Design Focus for accessibility: Thoughts from Microsoft Ability 2023
At Microsoft’s 2023 Ability Summit it was stated that 94.7% of websites are not accessible – and the percentage is even higher when it comes to internal systems and platforms. There is so much room for improvement in this area - design is a key area of accessibility – and the trick is to design websites, apps and platforms with the users included from the get-go.
By designing for accessibility, it becomes embedded in the core of the system, rather than being an afterthought. Not only is this easier, quicker, and cheaper, it also makes accessible design standard practice and helps you to get into the hearts and minds of your users. This method makes sure no one is excluded – everyone gets to experience good design.
Simple solutions are often the best when it comes to a focus on accessible design. This process allows designers to set aside impressive (but unnecessary) design features that require more hours to design than they’re worth and teaches us that simple is better. Simple designs don’t age as quickly, are easier to replicate and edit, and get the message across quicker.
Sometimes, designing with accessibility in mind can bring benefits to everyone – whether they originally required these adaptations or not. For example, video captioning has been widely introduced to meet the deaf community’s needs by allowing them to absorb video content, but is now widely used across society by people who are in situations when they can’t listen to audio, or when they’re in noisy environments and can’t quite hear the video sound, or even just to help them follow the video and take in the content easier. The deaf community experienced a problem and implemented a solution, but in doing so, they benefitted everyone.
Accessible design shouldn’t be seen as a bonus – but a requirement. If a building isn’t accessible, let’s say it has a few steps leading into the entrance that can’t be accessed by someone in a wheelchair, then the building should make adaptions to make it accessible for all. Therefore, if your website isn’t accessible then you should make the changes needed to make it accessible – it’s simple. The user shouldn’t have to ignore their needs or put up with design that is unsuitable for them. Plus, when you view accessible design as an added extra, there’s a high chance you could be detracting from your customer base and losing out on valuable business.
The best way to approach accessibility, of course, is to go above and beyond. Delight users who don’t view the minimum as enough by providing accessible experiences with everyone in mind. For the Rio Olympics, medal designers went beyond expectations by not only including braille on each medal to help winners distinguish between gold, silver, and bronze, but also filling the medals with metal balls so each medal category made a different sound when shaken. The braille would have been the minimum effort for the designers, but the decided to go the extra mile and include those with visual impairments by adding sound. Just like video captioning, this added feature delighted every winner, not just the people that designers had in mind.
One way to understand your website’s, app’s, or platform’s accessibility requirements is to carry out quality assurance testing. Running tests on your content is a sure way to find all the areas of improvement and measure it over time. Portals, documents, and emails should also be tested and assessed for their accessibility, plus any other content that is frequently used by internal and external stakeholders.
Most of the time, people simply want to do their job and need the tech to help them do it efficiently. People with additional tech needs are often early adopters of tech. They’re open to change and improvement and are often in search of new features and technologies to solve their problems. Remove the friction; provide accessible content and solutions to your employees and customers.
