Why you should think of accessibility at the beginning of your project

Most of the time when starting a project you hear a lot of people complaining about things they don’t like or fancy and things they would love to have on their site. But somehow, in the process, accessibility is often forgotten and at the end developers try to modify the web app to make it accessible.

There is some points I’d like to clarify before explaining my point:

• Even with the best of intentions, when working on a website your code is not always perfect (the amount of caffeine in the blood at the moment you type your code may be related to it) and you cannot score perfect on W3C
• Using some CMS sometimes prevent you to make clear code
• The client is ALWAYS right… Starting from here, they don’t care about accessibility or the beauty of your code they just want that brand new JqueryLib that “does like that website I LOVE”.
• I worked in a web agency, and deadlines were often coming like winter on Castle Black… So when they are you’re often worried about basic specs and not about best practices (I blame no-one ;))

SO,

Recently I attended a conference on UX and Accessibility and I finally realized that if you’re developing your app in a user-centered mode, then UX and Accessibility often are the same and are complementary. Turns out, if you think accessibility in your project before realizing it, you won’t have to take care of it later since it will easily merge into your development/design. You don’t believe me ? Ok…

A brief point on Numeric Accessibility

15% of your users will need accessibility

You don’t want to forget 15% of your users ;) Then come the other 85% of your users that might at some point be in a situation where accessibility comes in handy. As accessibility may affect visual, audio, motor-based or even cognitive functions, everybody can at some point need those features and thinking your product universally will, in most cases, help your product get better, simpler, easier (It eases the SEO for instance).
Looks like it’s a win-win… No ?

Place Human at the center of your conception

When building an app it is important to place yourself in the user’s shoes. That’s what people call User-Centered Design. In this Optic, you need to satisfy the user and not the creator nor the conceptor.

Satisfying your users, you cannot forget 15% of them…

To make sure that you are user-centered you need to

• create and react to what people do on your app
• take into account every user you have

If you don’t respect these two rules, then your not user-centered, you’re creating a product for a portion of your users, and you may loose the others…For instance, if you see that many people don’t use some function maybe it is because they don’t see it or your app lacks of affordance. You should then modify your color/logo/button to “charm” your user instinct (yeah our brains are lazy ;))

Ui design first, Usability then

Just start your UI design and you will think about usability after just by modifying the little things you forgot ;)
To be a success your app needs to be:

• Useful
• Usable
• Used

To be a success your app needs to be UsefulUsableUsed

In Order to make your app 3U-proofed here are some advices one can give :

Your elements should always be placed together as long as they concern similar actions (put some logic in the place and size of your elements).

Never forget that you address the brain: incredible but lazy :) And currently it seems that we only have a 7 elements (more or less) work memory, so don’t multiply buttons to do the same action…

Clickable elements should be easily identified when looking at your product… Make them big, closer together or colorful :) Nothing worse than being on an app and not knowing what to do…

Never forget that your users have standards comportments on the internet… Let’s call’em conventions (menu is on top of the site, footer on bottom etc…)…

So you think your site is ready now ? And what about accessibility…? Let’s see how we can improve it…

Make your links and labels explicits.

In order to facilitate the click make your click zone slightly bigger than the visual suggest it…

Make sure that your app is contrasted enough (some tools exists to test your colors, I personally like colorable)

Never lose your users on your site, make navigation easy to use and see (breadcrumbs etc…)

Sans-Serif rules ! No one prevents you to be creative with your titles, but you should prefer a sans-serif font to make your content readable :)

Make sure to always handle errors, User always make mistakes, ALWAYS.

Make your Images tags W3C-proofed : They should have a Title and a Alt. It will even improve your SEO :)

Use labels on every form you have. Always Use Labels. Users will thank you ;)

Finally you made it :) Your app… It looks perfect no ? Not really yet…

Testing

Whatever you may think of your app, you need to be testing it (showing it to you best-friend or your auntie Alice does not count :) ) Testing is REALLY important.
Choose a method, a target and test your app. Focus groups can help you:

• Collective test: marketing approach, etc…
• User Test: Ux/ergonomy approach

You’ve tested your app ? It’s now time to react… ;)

Never forgets that UX is not only ergonomy, it often responds to larger goals…

Thank you for reading this article, I hope it will help you rethink accessibility ;)