The Power of Accessible Design: Dignity, Expansion, and Longevity

Accessibility in graphic design refers to creating physical and digital communications materials that can be used and understood by as many people as possible, regardless of their abilities, disabilities, or sensory differences.  

As the digital world expands, the benefits of accessibility become increasingly apparent. Most importantly, digitally accessible documents, images, and interfaces are essential for ensuring all individuals can access information and resources that are vital to daily life. For businesses, investing in accessibility helps to put your products or services in front of a wider audience and create a more reliable and flexible experience for all users. Removing barriers and optimizing materials for accessibility ensures that more people can interact with your content and that your content is more capable of adapting to shifts in trends, technology, culture, and politics that will occur over time. 

Accessibility is an investment in your brand’s future. As digital technology advances, the ways that people access information — as well as the specific techniques designers employ to create accessible materials — continually change as well. Four principles that can encompass the goals of accessible design regardless of how technology changes, are recognized by WCAG, the international web accessibility standard, and form the basis of a framework that is used to determine accessibility.  
 
These principles are:  
1. Information and interface components must be presented in a way that is perceivable. 
2. User interface components and navigation must be practically operable. 
3. Information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable. 
4. Content must be flexible or robust enough to be understood using a wide variety of methods. 
 
Many techniques can be implemented to achieve these goals, which will vary depending on the medium and the content of your material. You can view the entirety of the current WCAG principles and guidelines here. To meet these goals, Syntax uses five strategies to integrate accessibility from the beginning of our creative process.  
 
These include: 
 
Meaningful information hierarchy: We use a consistent informational organization that helps our audience to find and keep their place and can translate more smoothly to assistive reading devices. 

Adaptability: We create materials that are flexible and maintain their logical structure when users need to alter aspects like page orientation, point size, or line spacing. 

Intentional and considered use of colour: We avoid using colour alone to delineate meaning and use a contrast-checking software to ensure text and background colours are as accessible as possible. 
 
Multi-tactic approach: Whenever possible, we incorporate as many different accessibility measures into our materials as are appropriate. Scripts, alternative text, captions, bookmarks, headings, reading order, tag order, and additional metadata may all be at work within a single product. 

Keeping meaning in mind: Our accessibility approach keeps meaningful and effective communication top of mind, employing language and writing skills alongside design and technical skills. For example, measures like alternative text are developed with consideration for the product as a whole. This means that when an image provides value, the alt text will be succinct and valuable, whereas images that are visually aesthetic alone will be omitted entirely to create a smoother overall experience for the end user. 

Contact the Syntax Strategic team for a content and accessibility audit to ensure your brand is up to date and accessible for everyone!