1.3 billion people in the world have a significant disability. That’s 1 in 6 people (World Health Organization, 2023). So, with over 5.3 billion internet users, a high percentage will encounter barriers to accessibility. Accessibility doesn’t just benefit those with a disability, it benefits everyone. An accessible website ensures that regardless of your ability, everyone can access the same information. Essentially, accessibility shouldn’t be considered as an add-on or an afterthought when designing user experience. In fact, accessibility should drive user experience design as it will result in a greater user experience for all users. So in this blog post, we’ll cover the relationship between accessibility and good user experience.
What’s the difference between accessibility and user experience?
It can be easy to assume accessibility and user experience are the same thing. However, they are two different concepts that overlap and improve a website, service, or product.
The basics of web accessibility
Accessibility is achieved when there are no barriers for everyone to access and consume web content, including those with disabilities. It can seem like an overwhelming concept to follow because of the scope. However, there are tools and resources in place to offer support in ensuring website accessibility. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is an internationally recognised standard dedicated to ensuring digital content is available to all. The guidelines are categorised into guiding principles of Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. By breaking down the guidelines into four parts, it’s easier to focus on certain areas of disabilities when implementing changes.
Disabilities can sit under one of the following types or be a combination of:
- Auditory.
- Cognitive.
- Neurological.
- Physical.
- Speech.
- Visual.
Disabilities can be permanent, temporary, or even situational. Being in a loud environment and unable to hear the audio of a video is an instance of a situational disability. A good example of accessibility to assist with this would be the inclusion of captions, so you can access and understand the content. Or, you may have a permanent disability resulting in low vision and therefore need to zoom in to read the page. The website needs to be responsive to ensure all information is still readily accessible even with increased font sizes.
It’s best practice to follow the WCAG 2.2 guidelines, the most recent update of WCAG. You can get an overview of these in our blog post. If you’d like to learn more about common accessibility issues, check out this blog post.
When accessibility leads design, it improves the user experience. As according to the 2019 Click Away Pound survey, 69% of disabled people with access needs leave a site with barriers.
The basics of user experience
Basically, user experience (UX) is how a user experiences a website. A good user experience considers:
- How a user interacts with your website, product, or service.
- How your website looks.
- What the user feels when they use your site.
- How well they can navigate.
- The relevance of information displayed.
To have a good user experience, firstly, you must understand who your users are. You can achieve this through user testing, surveys, and even talking to your users directly. However, by having accessibility drive your web design and improving accessibility you’ll get clearer insights from talking to your users. This means your users can provide insights specific to your organisation, rather than focusing on accessibility issues.
Another concept that can be confused with UX is UI (user interface). UI is what you can see on the screen, including layout, design, branding, and interactive components. Whereas, UX is all about storytelling, engagement, objectives, and usability.
Easy fixes to improve web accessibility and user experience
A common area of confusion is mixing up links and buttons. They may seem similar, but they serve two separate purposes. A good example of accessibility is when links and buttons follow their responsibilities and improve the user experience:
- Links go somewhere. For instance, taking you to a new page.
- Buttons do something. For example, a button for submitting a form.
This change might sound simple and that’s because it is. Improving accessibility and user experience doesn’t need to be hard. In fact, there are quite a few quick fixes you can implement.
Another change you can quickly implement is improving your forms. When someone with a disability uses assistive tools to consume web content the tool needs context for the fields to understand the information. To ensure everyone can use these forms, provide a proper <label> tag with a “for” attribute that matches the input’s ID.
Designing great accessibility and user experience
At Catalyst, we champion improving accessibility and implementing it as early in your design as possible. Our web accessibility team is qualified on the DIA Marketplace for Web Accessibility and can support you at any stage of your accessibility journey. If you'd like to improve your accessibility and user experience, contact us today.