Overview
As we continue to build and develop products for Singapore, we want to ensure that no one is left behind. Whether it means including video captions to help people with hearing difficulties, ensuring legibility of content through high-contrast text, or even presenting information in an understandable manner. Designing for accessibility means your digital products can be used and enjoyed by the majority.
Implementing accessible design
There are many ways for you and your agency to achieve accessibility, without impacting the overall look and feel of your digital services.
Foreground text needs to have sufficient contrast with background colors. This includes text on images, background gradients, buttons, and other elements.
This does not apply for logos, or incidental text, such as text that happens to be in a photograph. Minimum contrast ratio (level AA) should be 4.5:1 and enhanced contrast ratio (level AAA) should be at least 7:1.
While color can be useful to convey information, color should not be the only way information is conveyed.
You should consider using other additional identification to differentiate your design elements, e.g. use an asterisk(*) to indicate required form fields, use labels to distinguish areas on your graphs.
- Create distinctive styles for your design elements, e.g. links and buttons, so they are more identifiable.
- Ensure that styles and naming for interactive elements are consistent throughout the website.
- Ensure that navigation across pages in your website has a consistent design - naming, styling and positioning.
- Provide more than 1 method of website navigation, e.g. site search or site map.
- Helps users to understand their positions in a website by providing orientation cues, e.g. breadcrumbs and clear headings.
Ensure that all fields have a descriptive label adjacent to the field. For left-to-right languages, labels are usually positioned to the left or above the field, except for checkboxes and radio buttons where they are usually to the right.
Avoid having too much space between labels and fields.
Provide feedback for interactions, such as confirming form submission, alerting the user when something goes wrong, or notifying the user of changes on the page.
Instructions should be easy to identify. Important feedback that requires user action should be presented in a prominent style.
- Use whitespace and proximity to make relationships between content more apparent.
- Style headings to group content, reduce clutter, and make it easier to scan and understand.
- Presentation of page information varies based on display viewports, e.g. mobile phones or zoomed browser windows.
- Position and presentation of main elements, e.g. headers and navigation, should be modified to make the best use of the space.
- Text size and line width should be set to maximize readability and legibility.
- A display in a wide window, with small text, should use multiple columns for primary content, visible navigation options, and visible secondary information.
- A display in a narrow window, such as a mobile phone, or with large text should use a single column for primary content. Navigation options and secondary information should be revealed using an icon.
Provide a place in your design for media alternatives.
For example, you might need:
- Visible links to transcripts of audio
- Visible links to audio described versions of videos
- Text along with icons and graphical buttons
- Captions and descriptions for tables or complex graphs
Provide visible controls to allow users to stop any animations or auto-playing sound. This applies to carousels, image sliders, background sound, and videos.
Guidelines
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), developed by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), provide an international set of guidelines which form the basis of most web accessibility laws in the world.
Available to the senses (vision and hearing primarily) either through the browser or through assistive technologies.
Text alternatives: Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language
Time-based media: Provide alternatives for time-based media
Adaptable: Create content that can be presented in different ways
Distinguishable: Make it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background
Users can interact with all controls and interactive elements using either the mouse, keyboard, or an assistive device.
Keyboard accessible: Make all functionality available from a keyboard
Enough time: Provide users enough time to read and use content, no timing, interruptions can be postponed or suppressed by the user except interruptions involving an emergency, when an authenticated session expires, the user can continue the activity without loss of data after re-authenticating
Seizures: Do not design content in a way that is known to cause seizures, nothing that flashes more than three times in any one second period
Navigable: Provide ways to help users navigate, find content, and determine where they are, bypass blocks, page titles, focus order, link purpose from text alone, breadcrumbs
Content is clear and limits confusion and ambiguity.
Readable: Make text content readable and understandable, identifying specific definitions of words or phrases used in an unusual or restricted way, including idioms and jargon, abbreviations, difficult pronunciations
Predictable: Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways, consistent navigation, consistent identification
Input assistance: Help users avoid and correct mistakes, error prevention – reversible, checked, confirmed
A wide range of technologies can access the content.
Compatible: Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies. Elements have complete start and end tags, no duplicate attributes, IDs are unique. For all UI components, the name and role can be programmatically determined
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