Design for everyone

The closing comments of a recent CSS-Tricks article are great:

Just remember: apply carefully, and always be mindful of accessibility/UX. Magically evolving designs are great, but only if they are great for everyone.

Design is a hugely responsible role, and one of those responsibilities is ensuring everyone can use our websites, products, services, and applications.

We have to think about the content; for example, should we:

• Use video if we can’t afford the time to add subtitles or a transcription?
• Use abbreviations and symbols without explaining them first?
• Link to other places when it isn’t clear where the user will land?

Then there’s how users interact with our site:

• Are we using colour alone to convey meaning?
• Have we thought about visible keyboard focus states for interactive elements like links, buttons, and form fields?
• Does content change unexpectedly when a form field is filled in a certain way?

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

I’m reminded of a line from, of all places, Jurassic Park:

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.