How To Make An Inclusive Website? 10 All Inclusive Web Design Principles
You do realize the internet is for everyone.
Right?
So if you do— is your website accessible to everyone?
Don’t worry if not!
Because 70% of the websites are not entirely readable to everyone.
Even the biggest of the brands have overlooked web accessibility for disabled people.
Probably the reason why the call for inclusivity has gone up.
Don’t be surprised if you see the laws getting enshrined to make inclusive web designs for your website.
Many web design companies already push for inclusive web design.
Here’s why:
- You can’t fit a one-size tee on everyone. Everyone deserves an inclusive user experience.
- You can target a diverse range of individuals.
- There will be more ways to accommodate a variety of experiences.
- You make your website more approachable to everyone.
- It’s more understandable and usable for every user.
- Your website is easily navigational to disable users.
And it’s not that only your understanding of inclusivity will do the job for you.
Your web design companies should keep inclusivity on their bucket list.
We’re saying this because top web designing companies like SPINX Digital have mastered the art of inclusivity.
Plus, you’re not doing it only to reach a wider audience.
You’re also doing it to
- Build positive public relations
- Spread brand awareness
- Penetrate into the larger market area
- Grow your business
- Help your SEO efforts (as recommended by many SEO companies)
Now you know what inclusivity means for your business— we’ll look into ten core principles of inclusive web design.
Principle #1: Make it as flexible as possible
Of course, you can’t please everyone, but your web design should cover the most extensive set of audiences.
You’re basically giving the experiences to suit their limits.
How to make flexible web design
- Profile your customers based on their age, income, and demography
- Provide multiple contact options
- Make your website device-friendly
- Serve your services where they’re likely to use more— at home or work
Principle #2: Take care of moving content
Moving content can induce serious anxiety issues in people suffering from mental health problems.
You’d want to avoid endless moving content on the website.
How to respond to overwhelming customer
- Put a pause mechanism to moving content like ads, banners, gifs, etc.
- Don’t overuse time-sensitive content
- Avoid popping up annoying live chats time and again
- Have collapsible chat window
- Don’t force contact on the first few meetings with customers
- Avoid drowning your customers in notifications
Principle #3: Apply inclusive web typography rules
User experience is only as good as a reading experience.
Some have energies as high as Burj Khalifa when it comes to typography in web designing.
But for most— imaginations go on wheelchairs because inclusive typography rules are not easy to apply.
Rules for inclusive web typography
- Avoid justified aligning your texts
- Keep texts either left or right-aligned
- Apply proper spacing between each paragraph and lines
- Use small paragraphs
- Add tracking and kerning for roomy texts
- Use white space in the content
- Fold each line at 90 or fewer characters
- Write concise and straightforward language
- Avoid mixing texts within images
- Use clear, well-sized font
Principle #4: Let everyone access images
Texts are important, but images are helpful for those with reading disabilities like dyslexia.
You need to add relevant images so that everyone can relate to your content.
How to make images accessible
- Apply relevant alt texts to all your images
- Describe the images clearly
- Keep the description accurate
- Measure the color contrast ratio of the images and use them everywhere
- Check for contrast ratio for text on background (preferably 4:5:1)
- Use color wisely to appeal to colorblind people
- Get in touch with color blind and disable people to perfect images and multimedia
Principle #5: Keep touch accessibility in account
You may think the desktop is the most popular touchpoint.
But over half the world uses mobile and smartphones.
And you already know how touch-capabilities have changed the mobile market.
How to make website touch-accessible
- Add relevant-sized buttons
- Tapping should be easy
- Swiping on the pages should be smooth
- Avoid overly complicated touch capabilities
- Use tappable zoom functionality instead of “pinch-zoom.”
Principle #6: Try to be perceptible
Not everyone likes the same teacher.
Some kids like rote learning, some conceptual, and some practical.
Your users are pretty similar.
You want them to perceive your website the way they want.
How to make the perceptible website
- Communicate your words in a variety of ways (use texts, images, audio, and video)
- Provide different user experiences with the same valuable output
Principle #7: Don’t underestimate the simplicity
Look!
The ideal goal of your website is to communicate your idea clearly to everyone. Right?
That’s why simplicity is never out of touch.
Simplicity visibly passes the means-end benefits.
The clearer you are, the lesser the load on the customer help desk.
How to be simple yet informative
- Keep short paragraphs
- Use simple vocabulary
- Don’t flex industry language unless needed
- Cover relatable benefits over features
- Remove ambiguity everywhere necessary
- Focus on minimalism on every front— be it design, texts, or other informative data
Principle #8: Follow consistency across the board
Brand identity looks good when it stays consistent.
Imagine redesigning your logo every quarter.
Will customers get used to your identity? No!
In fact, you’ll lose credibility.
So you don’t need to make constant changes that put customers in doubty-pedestals.
You may want to create an entirely different website solution for disabled people.
The idea is good, but you don’t want them to consider themselves as a burden on you.
How to follow web design consistency
- Have consistent elements on each page
- Manage consistency on customer service as well
- Color contrast should be accessible on all the pages
- Alt texts should be consistent for all the images
Principle #9: Have a super-smooth site
You have to consider how the users access your business website.
The way you access a website in The Sahara Desert is different from how you access it in a metro city.
Ask yourself— how do you want to target the customers with
- Slow internet access
- Less powerful hardware devices
- Low-income
- Rural locations
Design your website in a way they have the option to choose between the data-eating content and low-data content.
How to smoothen up your site
- Consider the devices they’re using
- Count in their demographics
- Reduce irritating errors with minimal yet efficient coding
- Minimize the number of page navigation for a certain action to take place
- Keep short-form pages
Principle #10: Use clear visual hierarchy
It would help if you had a more precise visual hierarchy to make web browsing easier and simpler for every user.
Again, it’s not just about navigation— there are plenty of other elements attached with it.
Tips for visual hierarchy in design
- Size-up or down your visibility
- Use three levels of typographic hierarchy
- Pick your typefaces carefully (they’re like personalities to your website)
- Style the overall mood of the website
- Give balance and flow to your layout (use spaces smartly)
- Rely on compositional techniques for your design structure
- Test the effectiveness of your visual hierarchy
Let’s summarize
- Web flexibility is critical to appealing to a broader segment of the audience.
- You want to control the moving content on your website.
- Inclusive web typography is the skeleton of your content.
- Images should be easily relatable and accessible to every user.
- Touch accessibility makes your website much friendlier on mobile and bright devices.
- Help users perceive your brand website the way they want.
- Keep yourself informed, but don’t give up on the simplicity
- Whatever you do with your website, keep your efforts consistent enough
- Make your website blazing smooth
- Emphasize on visual hierarchy
Author Bio: Brijesh Jakharia
Brijesh Jakharia co-founded SPINX Digital in 2005 and takes great pride in crafting web and mobile marketing solutions for mid-market businesses to enterprises. Marketing is his passion, and the thrill to build a brand from the ground up has helped him craft successful brand stories for world-class clients. While not at work, he loves to spend his time on research and reading digital content stories.