Improving Accessibility for Links
Examples from accessibility guidelines
Baymard Institute’s Accessibility Guidelines
Liability Limiting Disclaimer:
Baymard Institute uses a combination of “Frequency” and “Severity” scores to identify the importance of UX issues in general.
However, for Accessibility issues in specific, it was important to put in perspective the overall issue of a lack of accessibility while also shielding the company from potential litigation (as we were not doing full Accessibility audits at the time).
“While [Baymard’s] guideline frequency ratings are traditionally based on the percentage of all users who would be afflicted by the issue, users who rely on accessibility considerations make up only a small subset of all users. It must be noted, however, that within that small subset of users with disabilities these issues will often affect all or nearly all of those users.
Similarly, in regards to severity ratings, accessibility issues will be rated "disruptive" if users with disabilities would have great difficulty completing tasks — for example, they will likely be forced to stop their tasks and must resort to finding alternate means of accomplishing their goals — and "harmful" if the completion of their tasks would be almost impossible and very likely result in site abandonment.”
Progressive Disclosure for Longer Code Examples
Limiting the default display of multi-line (3–5 lines) code examples behind progressive disclosure buttons enabled non-technical stakeholders to access critical accessiblity information while still keeping necessary code examples available to technical workers (i.e., Developers) who needed them.
See Code Example
Images Showcasing Assistive Technologies
Able-bodied people are often unfamiliar with how screen readers and other assistive technologies work. Including images of assistive technologies helps technical and non-technical people understand the challenges of navigating an e-commerce website.
Video Examples of Accessibilty Issues in Action
Seeing accessibility shortfalls in action, video examples helped contextualize the issues people with disabilities face interacting with e-commerce sites.