When you think about your brand, you’re probably thinking about visual aesthetics. But what about the accessibility of your brand? With about 15% of people worldwide having some type of disability, if you’re not thinking about accessibility, you could be doing your audience a disservice or limiting who your brand can reach. 

The topic of accessibility is starting to surface in mainstream conversations about design, but our current culture normalizes letting the accessibility of your brand fall to the wayside. But prioritizing accessibility means doing the right thing for your brand, and more importantly, your audience. It’s about implementing design practices that balance aesthetics and accessibility by anticipating user needs and making accommodations before they happen. It’s about designing good experiences, not just good looks.  

So what is accessibility and how does it affect your brand? Here are some of the basics you need to know to ensure you’re not ignoring accessibility and hurting your brand. 

What is accessibility?

Accessibility is the measure of something’s usability by as many people as possible. You’re probably familiar with accessible ramps, doors, and bathrooms and how they accommodate people navigating buildings. Through design elements like typography, color, contrast, heading styles and alternative text, visual design can similarly accommodate users with differing visual, cognitive, learning or neurological abilities. Enhancing the readability and usability of your website and social media won’t leave anyone complaining. Accessible design benefits everyone.

How do you measure accessibility?

There are laws and guidelines that set the standards for accessibility compliance! Knowing and implementing these accessibility guidelines and best practices can not only expand your audience, but also who you do business with. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), for instance, provide the technical standard for web content. Ignoring these guidelines and laws can lead to legal consequences if your company is not in accordance with Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act. For instance, in 2018 Fox News Network was sued in a class action lawsuit for its inaccessible website — specifically, its lack of alt text for many images and links and for having redundant and empty links that cluttered screen reader navigation. Similarly, Barnes & Noble faced multiple lawsuits between 2019 and 2022 for non-conformance with WCAG. Under Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act of 1973, federal agencies are required to eliminate technological barriers for people with disabilities.  

WCAG guidelines and success criteria (levels of conformance) can be found on W3.org. But they can be daunting. That’s why, when starting your brand or rethinking how your company accommodates accessibility, it’s best to consult with design professionals who are familiar with these guidelines and work accessibility into their strategy. 

Your Accessibility Starter Pack

There are a lot of resources available to consult during your journey to creating an accessible brand. Here are three basic things you need to consider to make your brand accessible.

  1. Color and Contrast: Color contrast is one of the most vital first steps to having an accessible brand. Dark blue over white is easier to view than neon yellow text over white simply because there’s a higher contrast between dark blue and white. From text color, to sitewide color schemes, to button colors and form fields, your brand colors are one of the first elements that could be a barrier to your audience. Try out tools like color.review or Use All Five to test your brand colors for appropriate color contrast.
  2. Text and Typography: While ensuring your text has enough color contrast is a good first step, you also need to make sure your text is sized and spaced appropriately and is responsive when zooming on various screen sizes. Additionally, you want to make sure that your chosen typeface is accessible. For instance, in a digital environment, sans serif fonts are significantly easier to read for people with visual impairment. Serif fonts are okay for headers, but san serif fonts are more accessible and better for fluid reading, especially in body copy or longer blocks of text. For more extensive information on accessible typography see section508.gov/fonts-typography/.
  3. Alternative Text: Alternative text is the description attached to an image in its metadata. There are billions of photos on the internet and so few have alternative text. For people using screen readers, this means those photos are rendered useless as there is no data for the screen reader to describe the image to the user. Functions to add alternative text, especially on social media apps, are buried in the posting settings, which normalizes complacency towards accessibility standards. Social media sites claim to automatically generate alt text, but they tend to be pretty vague. Learning how to write concise but descriptive alternative text for images on your website and social account will allow you to accommodate users with screen readers and may also increase your SEO by helping search engines correctly identify images in search results (double win!). Check out this resource to get you started writing alt text.

Making our brands and digital landscapes accessible is a huge undertaking, but it’s a necessary one that needs to be a priority. Here at Abel, we’re taking steps to prioritize it, and we want to help your brand do the same so you can expand your reach to a wider audience base. Our goal is to foster brand experiences that make users feel like the content is made for them — because it should be for everyone.  

Drop us a line to discuss receiving an Abel Accessibility Audit and Report. Discover how your brand measures up and gain actionable insights to optimize your content for all audiences.