Inclusivity is incredibly important, even in web design. In this context, it means creating digital experiences that are usable and user-friendly for the largest possible audience. And by this, we mean accessible.
Web accessibility refers specifically to a range of design and development techniques that make websites usable and accessible for people with disabilities, including auditory, visual, cognitive, and motor disabilities. In short, an accessible website caters to every possible type of user and offers a seamless, smooth browsing experience.
In this guide, we will define web accessibility and web accessibility design principles in detail. We will also explore the importance of creating accessible websites and share our favourite tips and tricks for incorporating accessibility features into your website design projects.
Defining Web Accessibility
Web accessibility can be defined as a series of web design and development practices that help ensure that websites are accessible to people of all ages and levels of ability.
Accessible websites designed in line with these practices enable users with disabilities to easily perceive all of the information on the website, even when using assistive tools like screen magnification programs or screen readers.
Web designers or web design agencies who create accessible sites enable users to use all of a website’s features and functions autonomously or by using adapted interfaces or keyboard navigation tools.
These users will also be able to understand all of the website’s content through concise language and logical structuring and interact with it effectively, navigating through pages and completing forms with ease.
How Important is Accessibility in Web Design?
So, how important is accessibility in web design, and is it essential for users with impairments? In short, very, and yes! Web accessibility is absolutely vital for making websites accessible not only to general users but particularly to those with disabilities.
Examples of the Importance of Accessible Designs
As an example, picture a user with a visual impairment who uses a screen reader tool to navigate your website. If the images on your site do not have alternative text descriptions, this user would not be able to understand the themes or content of the images you have embedded in your website.
However, by incorporating alternative text into your site, the user’s screen reader can read out descriptions of the images to the user, helping to convey accurate meaning to them despite their inability to view the images themselves.
This simple accessibility feature can go a long way in creating a more inclusive experience for this user and other website users with similar impairments.
Even the simplest accessibility features, like colour contrast, can help users with disabilities access your websites more effectively. Low levels of colour contrast between backgrounds and text can pose challenges for website users with visual impairments, making the text challenging to read.
By incorporating appropriate contrast ratios between your backgrounds and text, you can help to ensure that all users find your content clear, legible, and easy to read.
Accessibility Matters: The Benefits of Accessible Web Designs
Inclusion is an important ethical consideration when designing websites. However, inclusion is not the only benefit that well-designed and accessible websites have to offer. In fact, web accessibility offers numerous advantages to both website users and your web design agency’s clients and user agents.
Expanding Reach
Firstly, accessible websites tend to have a broader reach, helping clients engage a wider audience that includes people with disabilities. This can positively impact a client’s brand awareness and give them access to a larger pool of potential customers and clients.
Enhanced User Experience
Accessibility features enhance the user experience on desktop and mobile devices. Features such as alternative text for images and clear, easy navigation benefit not only users with disabilities but everyone who visits a well-designed site.
Improved Search Engine Rankings
Accessibility features may even improve a website’s search engine rankings, as search engines like Google factor user experience into their ranking algorithms. By incorporating these features into your web designs, you may make your websites more discoverable as well.
Legal and Regulatory Compliance
Creating accessible web designs helps your web design agency clients maintain legal compliance with regulations. Web accessibility standards are being increasingly widely adopted into laws and regulations around the world. Making your designs more accessible enables your web design agency and its clients to remain compliant.
Relevant Web Accessibility Standards
There are a few key web accessibility design principles that are crucial to your success as a web designer or web design agency looking to create more inclusive designs and incorporate accessibility into your web design work.
One of the most relevant standards today is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These international web accessibility standards outline a clear range of principles that enable designers to create more accessible and user-friendly sites.
The web accessibility design principles include the following key stipulations for web designers:
- Websites, their user interface aspects, and the information they contain should be presented in a way that is easily perceivable by users.
- User navigation and interface components need to be operable (easy to use) by website visitors.
- The information contained in websites and the usability of their interfaces must be understandable to website users.
- Website content needs to be robust enough to be accurately interpreted by many different assistive tools and technologies.
Following these WCAG guidelines will assist web designers or your web design team in creating websites that can be accessed and used by everyone, regardless of their unique abilities.
How to Implement Accessibility Features
Now that you understand the importance of web accessibility features in your designs, use these web accessibility design principles in your web design team's development process to make your web design agency’s projects as accessible as possible:
- Use clear, direct, and concise language in your text and web pages, which can easily be read by website users and assistive technologies.
- Include alternative text descriptions for every image and video you embed in your website.
- Consider incorporating non-visual alternatives to complex images on your site, such as simple graphs, charts or infographics.
- Use appropriate colour contrast between backgrounds and text to ensure that your on-site content is legible, even to people with visual impairment. To make your designs more visually accessible, you may consider using colour palettes specifically designed to be accessible to the 300+ million people worldwide who are colour blind. Another key consideration is omitting flashing content on your site designs to make them more accessible to anyone with epilepsy.
- Ensure that all of your site's text is legible, even when users zoom in to enlarge it.
- Structure your web page's content in a logical way, using appropriate headings wherever necessary.
- Incorporate descriptive links into your web design. Your link text should convey exactly where the link will navigate your users to, even when its context is removed. For instance, instead of ‘Click here’, you could incorporate a link that says, ‘Discover more about our products’.
- Ensure that your web design keyboard navigation is functional, seamless and smooth. All of the interactive elements on your site, including menus, buttons and forms, should be functional using the keyboard alone to ensure that users using assistive navigation technologies can access them.
- Test your web design site with a range of assistive technologies and user agents before it goes live to ensure that these technologies can navigate it effectively. You can use browser developer tools, various screen reader programs, and voice recognition tools to test your website from the perspective of users with different disabilities and identify areas that need further optimisation.
Bringing Web Accessibility Design Principles To Life
At Ryde, we believe that everyone deserves unhindered access to information and opportunities online. Our web design agency team is committed to developing websites that provide an inclusive digital experience to everyone, including people with disabilities.
Talk to us about how our award-winning web design agency can help you embrace accessibility and play a part in creating a more inclusive digital landscape.
