Difference Between Accessible Design and Sustainable Design

Accessibility and Sustainability are two important pillars of modern design. With the increasing environmental awareness, customers have become more environmentally conscious and a survey shows the design industry is also moving this way. On the other hand, about 15% of the global population is affected by some type of disability so designing for these people not only widens the impact you can create with your design, it also improves your brand among other users. In this article, we will discuss what Accessible design and Sustainable designs are, how they differ from one another, and how to create Accessible Designs.

What is Accessible Design?

Accessible Designs are designs that a wide range of audiences can easily use because these designs are simple and they make sure that the users who do not have a lot of context about the website or application can also be able to use it. Accessibility is a design principle that talks about designing products and services in an all-inclusive manner. 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.

What is Sustainable Design?

Sustainable Design is a methodical approach or technique to design physical or digital products with a keen focus on long-term sustainability and environmental viability. Sustainability in design refers to the approach of coming up with long-term design solutions for addressing fundamental design issues or for designing new features for any product meanwhile also minimizing any harm produced by the product to the environment and maximizing the positive impact of the product on environment. Sustainable design is taking the design industry by storm with more and more people becoming environmentally conscious as well as designers prioritizing the environment impact of the product over other factors. In the process of sustainable design, the focus is on designing recyclable, reusable, and biodegradable components for the product. This also includes designing the creating/manufacturing/packaging process which reduces the waste as much as possible and tries to integrate that waste into the product itself.

How to Create Accessible Designs?

The Three Cs strategy is used by many designers for coming up with accessible designs, these three Cs cover all the necessary accessibility issues with solutions on how a designer can overcome them.

1. Color Contrast: Ensure accessible color palettes for users with visual impairments. Use tools like Stark for accessibility checks. Also, prioritize conveying crucial information clearly through color choices.
2. Clickable Area Accessibility: Enhance usability for all users by ensuring easy navigation with keyboard tabbing. Apply hover effects for better mouse tracking, use pressed effects for button feedback, and provide clear labels and instructions.
3. Common Content Accessibility: Optimize typography by aligning text properly and ensuring adequate line and paragraph spacing. Maintain a responsive layout for accessibility on smaller screens. Aim for left or right alignment, 1.5x font size line spacing, and paragraph widths of no more than 80 characters.

How to Create Sustainable Designs?

Creating Sustainable designs is a 5 step approach which can be explained as following points:

1. Create Energy Efficient interfaces: This means optimize the current interface for lower energy requirements. This can be done by reducing the number of animations are visual content, reducing the CPU usage and using features like Dark Mode.
2. Minimalism and Decluttering: Minimalism is design is not just about aesthetics but also it is eco friendly. Decluttering the website or application results in less data transfer.
3. Recyclable and Low-Impact Visuals: Make sure that the visual elements you use in your design are reusable and have a minimum carbon footprint as possible.
4. Optimal Research Methods: Any design begins from researching about the users. Sustainable design requires the designer to conduct remote user researches and usability testing which reduces travel-related emissions.
5. Environmental awareness: Conveying your audience about your application or website is sustainable is not only good for spreading environmental awareness but also helps you improve your business’s brand.

Accessible Design vs Sustainable Design

	Accessible design	Sustainable Design
Definition	Accessible Designs are designs that can easily be used by a wide range of audiences because these designs are simple and they make sure that the users who do not have a lot of context about the the website or application can also be able to use it.	Sustainable design is a methodical approach or technique to design physical or digital products with a keen focus on long-term sustainability and environmental viability.
Explanation	Accessibility is a design principle that means designing products and services in an all-inclusive manner.	Sustainability in design refers to the approach of coming up with long-term design solutions for addressing fundamental design issues or for designing new features for any product meanwhile also minimizing any harm produced by the product to the environment and maximizing the positive impact of the product on environment.
Real World Examples	Example: To improve the accessibility of a social media app we can add a new feature to listen to news also providing the transcript in some commonly used languages so that the feature becomes accessible to people with hearing issues.	Example: A simple feature of incorporating a “dark mode” in an application, product or website serves to reduce the energy consumption by the local machine.
Principles	The three important principles for Accessible design are: Color contrast accessibility Clickable area accessibility Common content accessibility	The Three Principles of Sustainable Design are: Social Sustainability Economic Sustainability Environmental Sustainability
Benefits	Following are the benefits of accessible design: Improves Usability Reduces Institutional Risk Reduces Cognitive Load Improves User centricity	Following are the benefits of accessible design: Brand Perception Saves Resources Long term Sustainability Environment Friendly Moral Responsibility

Conclusion

In this article we discussed what Accessible designs and Sustainable designs are and how they differ from one another. These two practices in design are very important not only for the user experience but also for the brand perception. As designers we try reaching out to as many audiences as possible, Accessibility helps us achieve that. And other than this we should make sure that our designs are sustainable in the longer run and that is where sustainable design helps us. Make sure to follow the points we discussed in this article in order to understand the difference between Accessible design and Sustainable design.