I’ve been reading a lot on accessibility lately and I must say that if we are sincere we must think of accessibility as an integrated part of solution that we are building for our users.
So then it should be obvious that when our user experience and graphical designers gather information from the client (the person or organization that want’s to offer the webpage or solution to the public) they should ask the right questions.
Not only questions that brings business value to the table but also the questions that make sure the solution will be as including as it can be – accessible to all.
Then they should provide the developers with the concepts and plans for their realization. If it were only up to developers it would probably be accessible from the start, as they like to re-use existing elements that also includes semantic value and make it easier for the assistive technologies because of that. But yes – it would not be pretty 🙂
The designers and developers working together, implementing accessibility from mockups and prototypes to working, tested, products is the way to go.
Almost a cliche – but nonetheless;
If accessibility is there from the start, thought of in the raw design proposals, then it is easier to have accessible products at the launch.
random accessibility expert
So I suppose this is the optimal solution:
- including / universal design with best practices from UX and WCAG,
- spicing it up with artistic and graphical enrichements that attract,
- coded in most semantic yet simplest possible way, progressively enhanced and unit-tested with automatic tooling,
- manually tested with assistive technologies by the developer and fixed it needed,
- user tested with real users (multiple personas),
- regression tested with automatic tooling on each release
Those steps would assure that the released product is and stays accessible, much beyond conforming to the guidelines but being quality assured also by the end-users.
