Accessibility Guidelines for UX Designers

Getting started with Digital Accessibility and Inclusive Design

You may already be familiar with the terms, accessibility and inclusive design, but what is the difference between these two practices?

• Accessibility specifies to what degree an experience can be used by all people, taking care to incorporate best practices to cater to common types of access considerations.
• Inclusive design encompasses accessibility but also takes on board a broad range of perspectives to avoid bias and ensure an experience does not exclude or disadvantage anyone.

Typically, accessibility aims to provide users with varying abilities access to experiences that are often built without them in mind. Accessibility is unfortunately often an after-thought or modification to an existing design.

Inclusive design, on the other hand, aims to provide an experience that works for everyone equally with or without special modifications. This is often done by giving users several options and allowing them to choose what works best for them at any given time.

Why do these practices matter?

1 in 5 Canadians live with a disability. And, as people age, their likelihood to experience issues goes up – nearly 40% of the population over the age of 65 is affected by one or more disabilities on a daily basis. It's clear from these numbers that there is a large and growing market of people that require accessible services and tools.

And it’s not only those with ‘diagnosed’ or permanent disabilities who benefit from design considerations. Situations can cause changes in ability too, for example when someone breaks their arm or has eye surgery, or is simply in a crowded place looking to access information. There are many situations where solutions designed for permanent disabilities help to resolve temporary issues.

A great example of this is the curb cut.

Initially, it was designed for wheelchair users, but it's also used by parents with strollers, teenagers on skateboards, you (probably) and me.

By designing with accessibility and inclusion in mind, and explicitly considering the needs of all users, we can help everyone. But we need to be careful when we do it.

What’s wrong with this picture?

The architect wanted to make something for everyone by combining the stairs and ramp. However: 

1. The ramp is steep and has no railings
2. The stairs are not functional where they intersect with the ramp
3. This design required a sign to be added to tell people to watch their step

So, what can we learn from these examples as digital researchers and designers?

It’s critically important to consider the digital accessibility of our products and services, and there are several simple ways of doing this.

Here are four starting points:

1. Perform an accessibility assessment of your website or app.

Spatial Research + Design can help with this step which is critical to staying ahead of digital accessibility legislation. Our Accessibility Scorecard identifies areas for improvement and provides actionable recommendations to improve your UX accessibility.

2. Get familiar with key principles of inclusive design.

The following six principles by Lillian Xiao provide a good starting point

• Seek out points of exclusion, to understand how and why people are excluded.
• Identify situational challenges by considering context and how it might impact accessibility.
• Recognize personal biases to look past your own experiences.
• Offer different ways to engage to allow users to choose the method that serves them best at any given time.
• Provide equivalent experiences by making sure your engagement options are comparable.
• Extend the solution to everyone so your design offers benefit to broader audiences.

3. Make your research methods more accessible and inclusive.

There are many things that can be done to improve our research methods including  engaging a wide range of users, having accessible facilities, normalizing accessibility, and ensuring any documentation (screeners, agreements, NDAs, etc.) is easy to understand. Lauren Isaacson of Curio Research suggests these four tips for making your research inclusive (review her whole presentation on inclusive research to learn more):

• Mind your manners by putting the person first and not making any assumptions about their abilities.
• Design inclusively by providing options for recruiting, preparing for, conducting and participating in your research. This includes everything from higher incentives (due to greater potential difficulties to participate) to accessible facilities, to compliant devices and materials.
• Be accommodating by being a good host and building rapport, and understanding that not everyone will be able to complete every task as you might expect.
• Be willing to modify your approach including having a back-up plan for varying abilities that emerge and providing breaks.

4. Try out some digital accessibility tools to understand the experience.

The favourite word of every UXer is empathy. But to be truly empathetic, we must consider all users, including those with motor, visual or other impairments. So, how does your design play out when you use a screen-reader? What about if you tab through with your keyboard? Make sure you test your design with digital accessibility tools to see how it really performs.

Want to learn in a different format? For Canada's National AccessAbility Week on June 1st-5th,2020, Spatial Research & Design's Amelia Guimarin hosted a free webinar on the topic of accessibility and inclusive design. You can view it below or read the transcript here.