Hej Smashing Friends,
A few weeks ago we’ve run Inclusive Design Patterns For 2025, a free 3h 30mins online workshop, diving into all the fine details around accessibility, designing for older adults, and how to make a strong case for accessibility. You can now watch a full video recording and download all slides.
The world is made up of neurodiversity, with everyone beautifully different in their own way. This week we want to focus on the neurodivergent. We explore how to design more accessible numbers and how to build for ADHD, as well as some practical readability guidelines. A few things that people struggle with, and how little changes in design can help.
Meet SmashingConf Design & UX (Oct 28–31, 2024), in the magical city of Antwerp, Belgium.
In the meantime, we are getting ready for the final conference of the year — SmashingConf UX & Design (Oct 28–31) in Antwerp, Belgium. With plenty of practical insights and workshops on design, UX and accessibility at the very heart of them. With sessions on Figma, design systems, data visualization and design patterns. Jump to the details! 👻
Also on schedule:
We hope this issue will help you get your accessibility efforts off the ground! 🎉🥳
— Vitaly
1. Accessible Numbers
Numbers are everywhere, whether you’re managing money, arranging appointments, or doing calculations. Yet, many people struggle with them: Four out of five adults have low functional math skills, and half of the working-age adults in the UK are affected by low numeracy. So, how can we present numbers and data so that everyone can make sense of them?
Accessible Numbers has got your back. Created by Dave Smyth, the site explores how designers can help people understand numbers better. As Dave shows, it’s the little details that make a positive impact and benefit everyone: rounding up numbers, leaving space around numbers, and letting people make mistakes when entering numbers, for example, are small but effective ways to improve usability. (cm)
2. Neurodiversity Design System
How can we design better experiences for neurodiverse users? Will Soward’s Neurodiversity Design System is a wonderful introduction to the topic. Originally created to improve the design of Learning Management Systems, it defines a set of standards and principles that can be applied to all kinds of websites and products that need to hold a person’s attention for an extended time.
The system covers everything from numbers, fonts, typography, and color to inputs, interface, communication, and animations. You’ll also find a collection of learner personas that characterize real traits and qualities of neurodiverse users in the design system. Another fantastic example of how designing for accessibility can benefit everyone. (cm)
From our sponsor
Webinar From ImpactSense: How To Unlock The Full Potential Of Your User Research
Tired of User Research that doesn’t create real change? Join ImpactSense’s free webinar on October 22 and learn how to transform raw user behaviour into actionable insights that drive tangible results. Led by CX and UX expert Veronica Naguib, this is how you level up your UX. Register now.
3. Designing 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. Lots of valuable insights are guaranteed. (cm)
4. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences
That’s right! 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 Mindset Workbook
How can we create an inclusive mindset that can serve as a foundation for all our design decisions? That’s the question that the Inclusive Mindset Workbook by Project Lima attempts to answer. It helps you make inclusive design your practice — in three steps.
The workbook explores why inclusive design matters and takes a closer look at the power that designers have when it comes to inclusive design. You’ll learn to recognize exclusion, reflect upon it, and create inclusive solutions. With practical tips, activities, and exercises for reflection, the workbook will stretch your imagination of what’s possible and help you make inclusive design a natural part of your design workflow. (cm)
From our friends
Looking for an event that bridges the gap between tech and design? Beyond Tellerrand is exactly where you need to be — with Linda Liukas (who speaks about her playgrounds on which children learn programming without computers), Jessica Hische (who talks about her career as a designer and author), alongside Manuel Matuzovic, Sophie Koonin, Hidde de Vries, and many other speakers who will be in Berlin next month. Sounds interesting? Have a look and secure a ticket.
6. Resources For Cognitive Accessibility
Neurodiversity is an aspect that is often forgotten in discussions around accessibility. To raise awareness for the topic, Stéphanie Walter compiled a list of essential resources that help you understand and design for dyslexia, dyscalculia, autism, and ADHD.
The collection includes technical accessibility considerations, personal accounts and lived experiences, and guidance for creating more inclusive products. A focus also lies on building inclusive workplaces and educational systems that accommodate the needs of neurodivergent professionals and learners. One for the bookmarks. (cm)
7. New Video Course: How To Measure UX And Design Impact
Ready to dive deeper? Well, we have something very special coming up for you: Our brand-new video course “How To Measure UX & Design Impact” with Vitaly Friedman. Meet a 8-hour long journey to UX metrics and design KPIs, sailing in unchartered waters every now and again.
From establishing team-specific design KPIs to translating ambiguous objectives into practical design goals and making sense of OKRs, SUS, UMUX-Lite, TPI, KPI trees, feedback scoring, gap analysis, and Kano model, the course is filled with plenty of examples to help you measure UX. Jump to details!
8. Readability Guidelines
What if there was a central place where the community shared knowledge and created a universal content style guide based on usability evidence? That was the idea Sarah Winters of Content Design London had back in 2018. The result is the Readability Guidelines wiki.
For the Readability Guidelines, content collaborators from multiple sectors worked together to answer readability questions and develop a set of consistent guidelines to improve readability and usability. The topics covered range from clear language and grammar points to content design and images. The wiki is no longer being updated but with more than 100 guidelines, it is still a treasure chest for everyone who wants to ensure their content is accessible. (cm)
9. 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.
10. 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).
Sent to truly smashing readers via Mailchimp.
We sincerely appreciate your kind support. You rock.
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