Start with accessible design
Fortunately, companies are increasingly talking about designing for inclusion. Digital accessibility is an important part of this. Companies thus ensure that everyone can participate in society. With accessible design, you make sure that information on websites is easy to find.
Everyone benefits from accessible design
Compare your website to a shop, even if it is not a real online shop. You need to be able to navigate easily towards your goal. After all, in a physical shop too, you only want to walk to the shelves you need. Endless walking around and searching creates frustration and irritation.
That pleasant user experience and helping your visitors on a website is what makes digital accessibility so important. Everyone benefits from a website that is easier to 'surf' through. An inclusive design ensures that everyone can arrange things independently, buy products from webshops and use online services.
“When we design for disability, we all benefit”Elise Roy
Advantages accessible design
So we need to take function limitations into account right from the start of design for the product. As annoying as this word sounds, digitally accessible designs have many advantages.
The benefits of designing for inclusion are:
Your online information becomes accessible.
Everyone can independently participate
Higher usability
Better valuation by your visitors
Performance for website users
As a web page manager or shop owner, you want people to feel comfortable on your online environment. That customer experience is best when people with disabilities are taken into account right from the start. So that's inclusive design.
When creating the website or content, think about contrast, subtitles, structure, navigation and so on. Make it as optimal and pleasing to your user as possible. After all, the customer is king. Higher appreciation of your product or service has commercial positive consequences for you too, of course. Digitally accessible designs therefore also increase sales.
So accessible design goes beyond just good UX design. You consider many more users, not just a specific target group.
Designing for disability
One of the most beautiful statements from 2015 is Elise Roy's. During her TEDtalk, she said "When we design for disability, we all benefit". Elise Roy is a design thinker and largely deaf.
Improving existing products
She talked about designing a peeling knife for people with arthritis. This peeling knife turned out to be so nice in the hand that mainstream people also turned out to be very happy with this product. In fact, the user-friendliness was many times higher than that of standard peeling knives. Developing the product directly aimed at a disability, the OXO potato peeler immediately made it very comfortable that everyone loved it. A great example of accessible design.
Designing for disability helps many more people
The second bizarre example for good development that directly addressed a functional disability: text messaging. Text messaging was initially developed for deaf people. Consider that virtually the entire world currently relies on apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. These apps basically consist only of sending text messages. By now, everyone loves this solution too. These developments promote digital inclusion.
Digital accessibility in the physical world
Suppose we were to apply the principle, "When we design for disability, we all benefit", to websites, apps and other online communications. What would happen then? To make accessible design really clear, we make it visual.
Quickly navigate from A to B
Suppose we take an office building. This office building is built on the basis of a drawing. A lift or perhaps escalators have been taken into account. It has a pleasant, clear layout, numbers per department and so on. In such a large office, being able to navigate yourself well is a necessity. So you can get from A to B quickly. Just an attractive decoration is not enough.
Suppose the architect, contractor and the whole team did not think about a lift in this office building. How will people with a wheelchair, broken leg, a dog, with a pram or walker then get to floor 15? And what about all the other people who would rather not take the stairs up 15 floors? Fortunately, the architect has already thought about this and the Building Decree also lays down arrangements in this regard. During the construction of the office, the lift will also be installed immediately. The architect is working on accessible designs.
You have a problem if you need to install that same lift in your office building later. You will probably have to make a lot of modifications or 'stick' the lift on the outside of the building. This can be a nice solution, but it won't be very cheap.
Accessible design is user-friendly
Actually, the same applies to a website, app or other digital content. Even during accessible design, you make sure that everyone can use it. Usability automatically goes up by a steep line. Users navigate your product better. They enjoy being with you online and, after a good experience, are happy to come back again. How nice is that!
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines set out what your website or app must comply with. And this is also part of Dutch legislation.
Start with accessible design
Are you starting to design a new website or app soon? And don't know how to start? Together with our specialists, make your communications and designs more inclusive. We help with accessible designs. We prefer to be there from the beginning of the project. So you save time, money and a lot of frustration.
