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One thing I realized about writing maintainable code applies just as well to designing accessible interfaces: the right habits get you 80% of the way, with no r
by tikhonj 9y ago
One thing I realized about writing maintainable code applies just as well to designing accessible interfaces: the right habits get you 80% of the way, with no real cost beyond developing the habits. Getting into the right habits is an O(1) investment that pays off by making everything you produce more accessible.
Adding alt tags to images, using high contrast colors for text, writing clean, well-structured markup... all these things don't take significant time on top of your normal work as long as you do them right away. They also have additional benefits like making the site easier to parse for search engines.
- steveax 9y agoYep, the 80%-90% level is pretty easily met by doing those along with using the native controls (buttons, links, etc.) properly. When your designers hand you a custom interactive widget, you can add a good chunk (50%-100% extra effort) to your estimate to make it accessible. I struggle getting designers to consider how a thing is supposed to work without a mouse for instance.
- test1235 9y agoa lot of designers I've worked with don't come from a web development background - they typically come from print design. They know how to make things look good, but when it comes to user interaction, or web specific functionality they don't know that they have to deal with much, much more than what you can see in the first instance. You can't just design something and have it look good, you need to consider what happens in x, y, z scenario, and if you don't have experience, you don't even know those things even exist.