This blog post is the second in a series of two about accessibility design as a usability method
The aims of accessibility design
Accessibility design is specifically targeted at designing user interfaces that assist people with various disabilities. The needs relative to disabilities that accessibility design specifically addresses include the following four categories:
• Auditory: Creating interface designs that are user friendly for those who have hearing impairments.
• Cognitive/Intellectual: Creating interface designs that are user friendly for those with developmental disabilities such as dyslexia or cognitive disabilities that affect memory, attention, developmental maturity, logic and problem solving skills etc.
• Motor/Mobility: Creating interface designs that are user friendly for those with difficulty or inability to use their hands (people with Parkinson’s disease etc.)
• Visual: Creating interface designs for people with various visual impairments.
Why is accessibility design an important usability method?
Aside from the egalitarian implications, accessibility design is crucial to usability because it creates an interface design that can attract an even wider range of users and thus ensure more success for the website. There are many users who are disabled and if a website is not designed with them in mind, they will not be able to use it. This can be especially dangerous in the context of e-government where equal access is a must. It can also help to integrate accessibility design into the web development process because in addition to diversifying the number of users, it also makes for a development process that is suffuse with simplicity, as designers must find way to create a site that is universally usable for users of all abilities, thus diminishing their ability to create user interface designs that are too convoluted or contrived.