we're gonna take a look at some Accessibility for UX Designers. Accessible design is a design process that specifically considers the needs of people with disabilities. Having empathy for your users means remembering that not everyone uses the web in the same way. Some users rely on assistive technology to help them access the web.
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Common examples
screen readers, or software that reads web content a loud to assist visually impaired users.
MARC SUTTON: What a screen reader does is for example, I'm gonna read this start to read this page.
SCREEN READER: Navigation 1 item, link, Unversity of California San Francisco link, About UCSF, link, Search UCSF.
MARC SUTTON: And what I will now do is slow down the speech rate. SCREEN READER: Rate 80%, 75%, 70%, 65%, 60%, 55%, 50% 50% 55% 50% 45% 40%link UCSF Medical Center.
MARC SUTTON: So as I was about to say, a screen reader converts what is on a computer screen into information that can be displayed through synthetic speech or Braille output. And it does that by allowing you to use a computer instead of a mouse. A computer keyboard instead of a mouse.
SCREEN MAGNIFIERS:used to enlarge content for users with sight impairments.
SWITCH CONTROLS:which allow users with motor impairments to control your site without the use of a touchscreen, mouse, or keyboard.
CLOSED CAPTIONING : used to make videos accessible to deaf and hard of hearing users, as well as users with Auditory Processing Disorder which refers to challenges not with hearing, but how the brain understands speech.I've included an article in the Teacher's Notes on the subject.
Making your content accessible to all users is not just the right thing to do. It's required by law. In America Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act has been applied to digital content like
websites and apps as "places of public accommodation". In other words, creating inaccessible online content is like designing a new building without wheelchair ramps.
It's considered discriminatory against people with disabilities, and could leave your product subject to a costly lawsuit.
Unfortunately, accessibility is often given a lower priority than other steps in the design process or even forgotten. To avoid this, let's dispel some of the myths surrounding accessible design.
Starting with the idea that accessibility benefits only those with a permanent physical orcog nitive disability.
Microsoft is one company with a firm commitment to accessibility. I am looking at inclusive 101, a manual downloaded from Microsoft's inclusive design toolkit. The PDF illustrates various type so f disabilities, including reasons a user might only be able to operate their mobile device with one hand.
Some of your audience might have a permanent disability such as having only one arm. However, Microsoft notes there are also temporary disabilities, such as a broken arm that will eventually heal and situational disabilities, like using a smartphone onehanded while holding a baby.
These temporary and situational disabilities can impact your entire audience. Not just those with permanent conditions impacting their ability to see, hear, move, think or communicate.
Accessible design makes things better for users with all types of disabilities, whether permanent, temporary, or situational. But is that the only benefit? Actually, eliminating barriers between your audience and your product results in better overall usability, which sounds like a good part of your job description as a user experience (UX Designer) designer.
The notion that accessibility has benefits beyond allowing people with disabilities to use your product is termed the curb-cut effect.
While cuts in elevated sidewalks were originally developed to benefit wheelchair users, they also make life easier for pedestrians pushing strollers or bicycles, wheeling luggage ,using crutches, or even distracted by a mobile device.
Similarly, while video captions are critical for deaf users, other viewers might use them while in a noisy room, to understand difficult vocabulary, or to help them focus and retain information.
If you say to yourself, you know what, my product isn't really usable until everyone can use it, you'll never admit accessibility concerns from the design process. But that's not all.
Accessible design is good for business since it expands audience reach to include users of varying capabilities. According to the 2011,World Report on Disability, over 1 billion people in the world, or about 15% of the earth's population have some form of disability.
Excluding them just doesn't make sense from a business perspective. And websites that are coded to accessibility standards have greater prominence on search engines, making your product easier to find.
One final myth is that accessibility stands in the way of the creation of innovative products. In truth, innovation is frequently driven by people with disabilities. The first typewriter sappeared in early 19th century Italy as a letter writing tool for the blind.
Vint Cerf, a deaf American computer scientist frustrated with communicating over the telephone, co-invented the communication protocol that makes the internet possible in 1973.
Even universally popular gfeatures in today's mobile apps such as Auto Completion and Voice Control were initially developed to assist users with physical impairments.
So if we're going to make better products by making more accessible products, we'll need a set of rules to guide us.
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