(Posted on uie.com’s All You Can Learn section, link here)
Whitney defines delight as a balance of small pleasures and consideration—little victories in an impersonal world
Mapping expectations and experiences:
Accessibility guidelines exist:
webaim.org is a site that has resources for testing content for accessibility, though it’s mostly focused on mechanical accessibility and not actual content accessibilit
Also check out colorsafe.co to design accessible color palettes
Accessibility comes in many forms, from barely acceptable to best practices:
(That’s the LA County Elections Dept of universal voting project shown above)
Accessibility should be thought of as an extension of UX for people with the widest range of capabilities:
- Not rules, but thoughtful design that builds access into it
- Not disability, but experience
- Not tech, but people interact with tech
Whitney’s Principles for Accessible UX:
WordPress has focused on being accessible for a few years now—they created beautiful accessible-ready themes and require all new themes to be accessible
Voice Over is built into iOS
Interactions should be carefully designed with consideration for people who might have low visions, limited mobility etc
Whitney shared some samples how how to make products more accessible:
In testing a screen for ranking options, people much preferred the second option—the additional buttons on the right side did add more elements to the screen, but the elements actually clarify how to use the screen without having to guess or look for instructions
Plan your user journey to include helpful way finding
Target used to give customers pills in incredibly well-designed bottles with clearly defined hierarchies and thought given to the importance of IA:
- The drug’s name is the primary piece of text and so it’s largest
- The warnings are emphasized by being positioned alone on the back of the bottle
- The color key ring can be “owned” by particular people in the house to quickly pick out their meds
- The least-used info is smallest and tucked out of the way
43% of US adults read at basic or low levels—keep content simple, people!
- Break content into pieces with clear headers
- Use typographical hierarchies to guide readers’ attention
- Emphasize what tasks people can accomplish here
- Check out Medicare’s form redesign:
Accessibility is too often focused on as a legal issue, instead of a practice of good design
Try to include folks with a variety of disabilities in your testing!
It takes a team effort to have good accessibility:
Some resources from Whitney:
