100 Days of A11y
Day 94: Designing an Accessible User Experience, Part 2
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Learning directly from users with disabilities can be one of the most valuable things you can do as a part of the design process.
Today's dedicated accessibility time was a continuation of Part 1 on the topic of designing an accessible user experience.
Things I accomplished
Permalink for "Things I accomplished"- Continued Deque's "Designing an Accessible User Experience" course. 67% complete.
What I reviewed today
Permalink for "What I reviewed today"- A barrier is exclusion. Exclusion is the failure to meet an accessible design challenge;
- Plan for accessibility from the beginning and throughout the project;
- Common design failures:
- no semantic markup
- custom widgets without ARIA
- custom widgets without keyboard focus management
- poor color contrast
- visual-only cues for form validation;
- Test with real users;
- Disability is a spectrum;
- Accessible design is often inclusive;
What I learned from it
Permalink for "What I learned from it"Referring to statistical probability in math, if you were to target your design at users who fall in the middle of the normal bell curve, you would meet the needs of only 68% of your users. Admittedly, designing for the edge cases requires more skill and planning than designing only for the normal user, but the return is much greater, too.
Best statements of the day
Permalink for "Best statements of the day"Knowledge is power... and opportunity... and responsibility.
People with disabilities are in the minority, but that doesn't make their characteristics irrelevant to the majority.