Digital accessibility for graphic deliverables
When the design can also be used by everyone on screen.
Increasingly, a media designer's work ends up on a screen: websites, apps, newsletters, social media, and digital documents. Here there is an extra dimension beyond aesthetics and technique: the content must be usable by everyone – also by people with reduced vision, colour blindness, or who use a screen reader. This is called digital accessibility, and it is both good practice and in many cases a legal requirement for public-facing content.
§WCAG — the common standard
The international standard for accessible digital content is WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). It describes how content is made perceptible, usable, understandable and robust, and divides the requirements into levels of increasing stringency. Many public and publicly supported solutions must meet a specific level — so if you design for such solutions, accessibility is not up for discussion but part of the delivery.
§Contrast and readability
One of the most tangible WCAG requirements concerns contrast between text and background. Light grey text on a white background can look elegant but be unreadable for many. WCAG specifies concrete minimum requirements for contrast ratio and the requirement is more lenient for large/bold text than for small body text. Check your colour choices against the applicable threshold with a contrast tool rather than assessing by eye.
§Color correction fixes errors like wrong white balance and exposure, while color grading after creates the deliberate, artistic look.
A guiding principle is that colour must never be the only way a message is conveyed. If, for example, you mark errors in red and correct in green, a red-green colour-blind person will not perceive the difference. Therefore always add an extra signal: an icon, text, a pattern or a shape. This also applies to graphs and diagrams where categories should not be separated by colour alone.
§Alt text and structure
- 01Give images meaningful alternative text so a screen reader can convey the content.
- 02Purely decorative images are marked so the screen reader skips them.
- 03Use proper heading structure (levels in order), not just large, bold text.
- 04Make sure that the reading order is logical, even when the layout is visually complex.
- 05Make links and buttons meaningful — avoid 'click here' without context.
§Available PDFs and documents
Accessibility applies not only to websites. A digital document — for example a PDF — must also be structured so a screen reader can read it: with real text rather than text as image, a correct reading order, described pictures and a logical structure with headings. A beautiful, but 'flat' document that is just a picture of a page is inaccessible, no matter how good it looks.
§Accessibility is good design
It is a widespread misconception that accessibility makes design ugly or boring. Quite the opposite: strong contrast, clear structure, readable typography and messages that do not rely on color alone are hallmarks of good design for everyone. If you think accessibility in from the start rather than patching it on at the end, it rarely becomes a limitation — it becomes a quality stamp.
“Accessible design is not design for the few — it is design that works for the many, including those others forget.”
— Principle in digital accessibility