What Is Accessible Design?
Accessible design is the practice of creating communications, materials, and experiences that people with a wide range of abilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and use.
It considers accessibility from the beginning of a project instead of treating it as a correction added after the design is complete. This includes visual design of documents, websites, forms, presentations, video, audio, and other communications.
Accessible design, simply explained
Accessible design removes barriers that can prevent people from receiving information or completing a task.
For example, an accessible design may include aspects such as:
Sufficient color contrast
Information that does not rely on color alone
Clear headings and content organization
Descriptive links
Alternative text
Keyboard-accessible controls
Captions and transcripts
Predictable navigation and interactions
Why does accessible design matter?
Design determines whether people can find, understand, and use information. When accessibility is overlooked, a document may be confusing to a screen reader, a form may be impossible to complete with a keyboard, or important information may disappear for someone who cannot distinguish certain colors.
Designing accessibly from the beginning can:
- Reach a broader audience
Improve clarity and usability
- Reduce costly revisions and remediation
- Support accessibility and procurement requirements
- Strengthen customer trust
- Create more consistent digital and print communications
- Help organizations build accessibility into their everyday processes
Accessible choices can also help older adults, people with temporary injuries, mobile-device users, and people working in difficult environments such as bright sunlight or a location where audio cannot be played.
Accessible design is essential for some people and helpful for everyone.
Accessible design, MYTHS and FACTS
MYTHS
FACTS
MYTH: Accessibility is only needed for public-facing websites.
FACT: Section 508 applies to all Information and Communication Technology. This includes websites, documents, PDFs, presentations, forms, video, audio, print communications, and other touch points.
MYTH: Accessible design only applies to people who are blind.
FACT: 508 compliance supports a wide range of needs, including visual impairments (blindness, low vision, color blindness), learning disabilities, and motor skill limitations.
MYTH: Accessibility is only required for Medicare and Medicaid materials.
FACT: 508 remediation applies to all audiences.
MYTH: Accessibility makes websites and documents ugly.
FACT: Clean design, good contrast, and clear structure are both accessible and aesthetically pleasing. Accessibility does not prevent creativity. Accessible designs can use distinctive typography, photography, illustration, color, and strong visual storytelling. The goal is to use those elements thoughtfully so they do not prevent people from understanding the content or creating a barrier to accessing it.
Make accessibility part of the design
Accessibility is most effective when it is included in the plan – not added at the end. Whether you are developing a document, publication, website, presentation, campaign, or multimedia project, Splash Box can help you create something that is visually effective and designed to reach more people.