Designing for inclusion

Creating accessible digital design isn’t just about meeting guidelines, it’s about ensuring everyone can engage with your brand, regardless of ability. If your digital presence isn’t accessible to all users, you’re already leaving people behind. Done right, it removes barriers, improves user experience, and builds lasting brand loyalty.

So, how do you integrate inclusive design practices into your digital strategy?

Whilst inclusive design ensures your business can be compliant with accessibility laws, it is about something much bigger – it means creating equitable experiences for all users. By prioritising accessible UX/UI, businesses can expand their audience reach whilst improving usability for all users.

When inclusive design practices are at the core of your digital presence, you’re not just following regulations, you’re demonstrating customer-first thinking by building digital spaces that work for real people, no matter how they browse, read, or interact with your content.

To effectively embed accessible UX/UI, thinking beyond looks and focusing on how people experience your content is important.

1. Prioritise web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG)

The WCAG provides a framework for making digital content more accessible. These guidelines are in place to ensure websites and applications are perceivable, meaning content should be presentable in ways users can perceive, such as text alternatives for images and captions for videos.

It’s important to make sure users can navigate your site easily, whether using a keyboard, mouse, or assistive technology. Content should be clear, structured and predictable, with intuitive navigation and readable text, and your website should be compatible with different browsers, devices and assistive technologies.

2. Structure your content using semantic HTML for better accessibility

Accessible UX/UI starts with strong foundations. Structuring content properly using semantic HTML makes it easier for screen readers to interpret information, improving usability for visually impaired users.

This means following best practices such as using header tags in a logical order, labelling form elements clearly and implementing Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) attributes when necessary.

3. Optimise for keyboard-only navigation

If a user has a motor impairment, they may rely on keyboards or adaptive devices for navigation rather than a mouse. To ensure you are designing for accessibility, you should enable keyboard-friendly navigation across your website and provide clear focus indicators for interactive components. This means avoiding reliance on hover-only interactions to ensure that your site can be navigated in a variety of ways.

4. Improve visual accessibility

The visuals of your website are important not only for your branding and messaging but also for accessibility. Your colour choices, typography and layout all impact the usability of a site for individuals with visual impairments.

To make your website visually inclusive, you should consider maintaining a minimum colour contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for text. You could offer scalable fonts and adjustable text sizes and avoid conveying information solely through colour by using options like labels, icons, or patterns instead.

5. Make audio and visual content fully accessible

Any visual or audio content should be just as accessible to users with visual or hearing impairments as it is to anyone else. To achieve this, you should add descriptive alt text for all images, provide captions and subtitles for video content, and include transcripts for podcasts and audio files.

With a wide range of technology now available to make navigating the internet easier for everyone, it’s important to design websites with these forms of technology in mind. You should test accessibility through a mixture of automated and manual testing using screen readers, magnifiers, and other assistive tools to give you the confidence what you’re designing will meet all necessary accessibility standards.

Investing in accessible digital design goes far beyond compliance; it’s the smart thing to do for your business. Many businesses that prioritise accessible digital design will find they benefit from:

• More users and more engagement

• Better SEO performance

• Stronger brand reputation

• Fewer legal risks

When you invest in accessible UX/UI, you create an experience that’s better for everyone, boosting engagement, conversions, and long-term customer relationships.

By designing for accessibility from the outset, it is possible to create more inclusive, user-friendly experiences that cater to all. Embracing accessible UX/UI doesn’t just improve usability for those with disabilities, it can enhance the experience for everyone.

We make sure your digital design isn’t just beautiful, but accessible, functional, and user-friendly. Get in touch with us to get started.