Accessibility vs Usability in Design

Accessibility and Usability are the two crucial aspects and best practices for professional design. Accessibility means designing for everybody, keeping in mind the people who might have some special needs and taking care of those needs in the product experience and interface Usability or user-centered design is the process of designing something from the perspective of how it will eventually be used by an actual person. In this article, we will discuss the difference between Accessibility and Usability along with how to achieve them.

Accessibility vs Usability

What is Accessibility?

Accessibility is the process of designing applications or websites keeping in mind people with special needs and creating an application or website that would be accessible to a larger group of people. The foundational principle behind Accessibility is inclusiveness, so while designing the designer has to take care that the design should cater to everyone – from common people to people with special needs or disabilities.

For example, while designing an application for listening to music, the designer can make it more accessible by adding a feature for getting the lyrics of the songs in some common languages of the audience the application is targeting.

Steps for Achieving Accessibility

1. The first step of an accessible design is to create a Sketch. This help in getting an outline of the outline of the entire design, now we can have a high level overview of the design.
2. The next step is to create a Wireframe of the project. A Wireframe is basically the interface without the visual design principles applied. Wireframe clearly illustrates how the product functions and the core elements of its design. Create a wireframe for your design using whatever tool you are good at.
3. Next step is to design the components keeping in mind they must be easy to understand and work-with to as much as users as possible. By designing component we mean to design things like symbols (buttons and badges), element states (button hover states) or clicked states components (tables lists cards and forms) and shows actual texts and images.
4. Now we can can convert wireframes into wire flows using flow charts. These Wire flows will help during the final iteration of design in visualizing the entry, exit and decision points for the user.
5. Now we will create the final design and design things exactly as they will appear in the final product. we will add brand aesthetics and thematic elements as per the requirement of the client or the business itself. We will take the final approval from stakeholders and finish up the design from our side.
6. The final step is to take feedback and iterate. Your job is not over even after completing the design, for the best accessible designs you must take continuous feedback from your customers on how to make the website simpler and easy to understand for a large number of people and implement their feedback accordingly.

What is Usability?

Usability or User Centered design is the process of designing an application or a product while focusing on the needs and wants of the user and keeping user in the top priority then aesthetics, features or interactions. Usability or User Centered design ensures that the eventual application or website will be easy to understand and operate by the users. In simpler terms, Usability is measure of the ease with which a user can use an application or a website to perform important tasks for which the website or application is developed. If an application or website is considered to be high on User centered design, this means that the users of the website or application will have an exponential learning curve and will not face much difficulty while navigating and using the application.

The three key factors responsible of Usability are:

1. Effectiveness
2. Efficiency
3. Satisfaction

In order to design a high usability design, we must make sure that the features we are creating are effective, efficient and lead to user satisfaction.

Steps for Achieving Usability

1. The first step is to perform User Research. The designer takes detailed notes of the user research. there’s a lot of information that will be gathered so the designer has to analyze the information, understand the trend, and organize data using tools to identify trends and patterns in that data.
2. The next step to achieve Usability is to build User Personas. For that we need to learn who our target user is? What are their needs and goals? And what are their pain-points and challenges?
3. In the third step we can ideate Solutions to solve the user Problems. This can be done by conducting Ideation sessions to gather different perspectives of different people in the team to uncover the most unexpected and innovative solution to the problem.
4. Next step is building Prototypes. Building a Prototype helps you to ask questions and take User feedback to bring improvements thus improving the user experience.
5. Next step is conducting thorough usability testing. We already have discussed how to conduct usability testing.
6. And the final step is to Iterate. After performing usability testing you will get to know the issues with your design and some more feedback, implement it in your design and continue doing so until a usable design is achieved.

Difference between Accessibility and Usability

	Accessibility	Usability
Definition	Accessibility is the process of designing application or websites keeping in mind the people with special needs and creating an application or website that would be accessible to a larger group of people.	Usability or User Centered design is the process of designing an application or a product while focusing on the needs and wants of the user and keeping user in the top priority then aesthetics, features or interactions.
Simple Explanation	In simpler terms, it means designing for everybody, keeping in mind the people who might have some special needs and taking care of those needs in the product experience and interface.	In simpler terms, if an application or website is considered to be high on User centered design, this means that the users of the website or application will have an exponential learning curve and will not face much difficulty while navigating and using the application.
How to Test	Accessibility can be tested by Accessibility Tests.	Usability can be tested by moderated testing or unmoderated testing.
Importance	Increasing User Base Reducing Cognitive Load Ease of using the website or application Designing more effective interfaces Increasing user satisfaction	Increasing user satisfaction Increased productivity Increased profitability Balancing User and client needs Reduced training

Conclusion

Accessibility is the process of designing application or websites keeping in mind the people with special needs and creating an application or website that would be accessible to a larger group of people. While Usability or User Centered design is the process of designing an application or a product while focusing on the needs and wants of the user and keeping user in the top priority then aesthetics, features or interactions. Make sure to remember these points while designing your next application or website.