How many times, filling out a form online, have we been faced with the dreaded exercise of having to demonstrate that we are humans? Most of the times it is just a matter of clicking a box, but sometimes the exercise is pushed to its limits with captchas like the one below:

Now imagine that, instead of asking you to select all buses, the instruction was to select all “glasses”. The task is infuriating for anyone really, but for people with access needs a request like this can become a real nightmare. Indeed, what is meant by “glasses”?

Maybe it is all of them at once. The fact remains that not all people would understand this request the same way and some people might not get past it at all, therefore preventing them to access the content behind. As designers, curators, community builders, what can we do to ensure equal access of our content to all users?

Lucky for us, there is the  Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) international standard, providing us with principles and testable success criteria for our content.

The 4 principles are:

Are you ready to apply these principles to your learning experiences? If you are not yet convinced this will bring a real added value to your products, I strongly recommend to spend 15 min of your time testing User Inyerface, a challenging exploration of user interactions and design patterns.

Good luck and try having fun in the process!