Accessibility isn’t niche; it benefits everyone. This is because everyone will have accessibility needs at some point in their life – accessibility can be permanent, temporary or situational.
- Good colour contrast makes it easier to see what’s on your screen in strong sunshine – and helps people with visual impairments.
- Larger buttons and inputs make it easier to place an order while on a bumpy train – and for somebody with arthritis or Parkinson’s Disease.
- Video captions are really helpful if you’re trying to watch a video in a quiet library or a bustling airport – and for those who are hard of hearing.
It’s highly likely that we will all, sooner or later, experience situations like these when using the web, so let’s do better for ourselves and others.
Experiences on the web
When we talk about designing for the web, we use the terms ‘user stories’ and ‘user personas’. They enable us to understand the motivation and needs of website users, helping us write our content, plan, and design and build better user experiences.
It can be difficult to visualise and experience how other people experience the web. The Digital Inclusion and Accessibility Standards team at HMRC have created a virtual empathy hub, where eight accessibility personas give examples of how people might experience the web differently, including a sight-impaired user, a dyslexic user, and an older user with multiple conditions.
These personas help us to think beyond wheelchairs and screen readers, and to remember that disabilities are complicated. Not all disabilities are visible, not all disabilities are static, and disabilities are not always singular.
The Web Accessibility Initiative from W3C is another great resource for understanding how people use the web, with lots of helpful videos and user stories. They offer a free Digital Accessibility Foundations online course, the heart of which is the concept that accessibility is about people and when you design for the few, you help the many.
In the course, you learn about web accessibility through real stories of people with disabilities and their interactions in the digital world, including how important responsive design is, how assistive technology works, and how people use adaptive strategies like removing images from web pages.
Accessibility is good design
The social model of disability challenges the perception of disability as a problem within a person’s body that requires some form of intervention or treatment. Instead, disability is reframed as a mismatch between a person and their social environment. In other words, it’s systemic barriers, attitudes and exclusion within society that cause the negative impacts of disability.
A web for all
The web is for everyone, but we all need to have an accessibility mindset to make that a reality.
The UN in its Disability Inclusion Strategy in 2019, said “the full and complete realisation of the human rights of all persons with disabilities is an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
Good, accessible content and design serve everyone on the web. We believe in keeping the front-end simple and using tried and tested technology to build accessible, resilient websites that work for everyone.