ADA Compliancy

Being a Ux Designer and Front-End Developer, I am happy to see this big push for the focus on accessibility. When Ux meets ADA compliance it means more than creating a descriptive <alt> from a coding perspective. It means more than highly contrasted layouts from a design perspective. When it comes to interaction, if a user with working vision can immediately take action based on what they’ve read or have seen, then, someone who is visually impaired should be able to act upon something they want to do as soon as they hear it.

Before I consider the design I look at the copy, I read through it and I ask myself if at any point would I as a reader want to take action on any part of this? If so consideration of where links, forms, buttons should be placed should come into play for those who are visually impaired.

We shouldn’t make them read through the entire paragraph or list item (unless it is necessary for them to read through everything before taking action) to access a link or button.

For someone with working sight, sure a large button with some padding and margin around it looks great and makes me want to click it but it is so far removed from that associated paragraph that anyone visually impaired would find that button to be a hassle.

So what would I do? Place a link to take action right there in the midst of the paragraph and written content AND add that lovely giant flat button after the fact.

Give the visually impaired the ability to be instantly gratified.