Making Anthronation accessible
Accessibility is important to me for several reasons. I spent years as a playworker for Mencap working with children who have disabilities, and it's painful when things aren’t accessible or accommodating. I have endless stories of people who were just really GRIM - making my life and the experiences of the children I was working with awful.
I’m a firm believer that we should all accommodate diversity as no two people are the same, and being inclusive helps us all. As a lifelong asthmatic with a congenital heart abnormality I’ve always felt a barrier towards physical activities that were never tailored to my needs - despite asthma killing an average of three people in the UK every day. Slight accommodations would have made my experience, and propensity for, physical exercise very different.
The ideal for everyone would be universal design, which Lucy Edwards mentions a lot in her content on life as a blind woman. In the absence of universal design, small amendments to how we design can improve someone else’s experience, and show our commitment to equity.
Well, how many people really need design accommodations?
There are 2 million people in the UK with registered sight loss, and as of 2016 3.8 million people in the US were considered blind or had serious difficulty seeing. As populations age, this number will likely increase, and digital professionals need to consider visual accessibility when creating content and designs. Colour blindness is also very common affecting approximately 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women worldwide.
This is an amended post from an earlier version as we have since re-branded but the steps are still the same. For this iteration of the Anthronation brand I worked with someone and we considered the accessibility of text, design, and colour. The brand was crafted to reflect the human trace in both the physical and digital worlds, as well as my personal style preferences, and a desire to be inclusive in my work. I’ve given an overview of the parameters that I set when creating Anthronation, and some of the resources I used:
Developing my design
The Anthronation colour pallet was developed with the Color Safe - accessible web color combinations as a guide, ensuring that the colours used can be read clearly by as many people as possible. To meet W3C’s minimum AA rating, the background-to-text contrast ratio should be at least 4.5:1. and we figured the more contrast the better. This version of the Anthronation brand relies heavily on a soft white background and black text, making the contrast 18.69. Typefaces can be a bit tricker, and there wasn’t many hard and fast rules. We opted for typefaces that are easy to read, and large in size. I also try to accommodate people who are colour blind, by incorporating a mix of text, colour, and symbols to convey information. After developing a typeface, font sizes are also important, and for Anthronation we tried to ensure that all text written is size 12 or higher.
Crafting accessible documents and web copy
Websites and documents should follow a particular pattern when designing for accessibility. This layout is also applicable when perfecting SEO for your site.
A few things to mention include:
Use proper headings to demarcate information.
Don’t use all caps as it’s difficult for screen readers to pick up.
Write in short, simple sentences. Hemmingway is a helpful tool.
Always use the ALT text in your image captions as this is read by e-readers. Try and make sure the information that you include as your ALT text is useful and conveys what the image is depicting in context.
Ensure that your documents and website pages have plenty of white space. This makes information easier to read, so try and not have pages that have a lot of content in them.
Social media
When creating videos, follow the standard best-practice tools e.g. hold your phone camera width ways, and include captions so people can read the text. It’s also a good idea to put captions on a blank (light coloured) background. This makes it easier to read if someone struggles with hearing, if their screen brightness is low or if they’re using their phone in grayscale (think digital wellbeing apps).
Here are some top tips:
You can transcribe videos with tools like Rev How to Add Captions and Subtitles to Instagram Videos, and YouTube has a built in tool. We work with Academic Audio Transcription who offer transcription services and provide meaningful work for people with disabilities. If you’re interested in transcription services, get in touch with them.
When using hashtags, write them like this #SoEachWordIsRecognisedByAScreenReader
Remember ALT text in your social media images. Twitter, Facebook, and tools like Hootsuite have this feature built in to help you.
Resources
Below are some handy resources that you can refer to when considering accessibility in your own work. As a former DOT PROJECT member, I was also fortunate enough to learn from Ability Net (some of their resources are below) when they were commissioned by DOT PROJECT to help support us on the accessibility of our programmes.
For when you’re creating documents:
Things to consider when designing:
General tips and evaluation tools
I’m by no means an expert, but as a company we strive to do the best we can. If you spot something that you feel is a barrier to access or have any of your own recommendations - let us know!
Image: Vitsoe Chair Programme Poster