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UX design principles that improve both usability and accessibility
Design principles are commonly referenced for providing better usability, but some can also improve accessibility.
User experience designers are responsible for ensuring a product’s usability and accessibility. Unfortunately, accessibility is often overlooked. Content and features should be accessible, easy to understand, and efficient to use for a broad audience with a diverse range of abilities.
Accessibility is often touted as being beneficial for the 15% of the world’s population that has permanent disabilities. While that is true, it’s a bit short-sighted as 100% of the world’s population has temporary and situational disabilities that limit our ability to interact with our technical devices for short periods of time. And as we age, our abilities tend to decrease in vision, hearing, mobility, and cognition.
A few examples of temporary or situational disabilities include misplaced glasses, musculoskeletal injuries, poor lighting while viewing a screen, and loud environments while trying to hear audio.
Accessible designs benefit everyone. There’s a variety of situations in which people without permanent disabilities benefit from accessibility; curb cuts are a perfect example.
