Design

​​Instructions for understanding content and accomplishing tasks shouldn’t rely solely on characteristics like shape, color, size, visual location, orientation, or sound.

Using motion behind static text creates a depth mismatch that can be triggering. Even subtle animations can be harmful when placed directly behind the text. What constitutes excessive motion can be subjective, but a good rule is to avoid motion that takes up more than 10% of the central visual field.

Certain animations can be distracting and cause dizziness, nausea, headaches, and seizures in people with vestibular and photosensitivity disorders.

A parallax effect is a design trend where background elements move at different speeds than foreground elements while scrolling. This type of motion is harmful to people with vestibular disorders and should be avoided or used with extreme caution and restraint.

Images of text can’t be read by screen readers, don’t scale well for people with low vision, and can’t reflow on zoom.

If you host websites that collect personal data from EU residents — e.g., via form submissions or third-party scripts — you have responsibilities as a "data controller." Take the time to understand your responsibilities as a data controller, and take steps to abide by the GDPR. This data protection self-assessment checklist can be helpful.

Make sure touch controls like hamburger menus, social icons, gallery viewers, etc. are usable by a wide range of hand and stylus sizes. This doesn’t include footnotes or icons in or at the end of a sentence.

Excessive motion can trigger vestibular disorders and seizures. To reduce harm, it’s important to include a motion warning if your site uses excessive motion, or if you’re linking to a page that uses excessive motion.

Website content should be easy to scan and understand. Your page layout should make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for and do what they need to do. It’s also important to build your content programmatically, so assistive technologies can access content in the same order it is visually displayed.

We shouldn’t rely solely on color to convey information, indicate an action, or distinguish a visual element. This makes it impossible for people who are blind, visually impaired, or who don’t easily distinguish colors to access this information.

Designing text for readability and legibility are essential to a successful user experience. Appropriate text sizing and spacing ensure that visually-impaired people can read important text, and help those with cognitive disabilities to better focus on text blocks.

Unstructured web content is overwhelming and unusable for everyone, but especially for people with cognitive disabilities and those who use screen readers. Headings organize content and guide readers through your site.

Words carry meaning, and can cause harm — even if unintentional. And creating more inclusive spaces is defined by our actions, not our beliefs.

Plain language benefits everyone on your site, including people with cognitive disabilities and non-native language speakers. Plain language speeds up comprehension, helps people find what they’re looking for and do what they came to do.

Significant on-screen flashing can trigger seizures. Animations and background videos can also be distracting and disruptive for people with cognitive disabilities like ADHD.

Terms like “click here” and “read more” don’t provide any context. Screen readers can give visitors an overview of all the links on a page.