Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2022

Not a week goes by that I don’t read an article or hear a conversation about actioning on accessibility. Teams who have achieved business-level buy-in to develop accessible products now face a larger challenge, actually achieving it.

Here are five ways you can take action on accessibility.

TLDR; What is Accessibility?

Generally, Accessibility is concerned with a user’s level of access to products or services; whether they be physical locations such as a bank, or virtual services such as a website or telephone line.

In this article, we are focusing on Accessibility in technology — specifically, Web Accessibility.

Here, we use the term Accessibility to describe the tools and techniques we employ in creating inclusive experiences, that aim to make our websites and applications usable by everyone.

W3C help to articulate what constitutes an accessible experience through Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) — an industry-standard set of guidelines that define objective measures. According to W3C, an accessible experience is one that is; perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.

This may sound a little complex and niche, but really, Accessibility is just great usability.

The intersection of accessibility and usability

In UX, we often approach user-centered design by first understanding our users’ goals, and then designing solutions to help our users achieve those goals.

Accessibility pushes user-centered design one step further and casts a wider net to consider — not only users’ goals, but also their context; their abilities, their challenges, the technology they are using to engage with us and the environment in which they are doing so.

Often, we talk about Accessibility in relation to support for users who identify as having a disability or impairment. While this is of course important, thinking about Accessibility in this light shows us that there is a potential to use what inclusive design teaches us, to make better experiences for everyone.

Impairment may not always be permanent. It may be temporary, as in the case of a broken arm causing mobility issues. It may also be situational, where the glare of sunlight prevents a user from reading an article on their screen.

5 ways to get started

1. Find your champions and accessibility users

The first move is simple but might take a little time. Accessibility is ultimately a journey, and you’re going to need support along the way. Identify your key supporters, the people who can support the work and give your mission momentum. My advice is to ensure that your champion network is diverse enough to cover each product development discipline (design, engineering, product, copy, etc…)

You also need to identify a clutch of users who identify as having accessibility needs. The conversation around impairment and disability can be incredibly personal and as such, it’s not always easy to find people. Fortunately, there are many agencies, groups, and even charities who are happy to lean in and support.

Some charities, like the RNIB, will even work with you to hold talks to help raise awareness in your business.

UX, Coffee + Code — Accessibility and inclusive design with Reginé Gilbert

2. Build empathy through accessibility personas.

Ever looked at the WCAG guidelines? Complex, right? The first step towards actioning accessibility is to build understanding among your product teams.

and I had a lot of success using personas to make sense of the key challenges disabled and impaired users can face.

This solution is certainly not foolproof, but it’s a start. Take a look at the personas.

UX, Coffee + Code — Creating Inclusive Personas with Alicia Crowther

3. Lean on your design system

In a recent conversation on UX, Coffee + Code with

, Accessibility Lead at Skyscanner. I learned that she is using design systems to solve for accessibility at the ground level, within the foundations of their design language.

As she explained, color contrast and text legibility can be the root of so many accessibility issues and they are incredibly straightforward to solve, once and for all. By thinking systematically, design systems can adjust color palettes and typographic hierarchies to meet basic accessibility requirements long before we designers ever put pen to paper.

UX, Coffee + Code — Scaling Accessibility at Skyscanner — Check out the transcript.

4. Build those designer-engineer relationships

As a product designer, what I find most challenging about creating inclusive designs is that accessibility is a little bit of an iceberg. Most of the solution lives in the technology, beneath the waterline and out of my view.

The solution is really to get cozy with my engineering pals and put in the time to really understand the workings of the underlying technology.

Check out this example, working with an engineer colleague to build an accessible toolbar.

UX, Coffee + Code — Building for Accessibility with Emma Pratt Richens

5. Create a perspective and objective

Accessibility is a journey. You can’t flip the switch and there are no overnight fixes if you have an established product.

This can be really overwhelming for teams who inevitably ask, where should I start.

My advice is to pick one area of concern, like solving for users with visual impairments and unpack that.

• Identify where the issues are. You may need to employ the services of an external agency, there are lots of them!
• Identify a resolution plan. Who will own the adjustments? Maybe it’s a shared responsibility between your designers and engineers
• Look for opportunities to automate. Bake these considerations into your design system, or invest in some automated test suites to give you future coverage
• Verify your actions. Did they actually solve a problem for these users?

Further reading