Universal Design for Digital Media

By Kel Smith

About a year ago, I was working with a small internal team on the architecture and conceptual design of a software product. Our goal was a workplace solution to improve upon the inadequacies and burdens of common “e-room” applications with greater collaboration and efficiency.

During discussions around the visual design of the application, accessibility for users with disabilities was raised (the specific instance in this example being color blindness). A colleague made the comment that “we should not design for the lowest common denominator.” He went on to insist that such features are only of benefit to a small minority of users and not worth the effort.

I responded by describing a recent global analysis of workplace software against ISO 9660 standards, mentioning that design considerations are not merely a matter of visual preference or assumed user demographics. Providing employees of all abilities the necessary tools to do their jobs was our moral and legal obligation; a technology that accommodates all users would benefit everyone and make for a better overall product.

The scenario described above is a classic example of pressure-testing product specification against the principles of barrier-free access. The term universal design describes any broad-spectrum approach bringing value to all users, including and not limited to people who have disabilities. Applicable to such use cases as software design, architecture, store layout, transportation, and media, universal design operates under the belief that accommodating people with physical or cognitive challenges results in better solutions for everyone.

The Seven Principles of Universal Design

The principles of universal design are as follows:

Equitable Use—The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities.
Flexibility in Use—The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities.
Simple and Intuitive—Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user's experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level.
Perceptible Information—The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user's sensory abilities.
Tolerance for Error—The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions.
Low Physical Effort—The design can be used efficiently, comfortably, and with a minimum of fatigue.
Size and Space for Approach and Use—Appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use regardless of user's body size, posture, or mobility.

To better understand these principles, note the example of 6 North. This St. Louis, MO, multifamily development is considered to be among the first large-scale residential buildings constructed with universal design in mind. According to a 2007 article in the New York Times, 6 North offers the following features for residents:

Kitchens have adjustable-height countertops, roll-in showers, and no-step entrances
All doors have handles instead of knobs
Appliances are recessed into walls to avoid bumping into them
Common hallways are colored to assist residents with limited vision, and the color of the carpet becomes darker as you reach an entrance
Once at the door, a small shelf provides a place for residents to put their belongings as they fish out their keys

Offering a living experience free of barriers provides great value to residents with disabilities. Of arguably more importance is that 6 North looks and feels like any other residential apartment building. The lack of segregation creates a sense of inclusiveness, since the environment is usable also to people who do not have a disability.

Web Accessibility

It wasn't long ago that justifications against accessibility were common: accessibility was thought to be prohibitively expensive, difficult to implement, restrictive of visual creativity, not marketable, of no value to shareholders, impossible to test conclusively, and of benefit to too few users to prioritize. Recent history, dovetailing browser standards, and an evidence-based marketplace disprove many of these self-fulfilling rationalizations.

In the early days of Web design, it was nearly impossible to create a site that wasn't accessible. HTML was intended to be a simple language because it had a simple function: to transmit textual information across a network onto another user's computer. At that time, browsers weren't interested in the display of content; since pages largely consisted of text, it didn't matter in what particular browser a page loaded. As a result, screen readers had no problem translating the pages back to a blind user.

Those who published the content, however, wanted more options in terms of colors, fonts, and imagery. They began to manipulate HTML into presentation styles that weren't intended for primitive browsers. Since Internet software at the time wasn't adaptive to these highly personalized methods, views of page displays varied from one computer to another. Over time, the needs of the disabled user were jettisoned in favor of bloated, poorly coded pages that looked nice but lost cohesion when read by speech readers.

Multimedia capabilities such as sound and video, with no governing standards to regulate their use, left disabled users further recessed on the scope of priorities. It is ironic to recall that the edifice of the “Web page” as we currently understand it was originally provided as a community forum for the blind, who were among the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of today's Internet, and yet technical innovation largely neglected the basic needs of this user group.

Universal Design for the Web

Thanks to efforts by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and industry thought leaders, online accessibility is an increasingly vital topic among Web design communities. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act was amended in 1998 to provide more legislation behind laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability. Recent years have seen a palpable increase in the number of companies hiring user experience architects to ensure that websites are designed with all audiences in mind. Businesses leery of potential lawsuits prepare contingency plans in defense of inaccessibility claims, and government agencies list Section 508 compliance as a standard requirement.

Creative designers and technical developers have also begun to proudly champion digital accessibility. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) underwent a scope update in 2008, taking into account such emerging technologies as DOM-level scripting, AJAX, and Flash. Browser manufacturers increasingly place greater emphasis on standards compliance, bringing the focus back to content as well as presentation. Open data practices have evolved as well; Web application APIs by independent third-party developers now provide access to such social media frameworks as Facebook and Twitter.

It is not enough, however, to simply follow technical guidelines dictating how to write compliant code. Challenges remain for production teams who wish to better accommodate users with disabilities; capacity and resource needs sometimes prevent proactive assessment, leading to assumptions that best intentions fully represent those of the intended target audience. As a result, we can fall into the trap of designing features that make sense to ourselves, but not for the people who will actually use our products.

Usability vs. Accessibility

Usability is the extent to which a product can be used by people to achieve specified goals within a context of use. Accessibility focuses on people with disabilities among those specified users, often including assistive technology as part of the context. The challenge is in recognizing that technically meeting compliance checkpoints does not necessarily guarantee an optimal user experience for those with disabilities.

A digital experience that is accessible may not necessarily be an example of good usability, and vice versa. People with severe vision impairments often rely on a screen reader to navigate a website's contents, for example, and they listen at an incredibly fast rate. Most blind users are just as impatient as sighted people; they want the information they need as quickly as possible and tend to “scan with their ears” until the desired result is accomplished.

Universal design provides an opportunity for project teams to take a step back and cultivate empathy for our users. The intention is to design and test a product's adaptability toward meeting the needs of users with different levels and types of ability. In order to achieve a point of empathy with our users, it's good to keep in mind some general best practices:

Positive redundancy—the ability to accomplish the same task in multiple ways
Path of least astonishment—good usability is partly the result of removing unpleasant surprises
Principles-first approach—accessibility is more than a checklist, it's a tactical plan guided by intention
Variability among subjects—every user is different, and no blanket rule or exception can cover all use cases

One example of a well-meaning accessibility feature would be the “Skip Navigation” link, commonly found on many websites. For pages with long navigation menus containing several items, it makes sense to provide a way for users of screen readers to skip to the main content. The word “navigation,” however, may confuse blind users who are unfamiliar with the context of this term. A better option is to use the phrase “Skip to Main Content,” which provides a clear and concise directive to the main information on the page. The use of the modifier “main” further underscores the screen reader's interpretation of the word “content” as a noun (as opposed to “content” as an adjective denoting happiness).

Universal Design for Mobile

Recent innovations, such as Apple's iPad and increasing reliance on touchscreen technology, have brought to light issues relating to barrier-free access for people with disabilities. The iPad in particular has been praised for its applicability to learning contexts, such as those related to developmental disability and autism spectrum disorder. In addition, the device offers accessibility features built into the product to aid access for people with visual impairments, hearing difficulties, or muscular challenges.

Universal design covers both devices and information delivery. With the increasing age of mobile customers expected to exert a strong influence on human-computer use cases, sensory fluency and motor-skill abilities directly inform orientation benchmarks. Researchers continue to synthesize existing guidelines with respect to the needs of all users, cultivating best practices for screen navigation, error handling, search querying, text/language protocols, voice/sound equivalents, graphics, font sizes, and contextual help.

Conclusion

The Web has become increasingly essential to the ways in which we seek education, employment, and entertainment. When the U.S. Access Board prepared to update Section 508 in 2010, the technical and legal aspects of standards compliance were framed not as a “stop order” but as an “include everybody” approach. The message was clear: the issue is not about restriction but rather inclusiveness.

Universal design provides the necessary methodology for inclusive design strategies and extends beyond legal and economic considerations. Choosing a digital design strategy that accommodates people with disabilities isn't catering to the “lowest common denominator” any more than putting a ramp on a sidewalk caters solely to a population dependent on wheelchair access. Everyone uses ramps because they are an easier means of access; ramps just happen to be more of a necessity for a sampling of the population.

Technology vendors, particularly those who supply workplace and transactional services, need to recognize the aging and disability demographics as part of their deliverable scope. Teams that deprecate universal design to the back burner perform a disservice to their clients, the products they endorse, and the customer base that supports them. In short, the benefits of universal design simply make good ethical and business sense.

Kel Smith (Kel.Smith@anikto.com) is an innovation and accessibility advocate whose articles have been cited by the Pentagon Library, Kent State's Knowledge Management Program, and the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. His presentation credits include RNIB TechShare Conference in London, St. Joseph's Center for Consumer Research, IxDA10 in Savannah, Unitech 2010 in Oslo, CSUN 2010 in San Diego, and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. A current member of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) and the Usability Professionals' Association (UPA), Kel served two terms as vice chair of the Philadelphia chapter of ACM/SIG-CHI for computer-human interaction. Visit his website at www.anikto.com.