Design for everyone

Posted 9th December 2021 in Accessibility and Design

The closing comments of a recent CSS-Tricks article are great:

Just remember: apply carefully, and always be mindful of accessibility/UX. Magically evolving designs are great, but only if they are great for everyone.

Design is a hugely responsible role, and one of those responsibilities is ensuring everyone can use our websites, products, services, and applications.

We have to think about the content; for example, should we:

  • Use video if we can’t afford the time to add subtitles or a transcription?
  • Use abbreviations and symbols without explaining them first?
  • Link to other places when it isn’t clear where the user will land?

Then there’s how users interact with our site:

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

I’m reminded of a line from, of all places, Jurassic Park:

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

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More posts

Here are a couple more posts for you to enjoy. If that’s not enough, have a look at the full list.

  1. Windows high contrast mode and focus outlines or: My focus indicators were inaccessible

    In order to make my website’s keyboard focus outlines pretty in Safari, I inadvertently broke things for people who use Windows High Contrast Mode.

  2. If you’re going to do a job, do it properly

    I often hear the phrase “forward fix” used when referring to accessibility. It sounds fancy, but what it really means is “We’ll come back to the accessibility bit later”.