How Accessibility provides an efficient User Experience?
So first, what does accessibility mean?
If we take the commercial approach, “Accessibility” is the idea that a product when it is out in the market reaches every individual living in the world. Therefore, you’ll find that there are even laws about accessibility to aid individuals with disabilities. So these days designers need to create designs that have a better user experience and reach everyone.
Now coming to web accessibility means everyone gets the opportunity to get access to the same information, including users with any disabilities. There are many types of disabilities a user may face, including:-
a) Physical disabilities
b) Intellectual disabilities
c) Visual disabilities
Therefore, you’ll find that people of older age groups will benefit from accessibility recommendations. People nowadays should give more importance to accessibility on the web because ten years back the Internet was a different place, mostly tech geeks used it for gaining information. But in the present scenario, things have changed a lot, the web is treated as the basic source of information for everyone around the world along with e-commerce, education and for communication.
However, there are people among us who are impaired with certain disabilities and can’t get access to vital information as some websites don’t pay heed to their needs. Therefore, it’s important that websites don’t deprive people with disabilities and create content that can be accessible to them too.
Usability vs Accessibility
It’s common to see this notion that most people confuse Usability with Accessibility. Both of them are definitely important in building a good user experience, but there is a fine line of difference between them.
When you talk about Usability, it refers to the design of a product that is appealing to your users and also efficient and satisfying the users’ need in working. Therefore, usability directly requires accessibility as a product that is not well accessible isn’t usable either and usability doesn’t pertain to the user experience of individuals with disabilities.
However, accessibility means products that function exactly the same for everyone regardless of their disabilities and also help in a better user experience.
Importance of Web Accessibility
1) It’s a legal compliance
If you look at the USA, there is even a Disabilities Act which was proposed back in the nineties to fulfill accessibility requirements for disabled people. However, back then the Act was only related to stores in the market, but after 2015 there was a huge number of lawsuits regarding websites and applications so they also get covered in the Act and physically impaired people can benefit from them.
2) Getting more customers
Recently I’ve come across a statistic where it stated that over 75% of people with disabilities don’t trust a website because of the hurdles they face in accessing information. Thus this helps to reach out to more people. So the companies at present should improve their user experience for disabled people as it will not only keep their previous consumers but will also bring new ones. Also, people will revere and value your website more.
3) Morally correct
As someone who developed the product, no one would want their product somehow doesn’t reach someone. It would not be fair if someone seeking out the information you provide couldn’t access it due to some underlying disability.
Ways to improve the user experience for people with disabilities
a) Disabilities related to motor functions
There are a lot of individuals around the world who have transient or permanent motor disabilities that don’t allow them to use a mouse or track pad of the laptop. So they must use the arrow keys or the tab keys to move across the webpage. A website must be more functional so that someone with physical disabilities can use the keyboard as a substitute, thus improving accessibility for everyone and improving the web traffic. It needs only a tad bit of work to test what they may face by detaching your mouse.
The website will unanimously choose the tab button on the keyboard to move around the website. Therefore, it helps a great deal in improving accessibility for your website.
b) Sensory disabilities
One of the most common sensory disabilities that people face is hearing and sight problems. However, older people tend to have more problems because of failing health from hearing to color blind issues. Thus, to improve web accessibility for people with sensory disabilities, one can use video captioning and text transcripts in their websites so it helps people with hearing ailments. Also, for a better visual experience, low contrast can be avoided.
Ways to check the accessibility of your website
1) Being at par with guidelines
There are guidelines made internationally so that websites are more accessible and can be easily used by everyone. All websites have to keep to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These were mainly made for designers and developers so that while making a website they make sure it is accessible to everyone and follow the four principles: robust, understandable, perceivable, and can be easily operated.
2) User testing
The key to solving problems for people with disabilities is implementing the remedies for disabilities right in the testing process. Design the product not only for core users but also for extreme users. Therefore, you’ll easily be able to get important feedback before launching it to the public and improve the problems faced in the testing process. It’s highly advisable to use a UX designer who will create test scenarios that will test various disabilities.
3) Accessibility tools
There are various easy-to-use tools that help you check the accessibility of your product. If you are creating a website and want to check the accessibility, numerous plugins are there that analyze your website using accessibility rules and give you insights about whether your website needs improvement. Some of these chrome plugins or extensions are G WAVE Evaluation Tool, axe — Web Accessibility Testing, Accessibility Insights for Web , Siteimprove Accessibility Checker.
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User accessibility is something that is slowly turning out to be a huge issue for everyone as everything has become internet-oriented and the population is increasing exponentially. Twenty years from now, the aging population of now will double itself and physical disabilities will increase hand in hand.
It’s becoming a challenging task for companies who ignore accessibility as they are already losing a lot of potential customers because of their inflexible attitude. Therefore, the revenue earned by them will gradually decrease. We live in a world where everyone is treated equally so denying the basic human right to access information will badly affect the image of the business organizations.
Hence, accessibility plays a huge role in the user experience as better accessibility will get more traffic on your website, thus more search engine optimization.
