UX Design: What We Think of When We Think of Accessibility.

What comes to mind when you think of the word Accessibility? Wheelchair ramps? Gender-Neutral bathrooms? Braile on an ATM? All of these things are great and necessary to think of in product design. But when was the last time you thought of designing for language barriers?

For me, it was never. The reasons for this are two-fold: One, I am a beginner in UX design so accessibility is actually a new concept for me as a designer; and two, language just doesn’t seem like it could be a handicap. But now that I think about it; it makes so much sense!

It was this past week when I had a research project to do for my UX design certification class that I noticed it. I’m researching for designing a movie theatre app which means that I am comparing existing movie theatre websites/apps. One of the data points we are looking at is accessibility. None of the theatre websites I looked at (giant companies BTW) had any language options on their sites. Of course, they mentioned accessibility in the theatres like wheelchair ramps and accessible bathrooms but if you’re in a wheelchair and you speak Spanish you don’t know any of this after visiting their sites.

Now here’s the opinion part, I get this oversight. I really do. If you think your target audience is the only audience you’re designing for then this is what you would design and it feels great to feel like you’ve finished something. So adding accessibility options at the end of a project would really irritate me if I thought I had finished an entire website. However, it could make a big difference in your sales if you were the only movie theatre that would let the Spanish-speaking population in their area reserve tickets in their native language. They get to avoid any embarrassing attempts to speak English in public and you get a new loyal customer. It’s a win-win.

As a designer, you’ll be seen as innovative and very observant if you do happen to point out that the competition has no language options on their site at all. Bonus points for mentioning that the only translation that would have to be done in most cases would be some one-word buttons that you could use Google translate for without any fear of grammatical errors. Practical empathy at its finest.

I hope you found this interesting and helpful. Leave me a comment if you did or you didn’t and let’s discuss!