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Designing for Accessibility

Amy Castellani | Reading time: about 6 min

Our goal is to create a product that is usable, intuitive, and works how we expect it to, but we can’t assume all of our users will have the same experience with our design. Considering users’ ability levels is essential. One in four adults in the United States has a disability, and users with varying degrees of visual, cognitive, auditory, speech, and motor disabilities will have vastly different experiences with the same design. To put it into perspective, the inaccessible design of a website might make for a frustrating experience for a user without a disability, while making it completely impossible for a user with a disability to complete their desired task.

If this isn’t a compelling enough reason to consider accessibility as part of your design process, the Revised 508 Standards outline access standards for federal agencies with the intention of providing users with disabilities with comparable access to users without disabilities. 

Web Content Guidelines

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 defines how to make Web content more accessible to people with disabilities. Accessibility involves a wide range of disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities. Although these guidelines cover a wide range of issues, they are not able to address the needs of people with all types, degrees, and combinations of disability. These guidelines also make Web content more usable by older individuals with changing abilities due to aging, and often improve usability for users in general.

• Principles - Four principles provide the foundation for Web accessibility: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. See also Understanding the Four Principles of Accessibility.
• Guidelines - Under the principles are guidelines. The 12 guidelines provide the basic goals that authors should work toward to make content more accessible to users with different disabilities. The guidelines are not testable but provide the framework and overall objectives to help authors understand the success criteria and better implement the techniques.
• Success Criteria - For each guideline, testable success criteria are provided to allow WCAG 2.0 to be used where requirements and conformance testing are necessary such as in design specification, purchasing, regulation, and contractual agreements. To meet the needs of different groups and different situations, three levels of conformance are defined: A (lowest), AA, and AAA (highest). Additional information on WCAG levels can be found in Understanding Levels of Conformance.
• Sufficient and Advisory Techniques - For each of the guidelines and success criteria in the WCAG 2.0 document itself, the working group has also documented a wide variety of techniques. The techniques are informative and fall into two categories: those that are sufficient for meeting the success criteria and those that are advisory. The advisory techniques go beyond what is required by the individual success criteria and allow authors to better address the guidelines. Some advisory techniques address accessibility barriers that are not covered by the testable success criteria. Where common failures are known, these are also documented. See also Sufficient and Advisory Techniques in Understanding WCAG 2.0.

Design Best Practices

If we define Human-Centered Design (HCD) as an intentional process in which the needs, motivations, and limitations of the people using a product or service are considered, then designing for accessibility is a no-brainer. Keep reading for some best practices and resources when designing with accessibility.

• Keeping in line with the iterative HCD approach, accessibility should be baked into your work from the beginning and revisited throughout the process. Build with accessibility in mind. Rather than as an afterthought, as you're working add meaningful and descriptive alternate (alt) text to images —a must-have for 508 compliance. Make sure your desired color palette is compliant and there is enough contrast between desired pairings before designing your content with it. By being thoughtful about your design from the beginning, you’ll save time and effort, and more users will benefit from your work.
• Rather than feeling confined by accessibility guidelines, push yourself to innovate. Accessible doesn’t mean simple or boring. It just means you need to consider all of your users and what their respective experiences might be. While sighted people can take in a cluttered web page all at once and quickly scan for what they’re looking for, it might take someone who is visually impaired and using a screen reader far longer to locate their desired item. How might you design simpler navigation?
• Speaking of considering all of your users, conduct usability testing with users with a variety of disabilities with their assistive technology. Accessibility doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Your design may meet the 508 Standards, but that doesn’t mean users won’t find fault with it. Experiencing the content through a perspective that differs from yours will help you gain empathy for the users and insight into factors that you may not have considered while designing.
• Use the available resources. Take advantage of the many tools and checklists available to help you achieve 508 compliance. Here are just a few for starters:
  • CCSQ 508 Compliance
  • Section508.gov
  • Web Accessibility Initiative
  • VPAT Accessibility Conformance Act
  • Accessible Color Palettes

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