Nikka Estefani
Category: Design Tips
People with disabilities are often left out of society, and communities that don’t care send the message that their problems are their fault. This is not how communities that care work. Apathy doesn’t help people make designs that are inclusive and easy to use, either. Even though it might be hard to get rid of all barriers because people with different disabilities have different needs, there is definitely room for improvement when it comes to making the Internet easier for people with disabilities to use.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says that more than 15% of the world’s people are disabled in some way. So, we might be able to get more customers if our Web sites and apps were easier for people with disabilities to use. You wouldn’t deliberately turn away 15% of your potential customers, but that’s what happens when UX designers don’t care about accessibility.
Some people think, wrongly, that accessible design limits what users can do and makes designs look dull and boring. In reality, an accessible design improves the look, the way it works, how long it takes for a Web page to load, and the user’s overall experience.
Top Ten Factors
Keep the following ten things in mind when making a user experience that is accessible.
Making Labeling Visible
A user with a screen reader can’t see the same things as a user who can see, unless the form fields are labeled correctly. It might be hard for these users to figure out what information to put in a certain form field. Each form field needs a label that tells you what it is for and is easy to see and read. For example, a form that stores a person’s name should either have a field called “Full Name” or two fields called “First Name” and “Last Name.”
Streamlining a Web Site’s Structure and Overall Flow
Those who use screen readers can find their way around websites with the help of section headings. If you use headings (h1, h2, h3, etc.) on your website correctly and strategically, the content will be well-organized and easy for screen readers to understand. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to separate style from structure, and always put headings in the right order. When designing your content, use a new CSS class instead of a heading just because it looks good.
Making Web Sites Web Friendly
Even if the layout of your Web site is well thought out, attractive, and easy to use, it won’t be as useful as it could be if it is not compatible with the Web. It is important that your Web designers know about meta tags, alt tags, and search engine optimization (SEO). They should also know how to make sure that your site looks good in all major browsers. Make sure your Web designers know everything there is to know about design that affects how your site shows up in search engines and how it looks to visitors.
Working on making load times faster
When you’re doing UX research online, nothing is more frustrating than waiting for pages to load. If your site’s pages take too long to load, people might decide not to come back at all. But if you take the time to test your site before it goes live, you can find and fix any problems with how long it takes pages to load before your site goes live. After your site is up and running, checking how quickly pages load could help you keep more visitors and improve the overall experience for your users. Customers can quickly get the information they need if pages load quickly. But, if users don’t get what they expect from your site, they’ll go elsewhere.
Clear Call to Action
Putting calls to action on your website makes people more likely to contact your business. By providing a little friendly encouragement to your visitors—such as saying “Contact us immediately!”—you can demonstrate that your company values its customers and wants to build rapport with them. It is important that calls to action (CTAs) match how interested visitors are in your business right now. If someone is new to your brand, ask them to sign up for your email newsletter. People might like your brand’s loyalty rewards program if this is the case. Create a call to action for whatever it is that you want people to do on each page of your site.
Tables should only be used for tabular data
Users who use a screen reader often find it hard to read layouts that use tables. Users are distracted when a screen reader says that there is a table with X number of columns and rows. A screen reader might also read the words on a page out of the order that was meant. Don’t use tables to design a Web page’s layout. Use CSS instead to control how the content on your site’s pages is shown.
Optimizing Your Website
Top websites are set up so that search engines can easily find their content when someone does a search. What’s the point of having a website if no one goes to it? Even if you have the most interesting and useful online content, a beautiful website, or the answer to a common problem, if no one can find it, it doesn’t matter.
Don’t use color alone to tell what something means.
Even though color is a powerful way to get a message across, it shouldn’t be the only way to show what something on the screen means. Use color to make UI elements stand out, but also give a way to tell them apart that isn’t based on color. For example, you could label the parts of a graph or put a red asterisk next to form fields that are required.
Giving customers FAQs and chatbots
Before you start building your chatbot, you should come up with a well-thought-out plan and a list of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions). Assuming you have an idea of what the bot should be able to do, you need to think about how and when people will use it. How useful your chatbot’s user interface is depends on how it looks and how easy it is to use. There are many different kinds of bots.
Defining Alt Text for Images
People who use screen readers shouldn’t miss out on any of the information on your website just because they can’t see the pictures. The right use of “alternative” (alt) text makes sure that all visual content can be described in words. This is especially important for infographics and other visual ways to show information. The alt text of an image should explain what it is for. Also, if the picture has text in it, include that text in the alt text.
The only time it might be okay to leave out alt text is if an image is just for decoration and doesn’t give any useful information. In this case, you can leave the alt-text property blank so that people who use screen readers won’t be distracted.
