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Professional Usability & Accessibility in your Website Design will ultimately benefit your business.

Useability and Accessibility are two important subjects in Modern Website Graphic Interface Design. Validating and conforming to Useability and Accessibility guidelines will ensure that you have a web presence that can be viewed and understood by a wide variety of, and including users with a disability.

Why is Usability Important in Graphic & Website Interface Design?

On the Internet, Usability is an essential requirement for the relevance and endurance of your online presence. Think about how you acted the last time you came across a poorly designed website. I bet you left and didn't go back there ever again, right?

A good way to describe how Website Useability relates to user interaction is Building Trust. Building trust is not only an important function of E-Commerce Design; any business website should look to build credibility and trust with a user right from the very first moment they view your website.

Some of the most basic and important Website Design Useability issues include:

Communicate clearly and promote understanding. To avoid the short attention span of users your website must quickly convince people that your business is a valuable resource. What does your home page say to users in the first 5 seconds? Plainspoken words, clean & crisp Graphic and Visual Design or the “look and feel” of your website go a long way to promoting user understanding.
Provide Information Users want: when users can quickly and easily determine if what you offer meets their needs then there are less barriers to those users becoming a new customer.
Offer Simple and Consistent page design with clear navigation, and an information architecture that puts information where users expect to find it.

Why is Website Accessibility important?

Website Accessibility relates mainly to the functionality and visibility of your website to users with a disability, but can also include the visibility of your website to Search Engines and Internet Browsers like Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

Consider the fact that many users may be viewing your website in circumstances different to your own. The World Wide Web Consortium is the leading authority on Website Accessibility and an abstract of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines can be read below:

They may not be able to see, hear, move, or may not be able to process some types of information easily or at all.

They may have difficulty reading or comprehending text.

They may not have or be able to use a keyboard or mouse.

They may have a text-only screen, a small screen, or a slow Internet connection.

They may not speak or understand fluently the language in which the document is written.

They may be in a situation where their eyes, ears, or hands are busy or interfered with (e.g., driving to work, working in a loud environment, etc.).

They may have an early version of a browser, a different browser entirely, a voice browser, or a different operating system.

Content developers must consider these different situations during page design. While there are several situations to consider, each accessible design choice generally benefits several disability groups at once and the Web community as a whole.

Incorporating these considerations into a Website Interface Design will ensure that as many different users as possible can view and understand your website.

Do you think your website needs to be

checked for Useability and Accessibility Validation?

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