Designing for Disability

When you create a software project, who do you design for? If it’s a personal project, chances are you created it with yourself in mind– this could mean choosing the background or accent to match your favorite color, using your favorite fonts, or including inside jokes and images that only you and your friends would understand. While this makes sense in a personal context, would you want the design to look or function differently if you knew that the person you were working for had a disability? When you develop software in a professional setting, it is essential to think about the different kinds of people who will be using your application. Color-blindness, audio/visual disability, and different cognitive function levels are just a few differences that need to be taken into account when designing software. This article will define what accessibility means, why it is essential to design with accessibility in mind, tips to design with disabilities in mind, and finally some tools and guidelines that can be used as aid in your design process.

The first thing to understand about accessibility is what it means for software design. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines accessibility as “capable of being reached”. When it comes to software design, what is reachable is not necessarily the same for every user. It is also important to understand the definition of disability, which is “a physical, mental, cognitive, or developmental condition that impairs, interferes with, or limits a person's ability to engage in certain tasks or actions or participate in typical daily activities and interactions” (also from the Merriam-Webster dictionary). According to the WHO, approximately 16% of the world's population, or 1.6 billion people, have a disability; as population increases that number will continue to grow. Designing for disability is something that developers cannot and should not ignore. If the disabled population is not considered in software design, not only does that create ethical dilemmas, but it also limits the number of users that will actually use and be satisfied with your software.

There are many factors that go into designing for users with disabilities: color, contrast, spacing, intuitive navigation and interactive elements, and including alternatives for audio and visual media, to name a few. Imagine you are designing a website, and you decide to use color signaling similar to the red and green used for traffic lights in the U.S.: how would a color-blind user know what you meant if you did not also include clear descriptions of the choices that those colors were supposed to signal? Accessible software should not rely on only one of the five senses. If one sense is used, think about how you could provide support through another. In the same way, think about a video with spoken instructions but no captions: how would a deaf user follow along? Or consider a form with tiny buttons and no keyboard shortcuts: how would someone with limited motor control complete it without frustration? When design forces you to depend on one ability, it risks alienating those who do not have the same capabilities. Developers who have no experience with a disability may have a hard time putting themselves in the shoes of these kinds of users, so it is important to think carefully about these considerations, it may even require you to forcibly make yourself uncomfortable to know how to meet these needs. When I took a class on human computer interaction, the professor had us put our laptops and phones into grayscale mode for 24 hours to understand how to interact with our personal devices with a lack of visual cues. That experience really helped me understand what it means to experience technology differently, and I would recommend it for developers who do not know where to start with understanding visual disability. Similarly, you could try navigating a website using only a keyboard, or turning on captions for all your media for a day to better understand the needs of users with motor or hearing disabilities.

To help developers understand how to create software that caters to users with disabilities, there are several guidelines that have been and continue to be developed. The most helpful documentation that I have found is the Web Accessibility Initiative’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), as it includes tips related to design accessibility, but also guidance on making written and audio/visual content equally accessible. Google also provides great documentation on how they have made their software services, and electronic devices accessible, while also providing opportunities to become an accessibility tester, participate in research, and spotlighting the success stories of how their design has positively impacted the world. There are also more specific tools, such as Accessibility Tracker, that can scan website URLs and give them an accessibility score that evaluates attributes like contrast, color, and fonts.

I hope that this article was able to inspire you to create projects that are mindful of all kinds of users. Accessibility is not an add-on, it is simply good design. By being mindful of people with visual, hearing, motor, and cognitive differences, you are not just widening your user base, you are helping to create a more inclusive world.

References:

https://belonging.google/intl/ALL_us/accessible-features/

https://belonging.google/intl/ALL_us/in-products/disability-innovation/

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health

https://www.w3.org/WAI/tips/designing/

https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/color-contrast-checker/