Title: 7 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about Accessibility
Context: Accessibility isn’t just a good idea, it’s the law. Seriously.
Synopsis: You’ve just finished a many month-long redesign of a huge UI overhaul. You spent sleepless nights agonizing over fonts, colors, iconography, page layout. You sweated every detail, perfected every pixel, and now it’s ready to go out the door. Time to worry about accessibility, right? Wrong! The lack of appreciation for, and understanding of, accessibility requirements among design professionals is a bit shocking to be honest. When was the last time you developed a persona for a hearing impaired user? Have you checked your latest designs against a screen reader? Where does your most recent spec for keyboard navigation live? Is accessibility hard? No, it is surprisingly understandable—once you know what to account for. Does accessibility add overhead? Yes, but only in the sense that any other user requirement does. You wouldn’t leave a user-constraint until the last-minute for a non-challenged user, yet we still treat accessibility as an add-on, not because we think it’s the right thing to do, we just don’t know any better. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and now, by failing to proactively account for accessibility in your designs, you are breaking the law so let’s get rid of the ignorance instead of perpetuating crimes against our users.
Best Bit: “Embrace these accessibility guidelines as you would any set of design constraints. They are part of the challenge of creating amazing products.”
via medium.com
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