Accessibility web and print designer, accessibility auditor, and accessible document creator and remediator
Accessibility
Twenty-five percent of the population has one or more permanent disabilities. Additional members of the population can have episodic, temporary, or situational impairments. Disabilities fall under visual, motor, auditory, speech, or cognitive categories. The disabled community is the largest minority group intersecting all races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, ages, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Yet, the disabled community is most often left out of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. A DEI initiative without a focus on the disabled fails to be inclusive.
Ensuring that your digital communications and platforms are accessible provides the disabled community with equal access to your information and products. Accessible design is not only ethical; it's smart business. In many instances, it's also the law.
Web design
Designing user interfaces for the most optimal user experiences means that in addition to being designed per established user patterns and web best practices for usability, all web content and functionality also meets conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, at the highest or most appropriate level. Meeting conformance with WCAG is the baseline for accessibility.
For some industries in the United States, meeting compliance with WCAG 2.0, level AA, is the law — here's looking at you: educational, governmental, any entity accepting federal funding, and businesses and organizations open to the public.
Law references: Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (opens in new tab) Section 508 of The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (opens in new tab), and Section 504 of The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (opens in new tab).
Print design
Print design can be more accessible for visual consumers — and it should be. Designing with increased color contrast ratios, highly legible typefaces, larger font sizes, and optimal line lengths for readability are a few of the ways that print designs can be made more accessible. Accessible design can be equally aesthetically appealing as inaccessible design while providing more equal access to consumers.
What is the purpose of design that can't be seen or understood?
Audits
Design prototype phase
The ideal time to start auditing and assessing a product is at the design prototype stage. Visual, structural, and interactive elements and user flows can be evaluated and remediated before coding begins. Accessibility annotations can be added to design prototypes and design systems to guide developers on states, tab order, heading levels, accessible names, alt text, and more while coding. "Baking in" accessibility from a project's start and creating a plan to test and remediate as a product is built is the most time and cost-efficient way to achieve a high level of accessibility at product launch.
Staging or post-launch phases
No matter how far along your project is, manual and automatic testing can be performed to produce a detailed audit report to guide the remediation process. When a product conforms with a high level of accessibility, an accessibility conformance report (ACR) can be created by detailing the audit findings in a Volunteer Product Accessibility Template (VPAT). ACRs (or VPATs) are required when procuring engagements with any entity subject to Section 508. Creating a process for iteratively testing and remediating a product as it changes and new features are added helps to maintain accessibility and keep ACRs/VPATs current.
"Nothing for us without us"
In addition to extensive manual and automatic testing with a keyboard and some basic testing with a screen reader or mobile assistive technologies (AT), it's important to test complex products with native users of assistive technologies. Only native AT user accessibility testers can test for conformance with WCAG and provide insightful lived experience feedback. The feedback that AT user testers offer can be the catalyst that moves a product beyond meeting baseline accessibility standards to providing a superior user experience.
Shift left and bake in accessibility from the start of your projects. If you can't start at the beginning, it's never too late to start doing the right thing. "Progress over perfection." — Meryl Evans
Accessible document creation and remediation
Every document creation software has different accessibility capabilities and limitations. Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Docs, Google Slides, Canva, Adobe InDesign, and Adobe Acrobat all require different steps to achieve accessible document status for particular file types and uses. Your social media graphics, white papers, teaching documents, and catalogs; all digital assets your company produces for public consumption must be accessible.
The accessibility standards for PDFs are WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and PDF/UA. In order for your website to meet conformance with WCAG, any document provided on your site must also meet accessibility standards.