can benefit business?

1.Extend your market reach:

The global market of people with disabilities is over 1 billion people with a spending power of more than $6 trillion. Hence, ignoring this audience segment means losing at least ~20% of your potential users who can bring value to any business. It can be an insurance company, saloon, or any other service provider.

2.Enhance your brand:

Businesses that have focused on accessibility are considered leaders in the industry today(E.g. Apple). They are showcasing proof that ethical accessibility practices can help increase brand credibility, inclusion for all, and online conversions.

3.Minimize legal risks:

Many countries have laws requiring digital accessibility, and in many countries, accessibility is a human right.

E.g. American Disability Act(ADA), encourages companies to meet accessibility requirements to avoid lawsuits.

European Accessibility Act, requires all the information and communication technology to meet accessibility requirements.

The Equality Act 2010(UK), which helps people with disability to protect themselves from discrimination.

4.Drive Innovation and help everyone:

Accessibility features in your products and services often helps everyone. Accessible design thinking provides flexible ways for users to interact with websites and applications, options that are useful for people with and without disabilities.

Some examples are:

voice control, designed for users with physical impairments, has been more widely adopted as a great convenience by millions of others. (E.g. devices with voice assistance like Google assistance, Alexa, Cortana, etc.)

picture of amazon echo speaker, which is a voice controlled device. — Image Credit

auto-complete, initially provided for people with disabilities, is now widely used by all.

Image: Google Auto-complete

contrast minimums, required for people with low vision, help all people see in bright light glare situations.

display in mobile’s settings to control the contrast so people can interact easily according to their preferences. — Image credit — NN/g

How to design for Accessibility:

Designing for anything starts with…

Empathy:

Understanding what are you designing for? Who are you designing for? When it comes to designing for accessibility, empathy becomes a crucial skill to have, because it becomes harder to put yourselves into the shoes of a person with disabilities, understanding their pain, needs and motivation is hard but you can start with a good old research approach:

By talking/interviewing people with disabilities.
By observing their environment and observing how they perform certain actions.
By asking them what assistive technologies they use and trying to use that assistive technology by yourself is a good place to start, to have a better understanding.
If you can’t talk with people, that’s okay, just look up on youtube for documentaries, interviews, you will also find plenty of videos to understand how people use different assistive technologies to complete their tasks.

While researching for this article, I have tried this exercise to understand how people with disabilities, use their mobile devices:

Open the accessibility features in your mobile settings, I explored talk-back features which help people with vision impairment interact with the interface,

Accessibility page in mobile settings with options like test-to-speech, screen reader, font size etc.

and there’s a catch, You’ll need a blindfold, trust me, If you want to experience and put yourself into their shoes, then try this exercise with a blindfold on or just close your eyes, don’t peek, learn.

Or you can also watch Microsoft’s inclusive design short films to understand how people with visual impairment consume content by voice-over videos.

It was a whole new experience, I assure you, you’ll find your imagination run wild while listening to the narrator, who describes every scene. I felt that, now it’s your turn.

Standards and Guidelines:

There are several standards that help you design for accessibility. WCAG(Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) created by W3C (world wide web consortium) is a universally accepted standard.

In this article, we are going to talk about a framework on which all the guidelines are framed in WCAG, and that framework is called POUR Principles.

Understanding the Four principles of accessibility:

These four principles lay the foundation necessary for anyone to access and use the web, anyone who wants to use the web must have content that is :

1. Perceivable:

Permeability means users can identify content and interface by the means of the senses. Users with different abilities perceive information differently, E.g. a visually impaired person may perceive the information by hearing, or by touch.

(It can’t be invisible for all of their senses.)

E.g. An online training video narrates a process for completing a task. If video is uncaptioned then, How can a person with hearing impairment learn from the training, how will he/she complete the task?

2. Operable:

Operability means that a user can successfully use controls, buttons, navigation, and other necessary interactive elements.

For many users, this means identifying an interface control visually and then clicking, tapping, or swiping. For other users, using a computer keyboard or voice commands means by which they can operate and control the interface.

(The interface can not require interaction that a user can not perform.)

E.g. A navigation menu reveals a submenu of links when a user hovers over it with a mouse. If the menu doesn’t expand without hovering over it then how can a keyboard user access the submenu?

3. Understandable:

This means the users must be able to understand the information as well as operations and interactions of the user interface. Understandable technology is consistent, predictable, and intuitive in its design.

Users should be able to comprehend the content and learn and remember how to use the interface.

E.g.A technical website makes use of numerous abbreviations, acronyms, and jargon. If they are not comprehensible, then how can a user understand the content?

4. Robust:

Robust technologies are designed to function on all appropriate technologies.

Users should be able to choose the technology they use to interact with the website, online documents, multimedia, and other information formats including assistive technology.

E.g. A document is inaccessible to a screen reader on a particular operating system. If a user employs that operating system for day-to-day tasks, how can he/she gain access to the document?

Each principle has its different guidelines, The key objective of these guidelines is to ensure that content is directly accessible to as many people as possible.

Material Design Guidelines

Material design guidelines include accessibility guidelines built right into their system, that anyone can follow. It’s a really good way to start designing your digital interfaces, they have made it very comprehensible.

Misconception around Designing for Accessibility:

The prime misconception around designing for accessibility is thinking that people with disabilities are less likely to use a product or a website. When the fact is 37% of the world population suffers from one or other forms of permanent or temporary disabilities. Which can range from something very minor as partially impaired vision to blindness, or any other motor disabilities.
Another misconception is that designing for accessibility only serves people with disabilities, which is not true. As shown in the examples in this article earlier shows, how accessibility design is by its nature flexible and makes everyone’s life easier.

While doing research this question came into my mind quite often

If it’s such a beneficial and right thing to do, then why is everyone not implementing accessibility in their products?

So, I interviewed some awesome and humble industry experts to get the answer, and everyone had the same answer, and it was…Awareness.

Most companies are not aware of accessibility and issues around people with disabilities, and many countries around the globe are yet to adopt WCAG guidelines in form of a legal legislation that would help make it mandatory for private as well as public sector institutions to make accessible solutions.

Takeaways:

If you want to understand the necessity and impact of accessible design you can start with-

1.Accessibility Talks by Google(A YouTube playlist)

2.Accessibility talks(A YouTube channel)

3.Inclusive: The film(accessible films by Microsoft design)

4. Follow the hashtag (#a11y) on Twitter.

Conclusion

My aim to write this article was to spread awareness about accessibility because exclusion happens when we solve problems from our own biases, and it is rude to exclude. Technologies were made to help us in the first place, right?, then it should help everyone, people with or without, because everyone wants to access the vast sea of information and opportunities called the internet, and accessibility is the key that will lead us to inclusion.

Credits for help and valuable time: