Why compromise?
Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.George Lois
All too often ‘accessible’ means dull.
Sadly, there are plenty of experts will tell you that, if you want to build an accessible site, you must start by throwing away creative tools and ideas.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Creating accessible sites that are also engaging is about imagination, creativity and knowing a few clever tricks. How do we do it?
Don’t be afraid of the big idea
When we begin to design an accessible site, we step back and think about the big idea - the site we want to build.
Next, we ask ourselves ‘what would happen if we tried this on a mobile phone… if we were blind… if we were dyslexic…’ and so on.
In doing so, we’re drawing on our experience watching and talking to people with many different disabilities - or using different devices such as mobile phones or games consoles to access the web.
By asking these questions, we get to the essence of the design.
And because we understand how the technology works, we can sit down with programmers and figure out ways of implementing the idea.