How to Design a Website for Accessibility
Ensuring your website is accessible to all users means creating an inclusive digital environment where everyone can access the information they need. When users struggle to interact with your site, it leads to frustration and disengagement. By balancing design ideals with accessibility standards, you can deliver a seamless and inclusive user experience.
Designing for accessibility goes beyond aesthetics-- it's about providing an equitable experience for everyone, regardless of their abilities. By incorporating inclusive design practices, adhering to web accessibility standards like WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), and leveraging tools like Figma plugins, designers can create digital spaces that are adaptable and accessible to all users.
In this guide, we'll explore six core principles of accessible design, address common accessibility challenges, and highlight essential tools and techniques for ensuring your website is compliant, user-friendly, and visually appealing.
Why Accessibility Matters on a Website
Web accessibility ensures that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with websites. This includes accommodating visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive impairments. Accessibility also benefits older adults and those with temporary disabilities, making it especially important in sectors like healthcare.
A website without accessibility implementations will cause a frustrating user experience that will lead to disengagement. Addressing issues like poor legibility, confusing information hierarchy, and overwhelming interactivity are among the key considerations during the design process that can significantly enhance accessibility.
Key Accessibility Standards You Need to Know (WCAG)
To design an accessible website, it's essential to familiarize yourself with WCAG, which provides a comprehensive set of guidelines for making web content more accessible. The most current version, WCAG 2.1, is based on four key principles:
- Perceivable
- Operable
- Understandable
- Robust
These guidelines aim to ensure that websites accommodate users with varying abilities, including those with visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive impairments.
Core Principles of Accessible Design
1. Perceivable Principle
Ensuring content is perceivable means that users must be able to effectively access all information and UI components on the site. This includes
- Providing text alternatives (e.g., alt text) for non-text content such as images
- Offering captions and transcripts for multimedia content
- Using proper color contrast to accommodate users with visual impairments
2. Consistent Design Principle
Consistency in design is key to creating an intuitive user experience. Uniform placement of navigation elements, button styles, and typography across your website helps users, especially those with cognitive disabilities, to easily navigate and understand the content. Maintaining consistent design patterns reduces confusion and improves the user journey across your site.
3. Understandable Principle
Content and interfaces should be easy to understand for all users.
- Use clear, concise language
- Select readable typography
- Provide descriptive link text (e.g., avoid vague phrases like "Learn More")
- Offer intuitive error messages that guide users to fix mistakes without frustration
4. Visual Design Principle
Accessible visual design involves selecting the right colors, typography, and spacing to ensure users can easily navigate and read the content, all while creating a visually appealing design. Best practices include:
- Using high-contrast color schemes
- Offering adequate spacing and readable font sizes
- Implementing consistent and clear visual cues, such as headings and icons, to guide users through the content
5. Content Hierarchy Principle
A clear content hierarchy helps users easily navigate and understand the most important information first. Using headings, subheadings, and appropriate spacing creates a logical flow that enhances readability and accessibility. This principle ensures that your design effectively communicates the intended message to all users.
6. Responsive Design Principle
Designing with responsiveness in mind ensures that your website seamlessly adapts to different devices and screen sizes, from desktop to mobile. Ensure that touch interactions, such as swiping and tapping, are intuitive for users with mobility impairments, and that all content adjusts appropriately to different screen sizes.
Key Considerations for Accessible Design
Accessible Color Choices to Ensure Visual Clarity
Without the right color contrast for text or icons, some people with visual impairment will struggle or not be able to read or intake the visual information.
The following links can help check contrast accessibility. Pasting in the color HEX code can determine if the color choices pass or fail accessibility standards.
Designing Accessible Infographics and Charts
Visual content such as infographics and charts should include text alternatives to make them accessible to users with visual impairments. You can also:
- Use clear labels
- Provide alt text and transcripts for non-text elements
- Ensure charts are color-blind-friendly by using patterns and textures in addition to color
Accessible Videos: Captions and Transcripts
Videos should include closed captions and transcripts to accommodate users with hearing impairments. Additionally, ensure that captions are synchronized with the audio and that video controls are accessible via keyboard or screen reader.
Creating Accessible Buttons, Forms, and Navigation Menus
Interactive elements like buttons and forms must be keyboard-navigable and screen reader-friendly. Key best practices include:
- Ensuring all form fields have clear labels
- Avoiding generic buttons like "Submit"; use descriptive labels such as "Sign Up"
- Providing keyboard shortcuts for navigation and form submissions
Tools to Test Web Accessibility
Wave: Web accessibility evaluation tool for assessing your site against WCAG guidelines
Lighthouse: Google's tool for checking accessibility, performance, and SEO
Axe: Browser extension that helps developers test and identify accessibility issues
Screen Readers: Simulate the experience of a visually impaired user navigating your site
Common Accessibility Mistakes to Avoid
User feedback and usability testing offer valuable insights into what aspects of the design are effective and where improvements are needed. They help identify elements that may not be accessible or visible, guiding necessary revisions or confirming the success of design choices. Some common accessibility mistakes to avoid include:
- Insufficient color contrast
- Missing alt text for images
- Lack of keyboard navigability
- Overly complex navigation menus
- Not providing captions or transcripts for multimedia content
When it comes to color contrast, it's easy to overlook changes made during design tweaks. For example, ensure text over images is sufficiently contrasted by adding a darkening layer or drop shadows, rather than relying solely on the image itself to provide enough contrast. Also, hover states should include more than just a color change. Use additional indicators like text weight, movement, or scale changes to reinforce interaction. Lastly, don't rely solely on color to define links, especially in text. Use underlining, bolding, or other visual cues to ensure clarity.
Legal Implications of Not Designing an Accessible Website
Failure to comply with accessibility standards can lead to legal repercussions. In many countries, laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the U.S. or the Equality Act in the U.K. require digital platforms to be accessible. Non-compliance may result in lawsuits, fines, or exclusion of potential users, especially in sectors such as healthcare, education, and government.
Commitment to Continuous Improvement
Prioritizing accessibility from the outset is essential for creating inclusive and user-friendly websites. By following these core principles--perceivable, consistent design, understandable, visual design, content hierarchy, and responsive design--we ensure that our designs cater to all users, enhancing their experience and expanding your reach.
Investing in accessibility is not only about compliance; it's about building a web that welcomes everyone. By adopting an accessibility-first design approach, we make sure that inclusivity is integrated into every aspect of our work, resulting in websites that are both beautiful and universally accessible.