User Experience is … Accessible design

The web should be a place for everyone and designing for everyone is a way of keeping it that way.

In my first story ‘User Experience is …’ I promised that …

"over the course of a few stories, I’ll try and cover a few of the sciences we draw upon in our art as a creative community to create engaging experiences."

In my last story I talked around using design frameworks to guide solutions. This time around I’m going to talk about something that I care deeply about. Inclusive design and how every product should be accessible by all.

Focussing on inclusive design and designing for everyone means that nearly everyone benefits. Accessibility is often mistakenly thought to only affect a small number of people and so only a few would benefit from designing for everyone. Disability is often thought about those with permanent disabilities such as loss of limbs or being permanently visually impaired.

But with this in mind how many people are affected by exclusion? The short answer is practically everyone, at some point and in certain situations.

Everyone is unique. There is no norm.

Types of situational exclusion

Microsoft have explored the different situations where exclusion can take place. They categorise these exclusions into three groups: permanent, temporary and situational.

Permanent, are those who have a disability such as loss of limb, sight, hearing or speech.
Temporary, are when a person has short-term injury or context affects the way they interact for a short time. This includes wearing a cast or trying to browse in bright light where reflections can impact readability.
Situational, are when people move through different environments. For example in a large crowd people can’t hear well, in a car you’re visually impaired or if you’re a new parent many tasks need to be completed one-handed.

The benefits of designing for everyone

The beauty of designing for everyone is the benefits can spread wider than you think. For instance increasing the contrast will help those with sight loss but also help those out in the bright shine shine on a summer’s day. Providing captions will improve the experience for those with hearing loss but also for people who are in noisy environments.

The web should be a place for everyone and designing for everyone is a way of keeping it that way.

Accessibility has been a constant for me in my career and when I’ve moved to new teams I’ve often had to re-educate, mentor and repeat accessibility firsts:

The first time that an accessibility audit was done to understand how a product truly performs with a diverse audience
The first time that the team saw a product being used by a user with access needs
The first time that I wasn’t a lone voice and that the engineering teams also focussed on writing semantic, well structure and formed code
The first time that accessibility was considered as a definition of done for user stories
The first time that automated testing included accessibility checks and was integrated in the release pipeline
And the first time that a live product achieved AA

Taking small steps with the teams you work with

I’ve seen these firsts happen time and again, each time I’ve felt that I am helping to make a difference and help people. But there are some universal truths:

Use a contrast checker in your design work to make sure contrast ratios are great enough
Being pragmatic not all content necessarily has to be accessible, but you should aspire to it being. You need to focus time and energy on providing alternative experiences if it is either functional or adds significantly to the overall experience of a product
Make sure that the user can use whichever input method they choose to use your product, this could be just a mouse, maybe only a keyboard, it could be a voice, a tv control, a games controller or a piece of assistive technology.
Allow the user to control the visualisation of the content through assistive and browser controls, to make the text size larger etc.
Provide alternatives for content that relies just on one sense. In the example of images or videos, make sure that there are suitable captions provided for those that aren’t able to clear see. For audio make sure that there are subtitles for those that aren’t able to clearly hear, or find it easier to read along.
Make sure that the right content style is used to structure and format the content. Use headings, lists and tables correctly, so that information flows in the correct way.
When using forms make sure that the right field type is being used. This is particular important for touch devices to make sure that the right keyboard is enabled and can be used, as well as making it easy for assistive technology.
When using touch make sure that things can not be mis-hit and are adequately spaced and size to make them easy to click for those with reduced motor abilities, which can be people with temporary or older people who have reduced mobility in their hands and fingers.
Make sure that your experience degrades gracefully. Not only from a technical point of view but also from an accessibility point of view. You should design one experience with an understanding of what happens in certain situations in order to ensure everyone is provided with as good an experience, that’s closest to your ideal. Don’t think of these as separate experiences, else there might be some disconnect.

How to design for everyone

In addition to accessibility principals and testing I’ve found thinking about design wider has helped to design for everyone. Testing your biases and balancing them with challenge questions, alternative views and perspectives is a great way to do this.

Accessibility and design challenge cards can be used at key points to make sure that not just the happy path is being designed but you look at unhappy paths and experiences throughout and what the experience will be like (as well as how it can be recovered if something does go wrong). In doing this I consider the opposites and embracing a growth mindset to build out the experience.

AirBnb provide a great tool for developing another lends and challenge cards:

Another lens
A research tool for conscientious creatives How can you design for everyone without understanding the full picture?

There’s a summary of some of the unique challenges when designing for everyone. With those thoughts in my head, I’m going to look at how design is able to start helping out and start to lead delivery with experience considerations, instead of timescales and deadlines, by looking at how User Experience is ... Lean Roadmapping and how that mindset can start breaking down things into valuable smaller bitesize improvements to the experience.

Originally written as part of the ‘User Experience is …’ series for UX Collective.