29 Jan 2021

Web Accessibility Series: Part 1 - Colour Accessibility

Kicking off Part 1 of Catch’s new web accessibility series exploring the different ways we can make the internet accessible for everyone.
 

This month the Experience Design (XD) team at Catch is kicking off the first segment of our Accessibility Series, aimed at positioning accessibility as less of a challenge that needs to be tackled, and instead encouraging designers to embrace accessibility and view it as an integral part of their process. Each part of the series will provide an overview of our main learnings and provide relevant resources and advice to help you stay on top of accessibility. Part 1 covers how to address colour accessibility in our work.

 

Alt text: visual of overlapping circles in different colours and patterns

Overview 

Before we answer that question, we first want to provide a brief overview of the history of Accessibility Guidelines. 

In 1999, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) created a set of guidelines called the “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines” as part of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). The mission of the WAI is to lead the Web to its full potential of usability, enabling people with disabilities to participate equally on the Web.

Alt text: image of cartoon cat with words like inaccessible? Wow? Huh? Floating around them

What is colour accessibility?

Colour accessibility is the inclusion of enough contrast between the foreground text colour and the background colour to ensure text and iconography is easily recognisable. 

It also includes guidelines on how to distinguish between elements with colour, for example, in bar charts. Choosing different colours for different elements is not enough though. Anything that is indicated by colour should have a secondary way for it to be distinguished, for example a pattern, like in the example below.

Alt text: image of a bar chart with the appropriate colour contrast and patterns on each element to show how to be accessibility compliant

Why do we follow these guidelines?

We follow these rules to make the internet more accessible for people with a decreased ability to see colour, or a decreased ability to tell colours apart from one another. Colour blindness is more accurately referred to as Colour Vision Deficiency (CVD) and occurs in 8% of males and 0.5% of females worldwide, constituting a significant portion of the population.

(Source: Geri Coady, “Color Accessibility Workflows”)

Three Main Learnings

 

1. Guidelines are great, but also user test when possible

Despite all intentions to ensure guidelines match real user’s needs, this is not always the case. Take the example below. At first glance, you may think that there’s no way the white text over the busy and colourful background is legible. But according to the Accessibility Guidelines, in the below image “all texts meet AAA colour contrast requirements.”

Alt text: image of text over a busy colourful background that doesn’t seem accessible but according to the guidelines passes, showing a discrepancy

This is because “when background images are used, automated tests aren’t reliably able to check for minimum contrast of text against the image - especially if the image is a photograph or drawing where the text is placed over the image, and (2) situations in which depending upon context such as text becoming incidental because it is part of an inactive user interface component or is purely decorative or part of a logo” 

(Source: Challenges with Accessibility Guidelines Conformance and Testing, and Approaches for Mitigating Them). This reveals a limitation of available accessibility testers online and a need for making improvements.

User testing for accessibility is a good solution to solving the issue of guideline discrepancies in what’s said to help users and what is actually helpful.

2. We have a lot to learn. 

Despite the introduction of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines in 1999, there is still a long way to go in terms of ensuring the internet is fully accessible. For example, 86.3% of home pages in February 2020 lacked sufficient colour contrast. Keeping in mind the percentage of males and females that have Colour Vision Deficiency (CVD), totalling around 300 million people, we know that those in need of accessible websites are not receiving the best user experience possible across the internet.

Alt text: illustration of a blind man, a voice command logo, and a cell phone

3. We should all be champions of accessibility. 

 

Accessible Sites have improved performance

Accessible websites are inherently more usable, providing a better experience for your site visitors. This is crucial given that 88% of users are less likely to return to a website after a bad user experience (Source: UXCam) Lower bounce rates, higher conversions, and less negative feedback likely associated with a more accessible website should in turn rank your site higher in search engines, thus increasing your chance of reaching more people. 

 

It’s a financial liability

Lawsuits have been brought against multiple organisations that did not provide accessible websites. An article titled “Companies are Losing Web Cases: Spend Money on Web Access, not Lawyers,” court cases were filed by blind people against Blick Art Materials, Five Guys, Winn-Dixie, and Hobby Lobby crafts. In all of these cases the plaintiffs won significant compensation from these organisations. The article title says it all. It’s worth investing in your site’s accessibility. 

 

It’s the right thing to do

The last, and most important reason for improving your site’s accessibility, is that everyone deserves access to the internet in a way that supports their needs. This is echoed in a statement by the United Nations which recognises the access to information and communications technologies as a basic human right.

Alt text: illustration of a guy giving a thumbs up and “you’re a okay” spelled with three a’s before it, next to him

Conversations around accessibility should be had frequently when kicking off new projects with both internal teams and clients to ensure everyone is invested in creating the best possible user experience. The W3C has resources to help you make a business case for improving your organisation’s accessibility that you can find here. 

Our team at Catch has expertise in designing and building accessible websites, having worked at the highest level of WCAG accreditation. We’ve worked with Scope (the pan-disability charity), accredited by The Shaw Trust for AAA accessibility, to design and build a range of products and are currently working with the Royal National Institute of Blind People to reimagine their digital presence with accessibility as a key focus. 


If you need help starting conversations around accessibility or are ready to get to work, please get in touch. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram for more accessibility related content!

 

 

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27 Nov 2019

UX, bias & the good fight

Hi, I’m Michael Reiss, one of the UX Designers in the strategy team here at Catch. I'm hugely passionate about research and the value it brings to UX and digital strategy work, and I particularly champion the customer through my work. In the below I talk about the very real possibility for bias to interfere with research and share my tips for remaining objective.

If you've opened this post you may already be familiar with audience research. And not only are you familiar, but you're convinced of its benefits. The likes of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Glossier’s Emily Weiss, and AirBnb’s Brian Chesky and Joe Bebbia have attributed their success to having an understanding of their users. Instead of continuing its praises, I think it’s more interesting to consider how even those of us who conduct audience research for a living are not as objective as we think. 

According to the below study, we're actually pretty terrible at being objective, despite thinking we’re better at it than those around us.

Out of a sample of 600+ people, 85% believed they were less biased than the average person. This study led to social psychologist Emily Pronin coining the term "bias blind spot," which explains how not only does everyone have cognitive bias, but everyone also believes they are less biased than others.

Out of a sample of 600+ people, 85% believed they were less biased than the average person.

(Source: Princeton Publications)

Yikes.

And while it’s great that just reminding ourselves of this bias is a huge step in avoiding it’s potential influence, there are a few measures we can take to prevent falling into the bias trap.

The numbers don't lie? 

When we begin the research process, it's common to begin by deciding who to interview and what to ask them. For example, we've decided to collect user input for a sports drink company. Great, right? While perhaps a bit exaggerated, the below may sound familiar, especially when time and budget is tight.

We know the product so well, we have lots of site data and market research, so we know what our audience thinks of us. Not only are we the users (because we happen to also drink sports drinks), but we can imagine what our different audiences think of us and our competition.

Unfortunately, we're likely too engulfed in the day to day, to get accurate data from speaking just within our immediate teams. And if we do decide to conduct user interviews, bias can influence who we choose to interview (eg failing to consider all relevant groups of people) and the types of questions asked (eg leading questions).

While we've all heard that "the numbers don't lie," suggesting quantitative data is always objective, what about the steps we take to find this data, or how it is collected? That initial email request for specific datasets, or the Google search and selection of the study that most affirmed your hypothesis? That darn bias sneaks in yet again!

So how do we avoid UX bias?

  • Looking as far and wide as possible: of course make sure to source for any and all existing information on audience. But don’t stop there. Ensuring that we’re engaging with people from multiple departments, at different levels, and asking who they believe their audiences to be (and who they aren't, and why? …) The process of collecting multiple perspectives and asking them to explain their reasoning will provide us with great insight. 

  • Try to do the above activity in person, if possible during a workshop. Invite people from different departments with different levels of seniority. Separate people from their managers or those they work with on a daily basis to encourage open and honest input.  Use ice-breakers to help people loosen up and feel more comfortable. 

  • When you determine who your audience is, print out their persona and make sure everyone on the team can see it as a reminder of who you're working for! 

  • Collect a list (or slack your team members) of the most surprising information you've learned during your audience research. The habit of light heartedly calling out your assumptions and reminding yourself of surprises leads to a more open-minded approach to setting up audience research.

  • Ensure the whole team stays aware of the real possibility of having to pivot the project based on future research findings. We all need to be aware and educated of this possibility: providing updates on the research process as it progresses definitely helps.  Don’t be afraid to expose all team members to rough & ready “work in progress” brainstorms to give exposure to the work and provide space for far and wide input. It may take some initial effort, but you'll save yourself from future stress by having the flexibility to provide the best insights and recommendations.

  • The good news among all of this bias is that our users will quickly prove or disprove assumptions by telling us what they need, want, and expect! We just have to be comfortable with having assumptions disproven and allow time to adjust direction of research.

Bias can be hard to shake, but we're adept at avoiding it’s traps and giving accurate insight: if you’re thinking about audience research or wider UX strategy, we're here to help. 

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