Years ago, Dennis Lembree wrote a fabulous post for Social Light on online accessibility. The article explained exactly what online accessibility is, and why business owners and webmasters should care about it.
Online accessibility is a really good thing, but not something you see talked about terribly often so it wasn’t much of a surprise that this remained one of Social Light’s top posts for quite a while.
Today, I was doing a bit of recon on web design trends and stumbled across this graphic {thanks Webflow!}, which makes the point that we’re all disabled sometimes.
I love the example of the mom with a child in her arms showing us that being “disabled” can be situational. Meaning that people visiting your website might have a functional body, but that doesn’t mean they always have use of those functions.
Another great example the chart shows the bartender limited by crowd noise. That made me think of all the people working in an open office, who either can’t concentrate because of background noise, or would choose not play the sound on a video out of respect for their peers.
Good Marketing = Accessible Content
Interestingly, I was already putting captions on my Business Rules videos because when viewed on LinkedIn, they are muted by default. I want the content to be interesting and available regardless of volume, and thus: captions.
Truthfully I when I started putting captions on videos, I wasn’t thinking about this from an accessibility perspective; for me it was straight marketing. If I’m going to though the trouble of creating a video, I want it to be consumed, so I’ll adapt to the user’s conditions.
Though it didn’t occur to me before, this is pretty much the definition of usability.
Accessibility = Creating content that is viewable by everyone all the time.
Accessible Web Design
As we think about this in context of web design, it means that we should consider the user experience in many contexts – especially as it relates to mobile.
These days, just about every website should be responsive (it displays correctly across all devices); but even if it’s responsive, is it easy to use?
Here’s an example of a situational analysis: I hate standing in line. So much so that if there’s a really long line, I often decide I don’t really need what I was planning to buy. If I do have to stand in line, I whip out my phone to entertain myself. Let’s think through how I might be “disabled” in this situation:
- I very likely have the items I’m planning to buy in my hands, so that gives me only one hand to work my phone. And if I’m holding my phone with one hand that means that I have only my thumb to work the screen.
- It’s noisy in the store, so I probably won’t hear things very well.
- The line will move, a child will scream, or something else will catch my eye. While this isn’t exactly disabling me, I’m going to have a really short attention span, so it’s important make your message clear and memorable. In other words, you only have a few seconds to make me interested enough to remember you and come back when I have more time.
Wow, lot’s to think about!
I talk to my clients about the user experience all the time, but I admit, doing this level of situational analysis never occurred to me before.
Marketers talk a lot about knowing your customer, but thinking through the different situations in which they might interact with your brand/content/website opens up a whole new can of worms.
Here’s the good news: this concept doesn’t change many of the basic tenants of marketing or web design, it just underscores how important they are. For example:
- Lead with an interesting visual that will catch someone’s attention.
- You MUST have a quick summary statement that tells a user why they should care.
- Clear, simple call to actions that standout and help the user understand what steps they should take.
- Use colorful buttons that standout and are easily to click regardless of mobility (or fat fingers).
- Offer multiple ways that a user can interact with you that they can take advantage of in different situations (i.e. phone, chat, written resources).
Have more questions? Give us a shout!