Accessibility is not just designing to include a group of users with varying abilities

Instead it extends to everyone who is experiencing a permanent, temporary and situational disability.

There are three type of disabilities permanent, temporary and situational.

Let’s take example

Touch:

From permanent (one-armed) to temporary (arm-injury) to situational (e.g new parent)

1. Enable the one handed keyboard features and general keyboard.
2. Decide where to place the buttons in your design.
3. Create a feature that allows double tapping to avoid accidentally clicking on icons.

Hear:

From permanent (deaf) to temporay (ear infection) to situational (e.g bartender)

1. Enable haptics, i.e vibrations that appeal to the user’s sense of touch, and notification lights.
2. Enable chat system within the app so users can communicate in writing.

Speak:

From permanent (non-verbal) to temporary (laryngitis) to situational (e.g non-native speaker)

1. Provide written introductions, descriptions, and instructions for users in addition to video-based content.
2. Provide reatime texting during phone cell with users with app support.
3. Offer an in app messaging system that allows the use of emojis and uploading of images.

See:

From permanent (blindness) to temporary (glasses wearer) to situational (impaired vision)

1. Use larger fonts to create to reader friendly design products.
2. Use images on alternative text.
3. Design your products with high contrast color, don’t use red color alone.

So, who do you design for?

For permamemt, temporary or situational?

Tell me your answer in comment box.

Remember…

Accessibility is the environment for disable persons.

Consider the needs of users with disabilities:

If you empathizing with users, It is necessary to consider the need of users with disabilites, and try to understand the challenges they faced in using digital products.

Use empathy tools:

Use empathy tools such as empathy map, personas and users stories to help you better understand the needs and challenges of users with disabilites.

Get feedback from users with disabilities:

Get feedback from users with disabilites to ensure that your products is meeting the needs of users and accessible to them.

. . .

I hope you’ll save a little bit of time with this hint and thanks for reading!

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