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Accessibility for Everyone

Accessibility design is about more than just designing for niche needs. As implied in the word “accessibility,” we make products accessible for everyone. Accessible products work better, and often solve problems that designers didn’t anticipate. For example, 34% of U.S adults always or often use closed captions when they watch TV shows or movies, with another 23% reporting that they use them sometimes. For 18-to 44-year-olds, 40% always use captions and 27% sometimes use captions. Closed captions were developed for a small percentage of the audience who couldn’t hear the dialogue, but people use captions in ways the designers didn’t anticipate. It solves problems they didn’t know needed solving.

 

For accessibility design, we follow the latest standards set by the Web Content Accessibility Guide (WCAG); as of today, the current standard is 2.1AA, but as the standards evolve, we stay current and compliant with the latest iteration. Many of our clients’ standard operating procedures require ADA-compliant websites; some even have internal accessibility review processes that can be complicated to navigate. Our accessibility experts, like Melissa Eller, make this process easy, solving issues and anticipating problems well before they are seen by audiences or committees. Melissa plays an integral role in the early stages of design and development, helping our team to solve the right problems and develop a robust product. 

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Some of our recent projects, like Smithsonian Across America, demonstrate that accessibility is an important standard for excellence in design and development for all audiences. Smithsonian Across America includes multiple complex maps with an intense amount of details and data, a veritable nightmare for a keyboard user using a screen reader. Melissa worked to ensure that a screen reader could identify the elements on the map and could also skip the map or elements on the map so that the user isn’t burdened with excessive and unnecessary descriptions. 

Screenshot of Smithsonian Across America map, an American map with multiple data points and featured stories.
Screenshot of Smithsonian Across America map, an American map with multiple data points and featured stories. This image shows the screen reader functionality.

Whether it is selecting the right color contrasts, including captioning for videos, describing images and videos in alt tags, or building screen reader functionality, accessibility design enhances websites and pushes designers to make good practice decisions, improving the digital experience for all users. Accessibility design makes sense from a business perspective while aligning with our company values, and we are proud to make it a cornerstone offering for our products and services.