<aside> <img src="/icons/info-alternate_gray.svg" alt="/icons/info-alternate_gray.svg" width="40px" /> First shared 3/30/23 | Last updated 4/7/23

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Questions about my job is a series where I answer… questions… about my job. This week’s question comes from my lovely friend who is a learning designer working in higher education. She came to me with a few questions about user experience design, because there’s a lot of overlap in what I do as a UX/UI/product design generalist and her role helping faculty and students integrate technology into their work.

Do you follow any accessible standards in your work and can you highlight/point to any advice outside the standard advice - “use headings, chunk, alt text?”

Short Answer

Yes, tons of them. Accessibility is super important and anyone who tells you otherwise is a charlatan.

It is possible to completely reshape your perspective on design by opening yourself up to the principles of inclusivity and human-centered design. If you want to get nitty-gritty and practical, familiarize yourself with the WCAG standards for web accessibility and seek out perspectives from the people you’re designing for.

Long Answer

As a UX designer, accessibility is a primary concern in every project I work on. Sometimes, in situations where teams want to ship their product fast, it’s deprioritized or framed as something that can be done “later”. That attitude is a huge red flag for me! If your product is only usable by those who don’t experience disability, you’re flat-out excluding a huge number of people.

In tech, the nickname a11y (usually pronounced A-Eleven-Y) refers to a broad set of standards of and considerations about accessibility on the web and in software and apps. If you’re looking for opinions and advice, you won’t have to go far. It’s a hot topic and one that a lot of people are thinking critically about.

Here are some resources about inclusive, user-centered design that will change the way you think about your digital world.

I’ll try not to expand too far beyond the original question of what guidelines I follow to make sure my work is accessible. Accessibility in tech is about enabling access for people with very specific visual or motor impairments, but it’s also about bringing about a world where, as the Black Panther Party said in their Ten-Point Program, everyone has access to “land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people’s community control of modern technology.”

• You wouldn’t expect it given the general tone of the conversation these days, but governing bodies, and the nonprofits that work with them, have published some fascinating stuff about accessibility and inclusive design.
• Ethics. Design is not all pixels and fonts.

Here are some practical a11y tips that relate specifically to platforms I have experience working with.

• On the web, the specifics of accessibility are defined by a working group within the W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium— apparently we love acronyms with numbers in them) that has been around since the mid 90s.
• For apps, the WCAG principles still largely apply.
• As touch interfaces are common now, physical mobility and motor function is an important facet of a11y to consider.

<aside> <img src="/icons/heart_gray.svg" alt="/icons/heart_gray.svg" width="40px" /> There’s always more, and I’ve barely scratched the surface here. If you have thoughts or think I should add something, please get in touch.

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