Graphic Designers
Why should universal
design matter to you as
a graphic designer?
Universal design benefits everyone, especially people with disabilities. But it also benefits you, as a graphic designer because it expands your audience to become more all-inclusive, and makes your work marketable to a broader audience. It's also important morally, as all people should be treated equally, no matter their abilities.
Incorporating universal design can improve your work as a graphic designer by making it more legible in terms of contrast, and more readable in terms of hierarchy and clear communication of visual information. It also improves your personal image as a designer, and is good practice for when clients ask for designs using these universal design principles. Plus, you get the satisfaction of knowing that you're contributing to a brighter, more inclusive future.
Design Parameters
What are some methods to
make graphic design accessible
to all users?
Now that you know why universal design is important, here are some simple parameters to help you incorporate the universal design principles in your graphic design work.
To make documents as easy as possible to navigate for people with vision disabilities, clear, consistent grid structures and hierarchy are of utmost importance. This makes it easier navigate due to the logical structure of the layout, and let readers more quickly process the content.
Colour is also a big component, contrast being the most important aspect. Make sure to have at least 70% contrast between the foreground and background of your designs. This can easily be checked by setting the document colour mode to black and white, or by printing to a greyscale printer. If you notice that any elements are too close together in tone, adjust the colours accordingly to maximize legibility. The best way to achieve contrast between hues is to use complementary colour schemes, but ensuring that the saturation and intensity values aren’t too similar, as these will cause eye strain.
To make typography more legible for people with impaired eyesight, body text should be within 16-24pt size. Make sure to use typefaces with strokes that are neither too thin nor too thick, as these make type harder to read. Avoid using typefaces that are too narrow or wide, instead choose something well balanced with easily-recognizable letterforms. Also consider how you add emphasis. Making one word or phrase in all capital letters is good for emphasis, but setting entire paragraphs in all caps hinders readability. The same goes for italics and underlining.
With paragraphs, be sure to set a column width that aids reading flow, typically between 55-75 characters. This allows you to avoid using too many hyphenations while still making it easy to find the starting point for each new line of text, greatly reducing eye strain. Make sure not to kern or track type too loosely or too tightly, as both extremes make text difficult to read. Leading also plays a role, as leading too tight makes lines run into each other and reduces legibility, while loose leading makes it difficult to locate the beginning of each new line of text. Justified text should be avoided because it can cause awkward spacing and distracting rivers that form within the text block.