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Jul 6, 2015
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UI Design
Why You Should Design for Accessibility
Author Kevin Connors
“If you think about a person in a wheelchair, they’re going to find it very difficult to head down to the local bank office to do their banking. Having an online banking system makes life a lot easier for that person. If they’re actually a quadriplegic, having an inaccessible online banking system means they can’t do their banking at all.” – Gian Wild on Accessibility
I recently tried browsing the internet with VoiceOver, Apple’s built-in screen reader software. It quickly showed me how frustrating navigating poorly designed websites can be for blind or visually-impaired users. For example, when searching for a word at Merriam-Webster, I was actually unable to locate its definition. Instead, I found “Trend Watch,” word games, an article called “10 Charming Words for Nasty People,” and a link to Merriam-Webster’s Twitter account.
Sadly, Merriam-Webster is far from alone—most web pages are poorly optimized for screen readers. Screen readers work by navigating a site’s HTML markup in a hierarchical manner, from [...]