Just because a person is a vision or hearing impaired does not mean that the internet excludes them. Here we outlay some design elements which cater to their needs. Does your website include them?

Vision Impaired

There are numerous design elements that can be implemented to cater to those who are vision impaired. These techniques may help those who struggle to read smaller texts and fonts for example and so can overall enhance the visual impact of your website and website content. As such, it makes sense to design your website so that both the colors and font sizes can be altered in the settings of internet browsers.

Vision impairment can also be addressed through audio options. This can be utilized to offer an aural description of the content for users. In fact, Facebook has in existence a great example of this in the form of a tool that identifies the main aspects of a photograph (i.e. three people, trees, sunny sky, etc.) and transcribes these snippets of information in the form of an audio soundbite. This shows us the power of artificial intelligence in helping those with vision impairment to interact with websites on the internet.

Hearing Impaired

With a trend for video content on websites popular at the moment, this is all but useless to those who are hard of hearing or are deaf. To counteract this, add subtitling to your videos or even have a text transcript of all that is said below the video. The presence of text can be comforting to those who are hard of hearing as it is a tangible design element for them to interact with. As an offshoot of this, a natural and healthy smattering of your SEO keywords and phrases transcribed within this text adds positively to your keyword density.

Subtle design elements can have a substantial positive effect on visitors that may have vision or hearing impairments. It is worth remembering that with the prevalence of internet usage and ubiquity of websites today that they will both be accessed by people with differing needs.

The team at Ireland Website Design can implement design techniques that are helpful to those with special needs. These elements will not necessarily affect those who do not need to avail of them but rest assured that they will be appreciated by those who do need to avail of them. Contact us today to make the changes that you want to make to your website or to have a new website built and designed to meet your online aims and goals.