We’ve all seen it happen — the jerk who snags an accessible parking space in front of a business, even though he or she isn’t disabled. Whether it’s laziness or ignorance, it’s just plain obnoxious.

Okay, maybe it’s a bit heavy-handed to liken that to designers who put their own personal preferences and styles above all else. In the first case, the majority of culprits know what they are doing is wrong but just don’t care. In the second case, the intentions aren’t nearly as bad.

But there’s a kernel of similarity. In both cases, the end result is potentially inconveniencing those with disabilities and putting your own desires and preferences first.

Of course designers have unique styles that they imbue into whatever they create. There is nothing wrong with that. The answer isn’t to create sterile, one-size-fits-all designs and layouts devoid of personality or vibrancy.

Just be sure when you’re creating your masterpiece to think about users as well. Like I mentioned last week in Taking Criticism in Web Design, be mindful that certain color contrasts will cause problems for users with color blindness or limited vision. Working within that guideline won’t stymie your creativity. It may technically be a “limitation” to work around, but really, text that is easily readable benefits everybody.

Creating a Flash sequence for images or advertisements can be a fully accessible option – just make sure you take the time to do it right, and follow guidelines such as Flash Techniques for WCAG 2.0 or Adobe’s own Adobe Flash Professional CS5 accessibility.

Similarly, video can really enhance a web experience when appropriate. It may seem like extra work and be a drag, but if you don’t provide captioning or transcripts, somebody with a hearing disability won’t be able to follow what’s been said or somebody with a visual disability won’t have a means of listening to a synopsis of what the video is about.

There is plenty of room within accessibility and web standards to be creative and achieve something with a distinct design brand. You may have to park a row or two back from the destination, but you still can get there and be happy with the end result.

Tags: flash, user experience, ux, video captions, web design

Back in June, I had the opportunity to attend the inaugural event for mkeUX, an informal gathering point for user experience enthusiasts in the Milwaukee area.

The kickoff topic was content strategy, and they knocked it out of the park by having two exceptional speakers, Gretchen Thomas (Content Strategy: It’s Not All Greek slides) and Margot Bloomstein.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about how content strategy correlates with accessibility. Effective content presentation most definitely helps create a more accessible experience.

Let me count (some of) the ways!

Content comes in different shapes and sizes. I’ve worked with people who still equate content with just the text on the page.

Content is many, many things of all shapes and sizes, including:

• Information copy
• Images
• Video
• Comments
• Keywords and metadata
• Search engine optimization tags and information

Content is quite the umbrella, and we’ve talked many times about how many of these examples are very important in an accessible experience.

Just some examples of content’s role in accessibility:
Copy needs to be clear, direct and easy to understand. Ramble too much or get cute with flowery words, analogies or corporate speak, and those with cognitive disabilities may struggle mightily to understand the information. Even those without disabilities may get lost or simply move on to somewhere else where they can more easily get what they need.

We’ve talked about images and video plenty of times. Choosing imagery with poor color contrast may prevent those with various types of color blindness from effectively seeing what it is you’re displaying. Poor or absent alt tags will block those using screen readers from understanding what the image they cannot see is representing, or may never know there’s an image there at all. And of course video without effective captions or transcripts is just moving pictures to those who cannot hear.

Like many aspects of accessibility, poor content strategy affects many within your audience, whether they are disabled or not. Effective messaging, imagery, placement of information, etcetera will enable users to get the information they need, research and/or buy the product they are interested in…whatever it is they are coming to your site to do.

Tags: alt tags, content strategy, seo, video captions