Designers
On this page:
Your Impact
Accessibility is a critical element of good design, not a special requirement.
Inclusive products and services are the results of inclusive design processes and collaborations. When you improve the online experience for people with disabilities, you improve usability for everyone including people with low literacy skills and people who speak English as a foreign language. Consider the native language, literacy, digital literacy, and digital access of your users as well as potential visual, hearing, motor, and cognitive disabilities.
Grow Your Skill
Build Empathy with Your Teams
What You Can Do
Advocate for People with Disabilities
Throughout the product development cycle, advocate for people with disabilities.
Engage People with Disabilities
Early in the project, in user experience (UX) research and design, include them meaningfully.
Use Accessible Tools
When doing UX activities, use tools which enable inclusive access. Ask if participants require accommodations.
Create Accessible UX Artifacts
Ensure the documents and presentations are accessible.
Build Diverse Project Teams
Include people with disabilities and a wide range of experiences and viewpoints.
Inform Your Team
Educate your team about the experience of using assistive technologies.
Include Accessibility Considerations
In your personas, user archetypes, journey maps, and user stories include accessibility considerations.
Commit to Learning
Learn from people with disabilities. Educate yourself about the assistive technologies which improve their access.
Understand the Standards
Take time to understand the standards and guidelines which help create inclusive experiences.
You Can Design for Disabilities
Auditory
To use the Web effectively, people with auditory disabilities often rely on:
- Transcripts and captions of audio content, including audio-only content and audio tracks in multimedia.
- Media players that display captions and provide options to adjust the text size and colors of captions.
- Options to stop, pause, and adjust the volume of audio content (independently of the system volume).
- High-quality foreground audio that is clearly distinguishable from any background noise.
Cognitive, learning, and neurological
Depending on the individual needs, people with cognitive, learning, and neurological disabilities often rely on:
- Clearly structured content that facilitates overview and orientation.
- Consistent labeling of forms, buttons, and other content parts.
- Predictable link targets, functionality, and overall interaction.
- Different ways of navigating websites, such as with a hierarchical menu and search bar.
- Options to suppress blinking, flickering, flashing, and otherwise distracting content.
- Simpler text that is supplemented by images, graphs, and other illustrations.
Physical
To use the Web, people with physical disabilities often use specialized hardware and software such as:
- Ergonomic or specially designed keyboard or mouse.
- Head pointer, mouth stick, and other aids to help with typing.
- On-screen keyboard with trackball, joysticks, or other pointing devices.
- Switches operated by foot, shoulder, sip-and-puff, or other movements.
- Voice recognition, eye tracking, and other approaches for hands-free interaction.
Speech
- People with speech disabilities encounter barriers with voice-based services, such as automated web-based hotlines and web applications that are operated using voice commands.
- To use services that rely on voice, people with speech disabilities need alternative modes of interaction such as a text-based chat to interact with hotline representatives and keyboard commands to operate web applications.
- Also, websites that provide telephone numbers as the only means of communicating with an organization pose barriers for people with speech disabilities. Alternative means of communication include e-mail and feedback forms.
Visual
People with visual disabilities typically rely on changing the presentation of web content into forms that are more usable for their particular needs. For example by:
- Enlarging or reducing text size and images.
- Customizing settings for fonts, colors, and spacing.
- Listening to text-to-speech synthesis of the content.
- Listening to audio descriptions of video in multimedia.
- Reading text using refreshable Braille.
Accessibility Standards
Accessibility guidelines and standards aren’t unique to Louisiana. They’re established by industry leaders, government regulations, and academic research.
Section508.gov
U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1973Louisiana Governor’s Office
Louisiana Office of Disability AffairsWeb Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
WCAG 2.2 Standards