ACCESSIBILITY Design: It’s Damn Important
Currently my new focus has been getting to grips with what ‘Accessibility Design’ means and is.
What is it?
Accessibility Design is to ask the question of whether a product or service can be used by everyone despite their physical and/or cognitive abilities.
Accessibility Design and me
I first became properly serious about the topic after watching Derek Featherstone’s 2019 “Inclusive UX: Techniques for Everyone” presentation at An Event Apart.
Featherstone’s discussion on the topic involves taking an accessibility approach to design as THE ONLY approach to design, rather then accessibility as an after thought or a stretch goal. He believes that accessibility should be not an aside to design but a core value of design.
Recently I got reminded about how easy it is to forget about accessibility after the death of the Queen of England’s Husband Prince Phillip.
Prince Phillip Death Notice on National Rail in Black and White
National Rail website in Black and white in remembrance for the death of Prince Phillip
National Rail website in colour
The National Rail faux pas
nationalrail.com The United Kingdom’s national rain website. The primary source for booking train tickets, planning journeys and looking for travel related updates.
In remembrance of the death of their old monarch the webmaster of the dreadfully outdated national rail website decided it was a fitting tribute to make the entire website grey-scale.
From what I guess would be an attempt at the website version of flying a flag at half mast.
Afterwards was this incredible exchange on twitter and a lesson in what happens when accessibility is not one of your core values.
@Nationalrailenq Hi the website has been set to grey while we are in the mourning period of Prince Phillip.
@hantskentflyer Cheers. is there a way to change it back to normal as a user? as all grey I struggle with.
@Nationalrailenq Unfortunately, I do not believe there is currently. I will leave a note for someone to look at on Monday to see if there it is. As I to have been struggling to read it while coloured differently.
So this “little” change ended up isolating numerous of users from using their national rail website over the weekend because they didn’t consider the possibility of an accessibility issue.
Which is why accessibility as a core value is important, not just for the start the middle or the end of the design process but throughout it’s existence as a product.
We must be diligent with every design choice we make.
‘if we do this’ are we ‘doing our best for everyone’
The exchange on twitter between National Rail and it’s unfortunate user
Example of the National Rail website’s non responsiveness in mobile.
