A variety of people have different needs when it comes to digital access. If you’re designing a digital product, this list might help you better understand certain areas to consider.
10 Common Areas of Digital Accessibility
-
Overlays
As a screen reader user, I have to say that overlays make the web a much more difficult place to be. Overlays can be used for very good reasons, but not always. Wikipedia is one website with many overlays. The user needs to press Tab or Enter to navigate through the overlay to other links on the page, which takes time and focus from the task at hand.
-
Interactive Infographics
According to AudioEye, a website accessibility checker is a very good example of an interactive infographic. This is a great tool for exploring accessibility issues on a website. However, it’s not always easy and accessible to navigate through these types of interactive infographics. It can be time-consuming and frustrating to work through these types of controversial infographics.
-
Stateful Controls
This refers to buttons and menus that can change state depending on what is selected, e.g. either disabled or active (selected). There are two common things that I need to do when a control is disabled: press escape to close the menu/button or navigate to another page with tabs, which could be difficult because of the tab order of the page.
-
Inactive Controls
Chrome has a number of controls that can be disabled, but they seem to display as inactive. These buttons are often used in combination with other buttons. A user needs to press Tab or Enter when there is a combination of buttons, or navigate away from the page (press escape) if there is only one button.
-
Inconsistent Navigation
Navigation is a very important part of focusing and concentrating on a task. The user needs to identify where a link leads them to. For example, I often click an informational link and find it takes me somewhere unexpected (in another tab). Often this happens with forms. Forms have some common types of errors, such as check boxes that the user needs to change from the ‘selected’ state.
-
Lack of Contrast
When I’m in a dark room, I can hear the difference between the words on a page that are highlighted and those that aren’t. In landscape mode on my iPad, the contrast is not as clear. The page is coded for larger screens so there are fewer words for each screen pixel.
-
Buttons Without Labels
The buttons that people use to navigate have labels that tell them what they do. These labels are usually either below the button or to the side. The user needs to be able to identify where they are likely to find a label, e.g. on the top of links/buttons in a menu.
-
Navigation Without Cursors
People can use mouse cursors, but not everyone has access to them. People with touchscreens have no cursor available and need an alternative method of navigation.
-
Buttons Without Feedback
People need to know where they are. Buttons don’t always change when they are clicked or highlighted, which makes it more difficult for the user to know what’s happening.
-
Content in Images
People can’t see, so any text within images needs to have an alternative version such as a visible alt tag or plain text underneath the image. Users often can’t see the image at all as there are no alt tags or it’s an image they can’t load.
Conclusion
With better accessibility, web design will improve. The problems above only affect people with disabilities but, now that more people have access to the internet, it is worth investing in digital accessibility for everyone.
