Accessibility Design

Group of young co-workers gathered together.

1 in 4 of us need accessibility

Accessibility—what is it and why should you care?

When you speak to someone, the hope is that they receive your communication and understand it.

In life, like on the web, there are ways of helping your communications reach their intended recipients.

Why bother with accessibility?

Why bother with designing for accessibility? Do you have time to worry about everything? Of course not, but it is in your best interest to learn how to create accessibility.

Actually, about 26%—that is one in four—Americans live with a disability. Can you afford NOT to try to share your message, your event, your words, images, and thoughts with them?

Do well by doing good

What if I told you that you can do well by doing good? That by taking small, thoughtful steps to help make things accessible to people with hearing or visual disabilities, you will be increasing your market share? You will also be raising your search engine visibility.

One way to think of alternate descriptions is like an extra tag or sign on an item at the store. So if you were looking for snack foods, but wanted gluten-free, this would help you find it better and faster.

Everyone on social media talks about the algorithm or feeding the algorithm. To put it bluntly, why wouldn’t you want to add extra descriptions to your content—your story, your picture, your music?

What I recently learned from Google

Google recently offered an online course through SCORE. It was simple and sweet. Here are the basic takeaways:

Optimizing your content will help people find you.
Google will reward optimization by increasing your SEO ranking.
You will make the world better by being inclusive.
On top of all that, it will help you lessen your legal risk.

Why do I care about this? Because of the nature of what we do at Handy Entertainment, we see that accessibility is not just good business–it is fundamental. By being nimble, we create much more impact by reaching people where they are, by including them. Inclusion is not just about wheelchair accessibility. It is not about having Braille available. Inclusion is about welcoming people wherever they are and providing them with the tools to participate.

Here are some accessibility elements for digital content design.

Accessibility design techniques for digital content design.

Please share your thoughts on accessibility in your industry.