Designing for Accessibility - WordCamp London 2017
- 2. What I’m going to cover
Accessibility of websites and apps is primarily
down to markup – HTML or native app
languages.
But…
Design decisions can also influence
accessibility too.
@coolfields
- 3. What I’m going to cover
• Colour
• Catering for keyboard users
• Text and content
• Forms
@coolfields
- 7. Colour contrast – text/background
7@coolfields
http://paciellogroup.com/resources/contrastAnalyser
- 8. Colour contrast – text/background
8@coolfields
http://paciellogroup.com/resources/contrastAnalyser
- 9. Colour contrast – between elements
9@coolfields
Low vision affects around 2 million people in the UK.
- 10. So, good colour contrast is important.
But,
you can have too much…
@coolfields
- 12. Colour contrast for dyslexics
@coolfields
On The Beach
The sun baked down as I stumbled across
the ground.
I climbed way up to the top of the hill,
They all seem higher, and they always will.
To think I once had a postcard of this view,
sent by you,
How things change.
Original View What Tracy needs
On The Beach
The sun baked down as I stumbled across
the ground.
I climbed way up to the top of the hill,
They all seem higher, and they always will.
To think I once had a postcard of this view,
sent by you,
How things change.
Dyslexia affects approx 10% of the population, so over 6 million people in the UK.
Lyrics © Graham Armfield
- 14. Using colour to convey meaning
14
Project Name Status Fully
Resourced?
Easy peasy project a
Quite a tricky project a
So glad I'm not on that project r
Going OK a
@coolfields
Red-green colour blindness is the most common type of colour blindness.
- 20. Links, Buttons – define focus states
as well as hover states
For sighted keyboard users…
Keyboard focus should be at least as obvious as hover state.
20
Keyboard
Focus
Hover
- 24. Demo of keyboard focus
Good sites
• Gov.uk
• M&S Bank
Not so good sites
• Men’s Health magazine
• (Lego Shop)
- 26. Normal size
NB: Resizing and zooming are not the same thing.
Can your design handle resizing?
26@coolfields
Larger size
- 28. Demo of text resizing/zooming
Good sites
• Lego shop
Not so good sites
• Evans Cycles
• Dyson
- 30. "Rivers of white space"
Text justification
30
Left aligned textFully justified text
Editor's Notes
- My day job is mainly training developers in accessibility, and helping them solve accessibility issues.
But some aspects of the design can affect accessibility – both positively and not so positively
I'm going to have a look at a few of those.
- Who are we building websites for?
If a website is selling products or services, it's easy to miss out on sales if the site is inaccessible to some.
If we're building websites for clients, the we are hampering their business.
- It's important to remember who we're designing and building websites for – not everyone is the same.
What we want to avoid is the situation where people abandon a site because they can't use it easily.
Many people have poor vision, and the population is getting older as people live longer.
- A site I was involved in creating some years ago. Requirement was for an accessible website for a children's nursery. The initial design was very attractive, but very little of the reached the necessary colour contrast guidelines.
- In some places it's obvious where colour contrast is low.
- Even the main content text lack sufficient contrast.
- The borders on form elements are vital for some people
- A 'real-life' business example from a previous employer
- A more leisure orientated example
- Using colour is fine – just make sure it's not the only way
- Another way that colour alone is used to convey meaning
- Some thoughts on catering for keyboard only users
- Sadly this seems to be becoming more popular – removing all keyboard focus indication.
- Similar in a way to designing for mobile.
- Similar in a way to designing for mobile.
- Cause difficulty for many people – in many different ways.