Comments on: Making compromises for accessibility

By: cascade

cascade — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:46:06 +0000

What are web accessibility trade-offs then?

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:29:52 +0000

Good creativity leads to a better web design..!

By: Jenny

Jenny — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:22:30 +0000

In my opinion, designing a website that is accesible for everybody does not necessarily mean having a plain black and white straight site in the end. As somebody has already said, design is far much more than just the aesthetic part: it implies the way the information is laid out and hyerarchized, the colours you use, the typos you use and so on. A well designed website, therefore, will be error free, clear, user-friendly and will make you feel comfortable surfing it.

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:05:09 +0000

Thanks for your comments, Steve and Melanie!

That’s a classic quote from Mark Boulton — understanding the sense that design is an all-encompassing element of functionality and appearance is crucial to working your way through a project.

Best,
Joe

By: Steve Grobschmidt

Steve Grobschmidt — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:39:32 +0000

Great post — I noticed that wording in the “10 Things….” article as well, when I first read it.

That quote from Mark Boulton does resonate. I’ve encountered numerous people in my career who attribute design as pure aesthetics. The worst of those people calling what designers do “eye candy” or “making it pretty”.

But true web design encompasses so many things. I wouldn’t call a person who simply makes beautiful PSDs a great designer, if they can’t: produce semantically clean code; be mindful of presenting a strong user experience every step of the way; follow fundamental accessibility guidelines, etc

So, in effect, good design IS all about compromises, sacrifices, trade-offs, etc. The world’s most beautiful, eye-catching PhotoShop rendering may make an awful web site.

But yet, there is no reason at all that a fully accessible web site can’t be stunning and, yes, “eye candy”.

By: Melanie

Melanie — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:17:29 +0000

I understand your point. It is important for designers of all environments — web, buildings, devices — to think more broadly in the planning stages and to consider usability from the perspective of a diverse user base. It takes commitment, time and effort to think differently about the design process. In all that we design, we need to think about usability as a part of the design, not an add-on. If we do that, then we will not think of it as compromising, we will just think of it as good design. Boulton’s quote expresses this well:

“I think design covers so much more than the aesthetic. Design is fundamentally more. Design is usability. It is Information Architecture. It is Accessibility. This is all design.”

— Mark Boulton

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:54:12 +0000

I think it is a compromise, and that sacrifice is always involved, because I’m trying to look at it from a broad base of practical perspectives. I know from experience working with designers that they definitely have considered the more limiting color palette to be a sacrifice; I may think of it as simply the nature of working with contrast, but to them it’s an unfortunate sacrifice in design flexibility.

“Compromise” can be a pretty flexible word - the difference in use between compromise and trade-off is extremely subtle, and I’m not sure I’d agree that compromise requires loss and trade-off doesn’t

By: Jared Smith

Jared Smith — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:17:18 +0000

I don’t know that I’d call most of these issues compromises. I’d call them trade-offs. You don’t compromise your favorite design colors - you trade-off those colors you’d like with colors that will not hurt accessibility. ‘Compromise’ suggests that you only lose something. A trade-off means you give up something to gain something else. In this case, you give up some design ideas to gain better accessibility.

With that said, some of these trade-offs are pretty expensive. Visible “skip” links, for example, have a significant impact on design while providing only some users a benefit.