55 sec about a11y - users (part 2)
Tags: a11y
Published: 2022-04-26 19:58:13

Six years ago, a customer came to the company where I worked and asked to create a contact center where absolutely blind people could work. This project started my interest in creating accessible interfaces. And it is very closely related to the interest in users - those for whom we create a digital product - a website or an application.

It is easiest to design for an ideal user - he has excellent health, a good memory, he easily analyzes any information. The device of this user is the latest model, and the Internet never fails.

But in fact, users are much more interesting. Someone has old phones and computers, the Internet periodically lags or is too slow.
_For example, literally this morning I ordered a taxi and my Internet on my phone disappeared. I don’t know what the problem was - in the phone or with the operator, but the application suddenly stopped responding to button presses. And at that moment I realized that I made a mistake with the address and I need to cancel the order. I had to reboot the phone, by this moment the driver was already driving to me and I had to cancel the order that was already in progress._

And the users themselves are very different! Some may have **vision problems**. Blindness and color blindness are usually mentioned here, but besides them, there are cataracts, glaucoma, flies before my eyes .. For example, I did laser vision correction a year and a half ago, before that I saw everything very blurry. And we all know tired eyes after a long day at the computer. Other users may have **hearing problems**, not only deafness, but also ringing in the ears or room noise that makes it difficult to hear audio messages. Some users may have problems with **motor skills** - this is partial or complete paralysis, trembling in the fingers. Stephen Hawking was such a user. Another group of problems faced by users is **cognitive**. These are problems with the collection and perception of information, processing and analysis of data, their memorization and subsequent storage, data exchange, development and implementation of an action plan. Among these users are those who suffer from dyslexia, autism spectrum disorders, and those who are tired and who find it difficult to concentrate on complex tasks.
_For example, when a young mother tries to order diapers and medicines in an online store for her sick baby, but is constantly distracted by her child and is tired of a sleepless night. The same users may experience several problems at once. So, in the evening, a tired driver, using a navigator, must focus on the road and on the application interface, and cope with eye fatigue._

To make digital products available to our real users, different methods are used. These methods need to be observed in different aspects of development.

Imagine a wooden barrel. In biology, it is used to show how different aspects of the environment affect a living organism. With the help of this barrel, I will show how different aspects of development affect the availability of a digital product. So, our barrel is filled to the brim with water - these are our happy users. Each barrel board is responsible for 1 development aspect. Here is the UI board - this is how the buttons look, the texts, what colors are chosen .. The second board is responsible for the code. The third is for user scenarios, that is, those interactions that designers have thought through. Let's imagine that the designer picked up bad colors and unreadable texts turned out. In this case, the UI board shrinks and some users flow out of the barrel to competitors. If there are no competitors, then users are left without services or information. If everything is fine with the UI, but the programmer was too lazy and did not add information for screen readers to the code, then the code board decreases and users again leak away - those who use screen readers. With this barrel it is impossible to calculate the loss of users, but it is clear that each board is important. Also, different boards will be critical for different products. For example, the site of an ophthalmological clinic is visited mainly by people with vision problems, they are interested in information about doctors, operations and their cost. In this case, UI boards, screen reader code, and information architecture (which is responsible for providing the right information at the right time) become critical.

In a nutshell - think about real users, what difficulties they face and in what conditions they use your product. Remember that accessibility comes in many pieces.