Solving Interaction and Design for All: Tackling UX Challenges with Accessibility Insights
Jim Thatcher, co-author of Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance and a noted accessibility expert, has a great way to think about accessibility. He says, “I’ve gotta be able to (1) get there, (2) know where I am, and (3) know what I can do.”
This sounds a lot like good usability. Maybe focusing on accessibility objectives can help surface UX issues and offer ways to address them. We can go beyond the “accidental benefits” of accessibility and improve a product or site’s overall usability through accessibility insights. In the process, we might make our sites more usable for everyone.
Here are some examples:
Reduce Cognitive Burden and Boost Learnability
As user experience designers and developers, we still make users think too much. It’s not usually intentional, but it happens.
For instance, a woman who uses a screen magnifier is looking at your financial services website. She magnifies her screen twenty-six times (26 X), so instead of the usual 960-pixel wide viewport, hers is just 37 pixels wide. With such a small space visible, she needs context embedded in each screen element to find a relevant link. Ambiguous links such [...]