Accessibility Masterclass

Behind every great site or application lies thought, empathy and inclusion. This doesn’t happen by accident – it happens by design argues Henny Swan.

- Henny Swan

Inclusive design is about putting people first. It’s about designing for the needs of people with permanent, temporary, situational or changing disabilities, placing an emphasis on how a disabled user might experience content. The Inclusive Design Principles are a set of seven considerations to help inform design thinking. They are not a set of ‘how tos’ but a framework that can be used alongside established accessibility guidelines to take products beyond compliance.

Accessibility is ensuring disabled users can perceive, operate and understand content regardless of the hardware or software used to access a website or application. Products should adhere to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (https://www.w3.org/ WAI/intro/wcag) so that the output – code, styling and behaviour – is both accessible and compliant. It’s a technology-led approach to complex human experiences that places a greater emphasis on code over design, output over the final outcome and compliance over experience.

The Inclusive Design Principles remind us to put people, not their disability, first. We are not designing for stereotypes of ‘screen reader users', ‘voice input users’ or ‘keyboard users’ but parents, colleagues, friends, children, students, teachers – you name it.

Disabled people access the web at home, the office, while travelling, while under pressure, passing the time, or for the first time, or for the hundredth time. All of this has a big impact on how we interact with and utilise the web, regardless of disability.

So, let’s look at what the principles are, with examples of how they can be applied to make products both accessible and usable for disabled people.

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