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Designing for Accessibility

The software world has starting being more inclusive. After serving only the geeks and the techies, a lot of the software that is produced in this world has started looking at how it can be mor euseful.

One of the key constituencies of software usage is people with disability. The ADA (Americans with disability Act) has forced a lot of the software developers to look at this issue. The software world has also responded sensitively and with care making as much of the software usable by people with disability.

One of the key components that we are looking at in this are people with visual impairment.

Over a period of time, a lot of the software has made sure that the user experience is adjusted in such a way that is is intuitive. Google has been a front runner in this and a lot of others are also not left behind.

Text

The size and the font typology is very important. Choose those aspects with ADA in mind.

Media like Images


A lot of the media , including video and images , have been adjusted to be consumed by people with disability. Most of the videos contains a transcript and a readover text. This helps people with hearing disability to read through the text

All the images and the shades of the pages are toned to make sure people with color blindness understand the intent of an image

Finally, all images are now accompanies with alternative text that helps with the image descriptions

Overall User Journey

Visually impaired people use screen readers all the time. 

Design for a user experience based on how the screen reader interprets the site. You might be surprised on how the screen readers perceive our site and hence the user experience becomes very tedious for visually impaired.

More to come on how to start with making a site ADA compliant.

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