Designers should make sure accessibility is part of what they do. Keep content, flows and screens simple. This helps people with learning disabilities, mental health conditions, cognitive impairments and autism.
To make sure accessibility is part of the story, include:
- human readable URLs
- page titles that are the same as the
h1heading (but be aware of the Personally identifiable information caveat) - reading order when there are differences between what is visible and what is read out loud
- hidden text for screen readers, where necessary
- colours and colour contrast
- if something is tabular data or not and suggest HTML solutions or patterns
- the right design patterns to provide the user with consistent line spacing and whitespace
- non-breaking spaces and hyphens to stop unwanted word wrapping
- simple, easy to understand content that meets the content style guide
- how will this look on mobile (remember a zoomed in desktop screen will effectively become a mobile viewport)
- how this will work without javascript
- if the journey is more than a few screens and whether we allow the user to save and come back later
- whether people using assistive technology might need extra time to complete tasks
- accommodation for screen zoom and whether the screen still makes sense at +200%
- secondary methods to convey meaning rather than just colour alone
- reasonable distance between related elements, rather than remote from each other
Most of this should be part of standard components but may help if it is part of a ticket.