Web through all lenses

The Need for Accessible Web Viewing for Everyone

By Misari Patel

Photo by Brands&People on Unsplash licensed under an Unsplash license

Photo by Brands&People on Unsplash licensed under an Unsplash license

Web design needs to address more specific needs and personal preferences of people with -

Designers and developers use modern tools to provide accessible content to their website visitors.

The choices web designers and developers make can either make it easier or harder for people to fully conduct their daily activites. When designing web pages, it should be ensured that they work for everyone, not just some people. It's a responsibility to fix mismatches between what is created and the all the humans who use them.

Microsoft's Inclusive design guidelines introduces a model of persona spectrums, which is a more inclusive way to think about users than traditional personas. Instead of defining a single user character, persona spectrums focus on the range of abilities, motivations, and circumstances that can affect how people use your product or service.

Web and UI Designers as well as Developers must focus on the 'Vision' part of the spectrum, including people with varying visual challenges. They should aim to cover all 3 types of ailments, including permanent disabilities such as vision impairment, temporary disabilities such as recovering from eye surgery, and situational disabilities such as reading in low light.

Image on Left Source: Kill Your Personas, by Margaret P. and Doug Kim, Microsoft Design, Medium, October 13, 2022.

Let's take a look at some of such conditions and how it affects web viewing experience for different individuals.

Photo by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash licensed under an Unsplash license

Photo by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash licensed under an Unsplash license

For instance, let's think of a computer screen.

This is how it may start appearing to you as you age, even in absence of any disease.

Growth of 65+ age group using internet in USA (in %)

With so many services and activities shifting to digital platforms, internet adoption rates among seniors keep rising steadily. As options for video chatting, social media engagement, online shopping and telehealth continue expanding, internet usage is likely to keep growing among the 65+ population.

Color-Vision problems in various spectrums arise among the population in this age group and it affects the way they view websites.

“ Even in the absence of disease, age brings with it declining vision. Aging eyes lose the ability to discriminate pale colors, making yellows and other pastels appear white. They are also unable to differentiate shades of blue, green, and purple as these cooler colors can read gray. ”
- Benjamin Moore & Co.

According to the research by Marilyn E. Schneck, PhD, and colleagues of The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, San Francisco, problems with color vision become much more common as people age. Researchers tested the color vision of 865 older adults between ages 58-102. They found that few people under age 70 had trouble distinguishing colors. But the rate of color vision problems increased a lot in the oldest age groups. Around 45% of humans in their early to mid-70s and about half (50%) of people over the age of 85 had abnormal color vision. Around 66% of people over the age of 90 had trouble with color vision.

The most common type of color vision problem in older adults was difficulty telling apart blue and yellow colors. The researchers concluded that color vision gets worse for most people as they age. By their 90s, over half of the people have abnormalities in their ability to see colors correctly.

Source : Color Vision Deteriorates with Age

Shouldn't websites cater to their needs as well ?

Let's take a look at another condition.

Warning: The below content contains flashing images that may trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy.

Flashing or patterned effects on web pages, as seen in this example, can make people with or without photosensitive epilepsy feel disorientated, uncomfortable or unwell.

What is Photosensitive epilepsy ?

“Photosensitive epilepsy is when seizures are triggered by flashing lights or contrasting lights and dark patterns.”

Image on Left Source :
Photosensitive Epilepsy: Glasses and Other Ways to Prevent a Photosensitive Epilepsy Seizure

For instance, in UK,

Around 1 in 100 people have Epilepsy.

Epilepsy Society (2023). Photosensitive epilepsy. Retrieved October 15, 2023

And of those, more than 3% have photosensitive epilepsy.

Epilepsy Society (2023). Photosensitive epilepsy. Retrieved October 15, 2023

Don't they also deserve to be able to have an option to turn such motion graphics off ?

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash licensed under an Unsplash license

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash licensed under an Unsplash license

Globally, 1.1 billion people of the population had vision loss in 2020 and there are many conditions that fall under visual impairments that may affect the way one spectates different webpages on the internet.

-

-

-

-

Nevertheless, Web viewing, in its current form, is not as Accessible.

Let's look into some details to see how.

Population affected by vision loss, Global, 2020

As of 2023, Low contrast text, below the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) limits, was detected on 83.6% of home pages with an average of 31.7 distinct instances on each page.

Source : The WebAIM Million 2023 Report

% increase of failures in the WCAG category from 2019 to 2023

While the amount of low-contrast text failure seems to have reduced, just slightly, over the past five years, it still remains the most common failure with missing alternative text for images and empty links next in line.

Source : The WebAIM Million 2023 Report

Home page complexity has increased by 34.1 % since 2019.

Home page complexity means the number of elements present on a home page and, currently, there is an average of 1050 elements present per home page that the user interacts with.

And on the other hand, the number of home pages with detectable WCAG failures has only decreased from 97.8% to 96.3% from 2019 to 2023, which is 1.5% over the course of 4 years.

Source : The WebAIM Million 2023 Report

And with more elements present on the home pages,

Users with disabilities would expect to encounter errors on 1 in every 21 home page elements with which they engage.

Source : The WebAIM Million 2023 Report

Across 1 million home pages, 49,991,225 distinct accessibility errors were detected.

Source : The WebAIM Million 2023 Report

With an average of -

50 errors

1 page

Source : The WebAIM Million 2023 Report

All these accessibility errors can be observed among various websites in different categories and they vary significantly.

Above chart : An analysis of over 1 Million home pages, showing average number of errors per page in different categories.

We interact with websites from most of these domains on daily or weekly basis in a utilitarian manner.

So the question it brings us to is -

How might we enable people with temporary, situational, or permanent limitations individualize their interfaces to enhance their web viewing experience?

Photo by Javier Quesada on Unsplash licensed under an Unsplash license

It's important to develop concrete methods to assess whether web designs truly provide equal entry and participation for everyone, not just some. It should be proactively verified that websites don't shut people out. True inclusion that embraces diversity must be the objective that guides web design processes.

Embracing diverse needs and abilities makes the web more inclusive and accessible.

Here are some resources that can help during the Web design process.
It is always good practice to refer to these when building web experiences for your users.

Accessibility for Teams

WCGA Guidelines

Microsoft Inclusive Design Handbook

Tools like AccessiBe

References

Datasets:

Additional Sources:

TopBuilt with Shorthand