Inclusive design: How to improve accessibility with Adobe Express.

What is inclusive design?

Inclusive design refers to creating products, services and experiences that are universally inclusive and accessible. Whether it’s a museum, a website or product packaging, inclusive design ensures that your business can benefit as many people as possible.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in six people have a disability. Enhancing your brand usability ensures that you’re not excluding your audience by overlooking accessible design features.

Accessibility and inclusive design are also protected by the Equality Act 2010, which requires services and websites to meet accessibility regulations and avoid discrimination. This can help unlock your brand for everyone, not just people with disabilities.

Why is accessible web design so important for your UK business?

Design inclusivity impacts how people interact with your web content in various ways. As a business, it’s your responsibility to consider the potential barriers you could create for users with different abilities.

Accessibility and inclusivity guidelines help prevent unfair web and content experiences. It allows everyone to access the information they want or need to browse.

Let’s explore some of the key benefits of inclusive design and accessibility for businesses:

• Improves your user experience. Accessibility practices can greatly improve your user experience (UX) design by ensuring users have equal access to your content. Plus, making your content easy to interact with and understand can help improve how user-friendly it is overall, which is always beneficial.
• Makes your business more accessible to a wider audience. Designing for inclusivity and accessibility can help your brand reach more people in more locations, increasing your potential users and conversions.
• Digital accessibility and search engine optimisation (SEO) go hand in hand. Many accessibility design principles overlap with SEO best practices, including using plain language, short sentences and a formatted heading hierarchy. These principles can help boost your organic search performance and help users find your content online.
• Improve conversions and reduce bounce rate. Research shows that if your website is inaccessible, users are more likely to search for an alternative. In 2019, the Click-Away Pound report found that businesses lost a total of £17.1 billion due to the number of users who abandoned retail websites that posed accessibility barriers.
• Strengthen your reputation and brand image. Designing for accessibility can show that your brand is socially responsible and caters to its entire audience. By making content easy to understand and access, users feel valued and seen, which helps to build trust and foster a positive brand experience. Plus, if your website design is accessible to people of all abilities, it could help give you a competitive edge within your market.
• Legal obligation to follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. If your website or app doesn’t meet certain accessibility regulations, your business could be breaking the law. Government legislation states that digital services must meet level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2). They should also run on assistive technologies such as screen magnifiers, screen readers, and speech recognition tools.

6 inclusive design tips to help improve accessibility.

There are plenty of ways to help make your content more accessible online. We’ve included a few accessible design examples to help minimise barriers online.

Use a mix of colour, shapes, icons and text.

Using a combination of colour, graphics, icons and text can help make your content accessible for a range of user needs. This includes users with low vision, users of screen readers, neurodiverse users, and users who are deaf and hard of hearing.

Find a balance with images and icons that provide visual context for users who may have dyslexia or have trouble reading text. Break up large paragraphs with sub-headings, images and videos. All the while, make sure all images are formatted correctly with alt text, or they won’t be compatible for screen reader users.

Remember visual hierarchy.

Accessibility and UX design are closely entwined. Visual hierarchy is the bread and butter of creating accessible and inclusive content – for all users. So, make sure your content follows a logical, linear layout.

Meanwhile, breaking up your text with formatted headings ranked <h1> to <h6> ensures that screen reader users can navigate your content. Don’t rely on text size, placement or bold text to structure your page.

Visually, these inclusive design principles also help guide the customer journey, so everyone can benefit from your content.

Plain English, please.

Plain language doesn’t have to be dull. It simply means producing content that is clear to understand. This includes the wording, structure and design, helping users find what they need.

Think short sentences that are easy to scan and read using assistive technologies. Use bullet points and numbered lists to help break up longer paragraphs and lists. Meanwhile, buttons and call-to-action links need to be interactive and descriptive to help users understand what they’re designed for.

Avoid low colour contrast.

From logos to hero images, inclusive designs need to consider what colours might impact users. Colour contrast is important, as it can affect how easily users read information, particularly between text and background.

As a rule of thumb, make sure to use dark text on light backgrounds, and light text on dark backgrounds.

Offer varied content styles.

Producing a range of materials such as audio, video and text can help offer various avenues for users who have difficulties with reading comprehension.

It’s a good idea to keep content clear and simple, while also offering video captions. However, it’s important not to replace text with images and videos entirely.

Format forms correctly.

Online form fields can be challenging for users with mobility and cognitive disabilities, as well as screen reader and keyboard-only users. Accessible form fields must be labelled correctly with good spacing throughout.

Avoid using placeholder text to indicate form fields for users to complete, as assistive technologies may not recognise text as labels.