What is Accessible Design?

Accessible Design, Explained

Accessible website design is the practice of creating digital products, including websites, web or mobile apps, and online documents, that can be used and understood by people of all abilities. It ensures that content, navigation, and interactions are perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust for users with disabilities, including those who rely on assistive technologies, such as screen readers, voice control, or alternative input devices. 

The practice focuses on removing barriers and building content that works for everyone, whether someone has a permanent disability, a temporary injury, or a situational limitation like low or noisy environments. 

Accessible design is guided by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines(opens in a new tab) (WCAG) and is a key part of inclusive user experience (UX) and responsible digital design.

Universal Design vs. User-Centered Design

Building on the foundations of accessible design, it’s helpful to understand how universal design and user-centered design relate.

Universal design focuses on creating products and experiences that work for everyone, regardless of ability, age, or environment. User-centered design, on the other hand, prioritizes understanding real users, their needs, behaviors, and challenges, to build intuitive and effective digital experiences. 

Accessible design encompasses both by ensuring that digital content is usable not only by people with disabilities but by all users. 

For example, imagine a website form. A user-centered approach ensures clear labels and instructions, while universal design makes it intuitive for a broad audience. Accessible design adds features like keyboard navigation, screen reader support, and high-contrast text so users with visual or motor impairments can complete the form with ease. 

By combining all approaches, you create digital experiences that are inclusive, usable, and compliant with standards like WCAG, benefiting everyone who interacts with your content.

Each of these disabilities can impact how an individual perceives, understands, navigates, and interacts with websites and other digital content. Accessible design makes digital content easier to access and engage with, not just for those with disabilities but for everyone. 

For example:

• High color contrast enables people with color blindness or users in bright, sunny environments to easily perceive text.

• Descriptive alt text for images ensures non-sighted users can understand visual content, or when internet connections are unstable, and images fail to load.

• Captions on videos make content accessible for people who are deaf or hard of hearing or for those in noise-sensitive environments.

• Keyboard-accessible forms and buttons allow users to navigate through content easily without using a mouse.

Why Accessible Design Matters

Accessible design matters because it has the potential to help all users, not just those with disabilities. When digital content adheres to the principles of accessible design (which we’ll discuss in more detail below), it provides a better user experience for everyone. 

A classic example of the benefits of accessible design is the curb-cut effect. First started as a way to improve accessibility for individuals in wheelchairs, these sidewalk indentations have proved to benefit various other user groups: parents pushing strollers, professionals pulling suitcases, those on bikes, workers making large deliveries, etc. It’s a great illustration of how an accessibility feature benefits more than just the disability community. 

The same curb-cut effect applies online as well. When you design with accessibility in mind, you remove barriers and improve usability for everyone, which ultimately leads to better business outcomes. Let’s take a closer look.

Accessible Design Principles and Standards

Designing for everyone doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by choice. Accessible design ensures that people of all abilities can use, enjoy, and benefit from your digital content. To make this actionable, designers rely on clear principles and standards. 

Below, we’ll explore accessible design principles and standards, including POUR and WCAG, that help designers create accessible, user-friendly experiences.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

Considered the international standard for accessibility, WCAG is a set of accessibility standards that help improve the online experience for users with disabilities.

The POUR Principles

Included in WCAG are 86 success criteria, each of which describes a specific requirement digital content should meet to be accessible to people with disabilities. Each success criterion is organized into four main principles known as POUR: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. 

Below, we’ll take a closer look at these principles. 

Perceivable

According to the W3C: “information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.” More simply, information (such as interactive links, text boxes, buttons, etc.) must be presented in ways that everyone can perceive and understand. 

Think about it this way: If any part of a website is invisible to any user, it fails the perceivability test. For example, suppose you have an image of a chart displaying critical information, but it does not contain alt text. That means a screen reader (a device that reads digital content aloud) cannot convey the information on the chart to someone who’s blind. 

Operable

A website is considered operable if all users can interact with the interface and navigate content. Additionally, if digital content has interactive components (forms, quizzes, surveys, etc.), all users must be able to operate them, regardless of the device or assistive technology they’re using. 

Ways that content can fail the operable test include:

• Menus, buttons, or forms that can only be used with a mouse, which prevents keyboard users from interacting.

• Carousels or slideshows that advance too quickly without a way to pause or control timing, which can hinder readability. 

• Interactive elements without clear focus indicators limit keyboard navigation.

Understandable

This principle requires a website and all its components to function in a manner that is understandable to all users. If your site is confusing or unpredictable, it fails the understandability test. 

For example, if your navigation menu is inconsistent across pages, users can easily get lost. If your website is jargon-heavy or uses acronyms without explanation, users may not fully understand your message, which could drive them away. 

Robust

A website should be robust enough to be interpreted by a wide range of users, including those who use assistive technology. This is especially important as assistive technologies continue to evolve; content should remain accessible to ensure users are not blocked from information. Even if your digital content meets the three other principles, it won’t help users if it doesn’t work with the technology they rely on. 

Examples of content that fail the robust test include:

• Web pages built with outdated code that screen readers cannot interpret properly.

• Custom interactive elements that aren’t coded with standard HTML or ARIA roles.

• PDFs or documents that aren’t tagged correctly, so screen readers can’t read them in the correct order.