At Atomic NYC, we know that ensuring content is both understandable and perceivable is crucial for fostering inclusivity and accessibility in digital spaces.
Understandability ensures that information is presented in a clear and coherent manner, making it easier for all users to comprehend and navigate. By avoiding complex language, convoluted sentences, and jargon, content becomes more accessible to a wider audience, including those with cognitive or language barriers.
Perceivability ensures that content is accessible through various senses, such as sight, hearing, or touch. This is particularly important for users with disabilities, as it allows them to access information using alternative methods, such as screen readers for visually impaired users or captions for hearing-impaired users.
By prioritizing understandability and perceivability, we create digital environments that are more inclusive and user-friendly, ultimately enhancing the overall user experience for everyone.
Here are just a few ways we make content accessible:
Page structure: using a semantic structure and proper headings helps assistive technologies be more effective in describing the site to a user.
Page titles: not all designs have visible titles for every page. So, ensuring page titles are perceivable through another sense - like hearing - allows users who cannot understand a page’s context through sight to be able to through sound.
Links: use link text that makes sense when read out of context. Be specific about where links lead (ex., external site, PDF). Keep link text to 100 characters or less to help with cognitive load.
Images: if an image is important to understanding the context of a page and not purely decorative, include alternative text so screen readers can accurately describe the image’s purpose.
Videos and audio: review auto-generated captions or provide your own.
Use shorter words when possible: abbreviations and acronyms are not always understandable. When using acronyms like “FAQ” in links or buttons, ensure screen readers read out “Frequently Asked Questions.”