#25 The Accessibility Revolution: How Technology is Empowering Everyone
23:36 Share

Accessibility is the future. For us it's absolutely necessary to create and design digital products that are accessible to everyone.

Hello and welcome back to the podcast "The Future of UX" where we explore how emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, AR, VR and the metaverse will impact user experience design. And in this episode we will be discussing how we can design accessible products for our users.

So this podcast is actually the same outline like I did in a talk a couple of weeks ago where I was invited to an event from Mutabor in Hamburg and Otto, the e-commerce website, and I talked about designing accessible products. I actually shared five learnings, five tips, and I'm going to share the same learnings with you in this podcast.

And why is the topic now more important than ever? So there's actually a new law that says that websites, digital products need to be accessible until June 2025, so around like two years. And if you have a look at most websites, most digital products, they are absolutely not accessible, not for people with any disabilities.

So we have a lot of things to do until then and yeah, I would say let's get started. I'm going to share five learnings, five things that will be helpful for you if you want to dive a little bit deeper into the topic of accessibility. It will be absolutely necessary. Before we start, I want to share a fact or a stat that I think is pretty interesting. Because more than 15% of the world population is estimated to have to live with some form of disability.

And for me, that's like a super, super high number. Look at like 15%. That's so many people, right? It's not like a tiny group, but 15% is so much. So I'm designing digital products. This is my day-to-day task. As you all know, I'm a freelancer X designer, so I'm designing digital products every day.

And for me, when I'm thinking about digital products, they are for me a little bit like roads. You know, like a road brings people or transports people from one place to the other. So this is like the path that people can use to get from their home to the beach, from their home to the office, for example, or to the shopping center, wherever they actually want to go. And there are different kinds of roads, right? There are old bumpy country roads. There are perfectly built roads, right?

And of course also super nice cozy roads with a lot of plants on the side that are a little bit more like romantic. And I found one example online that I think is super interesting. Maybe some of you have heard about it. It's a road in Long Island and there are a lot of traffic jams. And the reason for it is that it's regularly caused by car accidents.

Because many of the bridges or the pathways that are crossing the street are too low clearance height for commercial vehicles. So for buses or also for any kind of like transportation vehicles like transport vehicles.

And the problem mainly can be traced back to Robert Moses. He was an architect living in Long Island and he designed many of these pathways, these bridges over the roads. And he designed them in the 1920s and 1930s more or less. And a lot of people really say that Moses was a racist.

And many people say that low bridges were designed so that not buses from the city of people of color who really used that, these buses could reach the Long Island parkways and the beaches so that they needed to stay inside. And only the people with the cars, the people with like a higher salary, mostly white people, could use these roads to get to the beaches or wherever they want to go.

Pretty shocking. Many of these bridges are still there. So there are a ton of these bridges and I think it's super interesting. Because when I see that, right, like these blockers that not everyone can actually use the road. That's the same thing with digital products.

we have a street and obviously like everyone can use them but there are also blockers that prevent some people from using it correctly of course the people who are you know have like a nice porsche they can drive through you know through the bridges no problem but the people who are who need the public need to use the public transport have a little bit more problems a little bit with like digital products as well

So let's start with the top five learnings about accessibility in UX. So one thing that I hear so much from clients, from people is accessibility is actually too expensive to integrate into the design process. First learning:

Accessibility should be integrated in our design process. It should be knitted in every part of the design process and not do like one tiny thing at the end, right? Because then it really gets expensive. And although in the beginning you need to have a higher investment, but you also save a lot of money in the end because you don't need to change like the whole code or everything if things are planned correctly.

So if it comes to accessibility in UX, the earlier you think about it, the better. It's easier to make changes to a design when it's still in the wireframing or prototyping phase rather than waiting for development to begin and then you need to change the whole code. So when you think about the human-centered design process, about the double diamond approach, and think about the different phases of the design process, of course it always looks a bit different, depends on the project.

But I can share already three things that are helpful when it comes to the design process and accessibility. The first and most important thing is to integrate diverse research target groups. And that can be people with, of course, with disabilities, but also older people who have different kind of like age-caused disabilities.

Then my tip number two is create multiple navigation options, right? It's also like screen readers, for example, and thinking about all the different touch points. And number three is user-friendly design concepts. And we will do a deep dive into that and see what does it really mean. We will also share some quick tips later. Okay, let's come to point number two. And this is what I hear actually the most is when I'm designing products with clients.

A lot of people say, let's start with like the normal users and then see how we integrate the rest. And what I can say is my learning number two is there is no normal, right? Like when we talk about normal people, that's actually not right. Most of the times when digital products are designed, you focus on the 80% of normal people and leaving 20% out, people with any kind of disabilities. But...

And when you really use that approach, it's actually not really correct because there is some kind of like a gradient from people who are normal people. These people actually don't exist. There is like the perfect person, right? Like when you think about it, who has like perfect sight, perfect vision, perfect focus, you know, it's like they're all the time totally focused and

But then it kind of fades out to people who have like permanent, temporary or based on like situational disabilities, right? So in fact, many of the principles of accessible design such as clear and concise language, consistent navigation, a legible typography benefit all users regardless of their abilities.

So by using clear language and simple navigations, users can quickly find what they are looking for. And legible typography can reduce eye strain and make reading easier for everyone. Additionally, designing for accessibility can create a more inclusive and also welcoming user experience for everyone. Like by prioritizing accessibility, you can send a message that the needs and abilities for everyone are important and valuable.

And not only an ethical topic here, but also like a business focused topic, right? Because leaving these 20% out means repelling customers, repelling paying customers. Although these 20% would love to use your service, would love to pay for your services, buy your products.

And by leaving them out, you're just like leaving a lot of money also out. And I think the business case is super important here. So to design for accessibility for all users, it's super important to consider a broad range of user needs and preferences. And this may include also, you know, things such as cognitive abilities, language preferences, cultural background, as well as physical disabilities.

There's one thing that was really eye-opening for me. I actually got that from a talk from Kat Holmes. I will link it in the show notes so you can check it out.

And she really shared the different stages of disabilities. When we are thinking about disabilities, we usually think of people who are blind, who have just one arm or who have any permanent disabilities. But the truth is that there are also people who have temporary disabilities. For example, they're not blind, but they have an eye infection or they have...

They usually have two arms but one is broken and they are situational disabilities. So they are not blind, they don't have an eye infection but they are driving a car or they are cooking, right? So they are busy with something else so they can't look at something. Or they are carrying a baby, right? Like on their arm. So they can only use one hand and the other is busy.

And this really means that these 15% are actually much higher because you, as a people who has like no problem with any kind of disabilities, of course, always gets into the situation of temporary and situational disabilities. And that really gets interesting because the number of like 20% that you leave out is actually much, much higher, right?

I think this is like a good thing to keep that in mind. Okay, let's come to point number three. And what I hear so often and I can totally relate to that is I don't really know where to start. So my tip number three is there are guidelines and policies that can help. For example, there is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. And this is a set of policies and standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium.

W3C to ensure that digital content is accessible to people with disabilities. And these guidelines encompass four principles: perceivable, operatable, understandable and robust. And each principle is divided into various guidelines and success criteria that relate to different aspects of web content such as text alternatives for images, keyboard accessibility, color contrast and more.

So I can highly recommend to just check it out. I will link it in the show notes so you can have a look. So this website is actually huge. So there are a lot of tips. So I want to share with you some quick tips. Even if you, so if you do these tips, you already like improve the product so much. So the first is design for all platforms and devices.

What happens in many cases is that certain digital products or websites are not designed for different internet browsers or different phones. You're only designed for a certain phone type or leave out like older phones, for example. And that makes it really difficult. So this is something that you can check pretty easily and then do adjustments.

The second quick tip is add descriptive link text. You know, the anchor text when you have something like "read more", for example. So anchor text refers to like the clickable text with a hyperlink. And it is important to ensure that the anchor text is meaningful, descriptive and also relevant to the content it refers to. For example, instead of using anchor text,

like click here or read more that provide no context to linked content, it would be better to use descriptive text like learn more about our services or read our latest blog post on digital marketing. So using descriptive and meaningful anchor text not only improves the accessibility and readability for your content, but also makes it easier for search engines to understand and appropriately rank the content. So this is like another really good pro tip.

The next quick tip are accessible fonts and I think this is something that everyone really knows and also can be tested with a lot of different tools with usability testing as well. So overall you can say that the sans serif fonts, so

are easier to read especially online if you have any serif fonts use them or any like decorative fonts use them like in a bigger size for headlines only so it's easier for people to to really read that tip the next quick tip are color contrast and i think this is probably like the most important one i would say

it's all about contrasts. So the contrast from the background to the typography, the contrast between different kind of colors, the contrast from like typography for example on the colored background. So the higher the contrast the easier it is to read. Also you have a higher contrast if things are bigger right? So if you have like a bigger typography

then the contrasts are automatically higher. So that's I think really helpful. There are also a ton of amazing plugins for Figma that you can download where you can just like check if the color contrast is enough, if that's like a triple A standard, this is how you actually call that. And yeah, then you can choose the right colors.

So the next quick tip is optimize for screen readers. A number that really surprised me from SSOB is that 7.3 million people in the US rely on screen readers to navigate the web. And it really would be wrong to neglect this tool when designing a product or service with any online presence.

So all the online content should be accessible and readable through a screen reader. One tip there, for example, is to have a description above an input field. Otherwise, the screen reader can't really read it. Another problem that happens pretty, pretty often is when you have a pop-up that the screen reader reads the content that is on the main page and not the content on the pop-up.

pretty difficult things that you just need to test out and try out and there is a screen reader automatically integrated in your phone so you can just like check it out for your web page and see how that works and from my experience this is one of the easiest thing to to fail right because you just like don't think about it at all and the next tip is reduce animations too

Animations are great if they're telling a story, if they really help the user to navigate the content and find what they need. But most of the times it's just some kind of like a visual thing. And it can be really tempting to include many moving images in the design. And this decision really requires some like very careful consideration. It is advisable to include a mix of text and visual elements in the content so that all users can interact with it equally.

But additionally, moving images, particularly like flashing images, can be problematic for users and should be therefore avoided if it's possible. Okay, that's with the quick tips. Get to point number four. Yeah, and I think this is an interesting one because even if you do all the quick tips, you think like, oh, I have designed everything as prescribed, you know, I am done now.

But unfortunately not. Same with user research, the discussion that we had a few years ago where it was like, oh, I did user research once. You know, check, I did it. I'm done. Of course not. Accessibility is not a sprint. It's also not a marathon. It's more a long-term walk with breaks, right?

Good accessibility really responds to complying with regulations, but great accessibility is based on empathy. Always include accessibility in the design process. And what I think is, it's also a mindset. So it's not just like, oh, I need to do these regulations. It's like so annoying. But once you have done user testing or research with people with disabilities, you start to

See that as a design challenge and you really want to help people and want to make things accessible, not only from the business and ethical point of view, but also from your own design point of view, right? Like designers are problem solvers, right?

So I think like seeing that more as a mindset to making things inclusive and accessible for everyone is important and that should be a thing that also we as designers talk about, learn about and want to be curious about. Yeah, more than just seeing it as like a regulation or something that you need to do but more about a mindset. I think this is super super super important and this is also why I wanted to highlight it here. And I also have another tool tip for you. One

One thing that I really love is the Wave Chrome extension. You can download it for free, install it in Chrome, and then you run it on a website. And this extension shows you different kind of tool, like arrows, alerts from a website. So they check the contrast, they check the links, they check if an image has alt text, for example, something that...

It's also a good tip. I actually forgot it with the quick tips, but I think it's still important to keep that in mind that every image, every media, every video need to have alt text. And alt text is the description that the screen reader reads. So for example, if you have an image of like Nike shoes, then the alt text would be describing the shoe, how it looks like. Black Nike sports shoe with...

red colors and something like that. Like everything that needs the reader to know, to understand what's in the image. So definitely check out the WAVE Chrome extension. It's absolutely amazing. A great thing to just get started and see how many errors or issues there might be with your website. Okay, and let's come to point number five, which is a little bit of like a smaller point, but I still want to mention it. And this is thinking about the future.

And especially at the moment, there is so much going on about AI, about ethical AI products, about the future. There are two things that I find super interesting when it comes to the future. The first thing is, and I...

I think like we are definitely not there yet, is that AI systems need to be transparent and understandable for all users. This is definitely not the case at the moment. We don't know what's the input data. We don't know how things are working. And this is exactly not how things should be. Because not every one of us has studied machine learning or AI in university. Only like a super small percentage really understand what is going on in there. And I would say the...

responsibility of the provider of the software of the company to share what is actually going on between closed doors or share what they know what is the training data who actually trained it what kind of people were there were there any kind of diversity included this is also a part of accessibility explaining what is going on so people understand

And the second thing that I find super exciting is thinking about new input fields, for example, like voice design, integrating your voice as an input field, new ways of navigation, AR/VR content as well. And yeah, also gesture, right? So how does that all be? Can this all be included in our new design products?

super exciting i don't have an answer for that now um but i think this is something that we definitely need to focus on and need to think about okay so friends i hope this was helpful i added a few of the links in the description box and if you want to learn more about this topic i also share um content about the future new tools and products in my weekly

free newsletter so you can just subscribe I added the description in the description box and the link to the newsletter and sign up and you get all the fresh new cool design content insights resources in your mailbox for free each week

Okay, if you find this episode helpful, feel free to share it with a colleague or with a friend or on Instagram, of course, what you like. And yes, thank you so much for listening. Let's make this world a little bit more accessible and create a better future for everyone. Thank you so much for listening and hear you in the future.