Hallole Smashing Friends,
I keep repeating it like a broken record, but: Accessibility isn’t about compliance. It’s not about ticking off checkboxes in a checklist. It’s not about plugging in accessibility overlays either. Instead, it’s about designing with a wide range of people in mind. It’s about including and respecting everyone — independent of what skills and preferences they have.
In today’s newsletter, we look at accessibility and inclusive design. We explore how to design with neurodiversity in mind, how to respect and consider dyslexia, ADHD, dyscalculia, and general do’s and don’ts to keep in mind. We hope you’ll find a few useful gems in there.
If you’d like to dive deeper into accessibility, we have a few wonderful workshops running or starting next week:
We’ve also been quite busy with a few friendly events that are coming up soon:
Coming up: One Challenge, Three Designers! Mark your calendars and join us on Thu, Sep 26, 8–11 am (PT) — tickets are free!
And thank you so much to all the wonderful people working behind the scenes on improving accessibility of digital products. You are making a difference, and that matters. So thank you. ❤️
— Vitaly
1. Neurodiversity Design System
How can we support neurodiverse users when creating digital experiences? In his Neurodiversity Design System, Will Soward details a set of standards and principles that combines neurodiversity and user experience design for Learning Management Systems.
Particularly interesting for sites, apps, or services that need to hold a person’s attention for an extended period of time — such as interactive learning media — the design system presents a collection of design principles informed by the needs of neurodiverse users. It covers everything from typography and color to buttons, links, inputs, interface, communication, and animation. Also part of the design system is a collection of personas characterizing traits and qualities of neurodiverse as well as neurotypical users. Valuable tips that, if put into action, benefit everyone. (cm)
2. Dyslexia Style Guide
The British Dyslexia Association estimates that ten percent of the population is dyslexic. Dyslexia not only affects the ability to read and write, but it can also have an effect on coordination, organization, and memory. To help you ensure your written material considers the difficulties experienced by dyslexic people, the British Dyslexia Association published a dyslexia-friendly style guide.
The style guide covers principles for readable fonts, heading and structure, color, and layout. They are not difficult to implement and will make all written communication easier on the eye for everyone, whether it’s emails, presentations, web pages, or printed material. Small tweaks that make a real difference. (cm)
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3. Building For ADHD
We all know those moments when we struggle to focus and a website bombards us with too many options or asks for too much of our attention, making it hard to concentrate and keep on track. While this might only be a momentary condition for most users, for users with ADHD, an extreme lack of focus is the normal state. So how can we design products to support them?
The post “Building for ADHD will make your product better for everyone” dives deeper into how to get users who struggle with focus to onboard and sustain interest in your product. As the post points out, by designing for ADHD, you can uncover areas of friction for everyone that may otherwise go unobserved. Maybe you were overwhelming users by giving them too many things to handle at once, maybe you asked them to remember too much information or created a false sense of urgency that resulted in anxiety. Again, a wonderful example of how inclusive design benefits everyone. (cm)
4. Designing For Dyscalculia
Dyscalculia makes it hard for someone to read, understand, and work with numbers. They might have difficulties handling money, managing time, understanding percentages, following instructions, or remembering PINs and phone numbers. But it’s not only people with dyscalculia who struggle with numbers. According to National Numeracy, low numeracy affects half of the working-age adults in the UK. So how can we convey numbers in a way that is easy for everyone to understand?
GOV.UK published an accessibility poster with practical design do’s and don’ts to help people make better sense of numbers. And again, it’s the small changes that make a significant difference: don’t use decimals unless it’s money, for example, leave space around numbers, and use sentences to add context about numbers instead of percentages. (cm)
4. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences
As you probably know, we run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.
With online workshops, we aim to give you the same experience and access to experts as in an in-person workshop from wherever you are.
As always, here’s a quick overview:
5. Inclusive Design Guidelines
When we talk about inclusive design, we often talk about physical disabilities like vision impairments or motor skill disorders. Psychological disorders or neurodiversity are often forgotten in the discussion. The team at Nomensa wanted to change that and published an introduction to inclusive design as seen from this perspective.
The guide describes some of the most common types of neurodiversity, psychological disorders, and learning difficulties and how to accommodate user experiences and products to them — with easy methods but also guidance on more difficult solutions. The focus of the guide lies on dyslexia, autism, ADHD, dyscalculia, and anxiety disorders. A helpful overview and a good reminder to not lose these conditions out of sight when designing inclusive experiences. (cm)
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6. Can CAPTCHAs Be Accessible?
How much time have you spent identifying all the traffic lights in a grid or decrypting warped strings of letters to prove you’re not a bot? As annoying and unintuitive CAPTCHAs might be, for blind or visually impaired users, dyslexic users, or individuals with cognitive or learning disabilities, they can be completely inaccessible.
In her post “It’s about time CAPTCHAs become accessible,” Camryn Manker dives deeper into the problem with CAPTCHAs and how we can make them more user-friendly and accessible. There is no all-encompassing solution, but avoiding image-based CAPTCHAs whenever possible can be a step towards better accessibility.
Camryn explores some of the non-image alternatives and the advantages and disadvantages they bring along in the post. A great reminder to carefully consider if a CAPTCHA is really needed and, if yes, to test it thoroughly. (cm)
7. Emoji Accessibility
Emoji are a fun and easy way to convey many things very quickly. However, we should be careful when we use them outside of casual conversations. Camryn Manker examined the accessibility pitfalls emoji bring along and how we can use them to ensure they are beneficial for everyone.
Due to the way screen readers handle emojis, using them sparingly is the first step towards better accessibility, as Camryn demonstrates. Camryn also explores where to best position emoji, why using them as bullet points in a list is not a good idea, and why you shouldn’t rely entirely on emoji to get your message across.
Interesting insights to create better emoji experiences without missing out on the fun they are known and loved for. (cm)
8. Recently Published Books 📚
Promoting best practices and providing you with practical tips to master your daily coding and design challenges has always been at the core of everything we do at Smashing.
In the past few years, we were very lucky to have worked together with some talented, caring people from the web community to publish their wealth of experience as printed books. Have you checked them out already?
It’s here, and it’s shipping! Success At Scale, a new book by Addy Osmani. Get the book or browse the complete library.
9. Recent Smashing Articles
That’s All, Folks!
Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!
This newsletter issue was written and edited by Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf) and Iris Lješnjanin (il).
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We sincerely appreciate your kind support. You rock.
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