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by Theodores
1426 days ago
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If your website is commercial in nature then it can help to get rid of the buzzwords such as 'SEO' and 'accessibility' to just think of putting the customer first. In a real retail business, what would you do for customers that needed some type of assistance, whether reading labels or navigating the store? Hopefully you would help them out as needed with a customer first ethos and not treat them as 'disabled'. If anything, their money is going to be yours quicker than with those 'able bodied' customers because you have gone out of your way to help them. Chipping away at the 'accessibility' of a website, there is a long way to go before getting the 'aria' properties right on every link. Text might be below the size Google deems 'accessible'. Making that text big and chunky might upset designers who want the customer to be browsing by pictures not words. If you argue the case from an accessibility viewpoint they are imagining wheelchairs and they don't see their customers that way. However, if you can argue 'putting customers first' floats their boat. "Won't have text too small for Google" and "so the typical customer can read the text" is still about accessibility but you are not using the 'a' word. For me the fun in accessibility is this word play, to persuade a wider team that has its own inertia and SEO religion to 'put the customer first'. |
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>a customer first ethos and not treat them as 'disabled'
That's a weird way of phrasing it. It sounds to me like you try to play accessibility and customer focus against each other. I'd argue that speaking about "customers" instead of "humans" is counterproductive and only some kind of commercial websites like online shops could be compared to a retail businesses. Also, "accessibility" is not a buzzword.
Maybe you could get comfortable with the term universal/inclusive design?
https://sayyeah.com/digital-insights/universal-design-access...
>Text might be below the size Google deems 'accessible'
Which Google guidelines you are referring to?
>Making that text big and chunky might upset designers who want the customer to be browsing by pictures not words.
Do you assume good design and accessibility can't go together? Developing an accessible product generally means that ideally everyone involved has some basic knowledge about a11y. I totally agree that using "SEO" to justify certain decisions is (almost always) a bad idea. Referring to detailed guidelines like the WCAG may be helpful in order to get everyone on board. Obviously designers will get frustrated when told without explanation or context that their design needs to be changed in favor of a11y.