Digital accessibility (abbreviated as a11y) is about:
- designing and building digital products...
- so that they can be used in a meaningful and equal way...
- by as many people as possible — including those with disabilities.
WHY: Why focus on it?
Over 15% of the world's population self-identify as having a disability. By catering to them, you broaden your audience. (You also avoid getting a bad reputation and facing discrimination lawsuits).
When you design for accessibility, you also enhance the user experience for everyone else. (This is called the curb-cut effect).
Let me do the math for you:
larger audience + happier users = increased revenue
WHO: Main groups to consider
1. Visual impairments 👁️
- Examples: blindness, low vision, color blindness
- Prevalence (worldwide): 13% vision loss, 3% color blind
-
Pain points:
- digital products that do not work with screen reader software
- mobile websites/apps without pinch to zoom, complex graphs and charts differentiated by colors alone
- color contrasts that make it difficult to read text on the screen
2. Mobility impairments ♿️
- Examples: arthritis, paralysis, amputees, seizure disorders
- Prevalence (worldwide): 1 in 7 people
-
Pain points:
- elements that are only designed to work with the use of a mouse.
3. Hearing impairments 👂🏼
- Examples: deafness, heard of hearing
- Prevalence (worldwide): 20%
-
Pain points:
- audio content without text transcripts
- video content without well-synchronized captions
4. Cognitive impairments 🧠
- Examples: Down's syndrome, autism, ADHD, dyslexia, aphasia
-
Pain points:
- busy interfaces that make it overly complicated to focus on the task at hand,
- large blocks of (justified) text with minimal whitespace
- small or hard-to-read fonts
+1. Others who can benefit from improved accessibility
- Temporarily disabled: a person with a broken leg, or with slower thinking due to medication.
- Situationally disabled: a person experiencing glare on a device screen or someone watching a video without sound on the train.
- Mildly disabled. A person needing eyeglasses to see a screen or captions to understand audio.
- Older people with age-related diminishing senses, eg. vision, grip, cognitive abilities.
- Non-native speakers: they can take longer time to understand content.
- SEO bots
Note: This post is part of a series on digital accessibility. The content of this series is based on various resources, including the Learn Accessibility course.
Top comments (0)