Drive It - Convert It!

How “Accessible” Should You Be

The Point:
Economic specifics trump economic generalizations.

The Background:
A client’s site had some design issues that made it somewhat less accessible to certain web visitors. If a User had changed the “text size” setting in their browser (e.g. Internet Explorer), to “largest”, some of the text menu’s would blow out of their space and became unreadable. Many far-sighted people do exactly this.

I talked to some technical resources to see what options there were to modify the site to limit a browser’s ability to enlarge the text within certain menu areas. This has traditionally been done using images (i.e. pictures of text), as opposed to using text characters themselves. However, there are certain design techniques (e.g. CSS), as well as Search Engine Optimization traits that make using text preferable to using an image. Well this started a whole discussion on the aging population and how a user should be able to view a site in whatever manner was best for them. It also led to a further discussion on moral and social responsibilities not to discriminate.

Now, I’m getting older, too, but it didn’t quite sit right with me that a site should need to cater to me, if indeed I wasn’t their typical audience. The answer all boiled down to target marketing.

If your target market includes people who are likely to have their “text size” set to large - then make sure your site is designed accordingly. However, you may very well be targeting a younger audience where this is secondary to other design considerations.

For all I know, the younger generation may soon be demanding non-resizable text sites as a way of rebelling against the older generation.

“So Dad, you want to monitor my MySpace account, bring a magnifying glass with you - ha ha ha.”

The bottom line is that when we try to cater to large trends we can lose sight of the immediate opportunities. Have a good understanding of who your target audience is. Design your site, design your ads, and design your ad landing pages all to appeal to that audience. If you’re in business to do business, your first priority must be economic specifics.

Examine generalizations; just because the macro market of the U.S. population is aging, doesn’t mean that you should be catering to it at this point. However, if you are targeting that market, then proper use of technology could definitely leverage your marketing strategy and your ability to convert these users.

Finally, a good piece of news is that true accessibility (i.e. for the handicapped), usually has excellent benefits. For example, if your site is developed so that a visually impaired person could easily understand and navigate it with a screen reader, then it is perfectly designed for Google and Yahoo’s crawler robots, too. For a crawler, like love, is blind.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 at 5:52 pm and is filed under General - Blog . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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