Hi there! 👋🏼 Are you looking to create a digital product that is fully accessible to everyone? Well, you’ve come to the right place! In this blog post, we’ll take you through a step-by-step guide on how to ensure that your digital product is accessible from design to deployment. 🚀

Step 1: Understanding Accessibility

Before we dive into the process, it’s important to understand what accessibility is and why it’s important. Accessibility refers to the ability of people with disabilities to access and use digital products and services. This includes people with visual, auditory, physical, or cognitive disabilities.

Creating accessible digital products is important for many reasons. For one, it’s the right thing to do. Everyone deserves equal access to information, services and products. Additionally, creating products that are accessible from the beginning saves you time and money in the long run, as you won’t have to go back and make changes to make it accessible later on.

A comic strip of a person sitting in a wheelchair outside a store with stairs leading up to it. A person next to them has just started drawing a ramp.

Step 2: Designing for Accessibility

When designing your digital product, it’s important to keep accessibility in mind from the start. This includes things like:

  • Use of contrasting colors for text and background
  • Providing text alternatives for all images, videos and audio files
  • Using semantic HTML tags for improved screen reader compatibility
  • Providing keyboard access to all features of the product

By designing with accessibility in mind, you can create a product that is easy to use for everyone, regardless of their abilities.

A person sitting at a desk with a laptop and a sketchbook. They have a ruler and pencil in hand, drawing something on the page.

Step 3: Development for Accessibility

Developing for accessibility means putting those designs into action. This includes ensuring that all code written is accessible, and that all features are easy to use for everyone.

Some considerations include:

  • Ensuring proper use of ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) tags to make sure your web content is properly read by screen readers
  • Making sure all features can be accessed with only a keyboard, as some people with disabilities cannot use a mouse
  • Including alt tags on images for screen readers

By coding with accessibility in mind, you’ll create a product that works for all users, not just for those without disabilities.

A computer screen with a code editor on one side and the website on the other. There are HTML tags visible in the editor, and the website has a menu bar at the top and text content in the middle.

Step 4: Testing for Accessibility

Testing is perhaps the most important step in ensuring your product is accessible. Test your product with a range of assistive technologies, including screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, and voice recognition software.

Additionally, consider user testing with a focus on accessibility. Find volunteers with disabilities who are willing to test your product. This will give you valuable feedback on any roadblocks they experience, and whether your product is truly accessible.

A person using a screen reader to navigate a website with a laptop. They have headphones on and a hand on the keyboard, with the screen reader software visible on screen.

Conclusion

By following these four steps – understanding accessibility, designing for accessibility, developing for accessibility and testing for accessibility – you’ll be well on your way to creating an accessible digital product that works for everyone. Not only will you be doing the right thing, but providing an accessible product also opens your potential customer base to millions of people that would otherwise be excluded.

So, go forth and create an accessible digital product with confidence. You’ve got this! 💪🏼🌟

A group of diverse people of different ages and abilities around a computer screen, smiling and giving thumbs up.