In these modern times, online forms have become crucial for various purposes ranging from gathering customer feedback to handling job applications. However, certain forms unintentionally pose difficulties for users with disabilities.
Ensuring that your digital forms are accessible guarantees that everyone can interact with your content equally. This leads to a more inclusive user experience, enhances your brand’s reputation, and also ensures legal compliance.
Partnering with accessibility compliance companies can help ensure that your forms meet necessary standards, leading to a more inclusive user experience, enhancing your brand’s reputation, and ensuring legal compliance.
Designing Accessible Forms:
If you’re looking to create digital forms that are accessible to everyone, here is a helpful guide to get you started.
Assistive Technology Compatibility: It’s essential to ensure that your digital forms are fully compatible with assistive technologies like screen readers and keyboard navigation tools. These technologies are essential for individuals with visual and cognitive impairments, enabling them to interact with your content and complete forms just like anyone else. By designing accessible forms, you can create a more inclusive and user-friendly experience for everyone, regardless of their physical or cognitive abilities.
Adhere to WCAG Guidelines: WCAG provides a set of internationally recognized standards for web accessibility. Align your forms to follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to ensure they’re usable by a wider range of users.
Avoid Horizontal Form Layout: When designing digital forms, it is important to keep in mind that horizontal layouts can pose challenges for screen reader users. This is because these layouts can be confusing and difficult to navigate without proper labeling. To ensure that your digital form is accessible to all users, it is recommended to use a vertical layout that is clearly labeled and easy to navigate.
Highlight Input Fields: To ensure that users can easily understand where to input information, it’s recommended to use visual cues such as borders or color changes. By implementing these design elements, users can quickly identify the fields where they need to enter their information, leading to a smoother and more user-friendly experience.
Use Meaningful Labels: When creating labels for input fields, it’s important to ensure they are clear, concise, and directly linked to the corresponding field. This means avoiding the use of abbreviations or technical jargon that may not be easily understood by all users. By providing clear and concise labels, users can easily understand what information they need to input in a given field, which can help reduce errors and improve overall usability of the interface. Additionally, it’s important to consider the visual design of the labels, ensuring they are easily readable and stand out from the background to help users quickly identify and understand the purpose of each input field.
Save Users’ Answers: It would be a great feature to let users save partially filled forms and come back to it later. This feature can be particularly useful for users who require additional time to complete the form. By allowing users to resume the form filling at their convenience, they can avoid losing their progress and complete the form without any hassle.
Use Error Messages: It’s important to ensure that any error messages displayed to users are clear and specific, so that they can understand what went wrong and take appropriate action to fix the issue. This can help to minimize frustration and confusion, and improve overall user experience.
Keyboard Navigation: It is important to ensure that the form is accessible to all users, even those who cannot use a mouse. One way to achieve digital form accessibility is by allowing users to navigate the form entirely using just their keyboard. This means that users should be able to tab through all the fields on the form, submit it using their keyboard, and also be able to access error messages through their keyboard. By making your form keyboard accessible, you can provide a better user experience for all your website visitors.
Ensure Proper Color Contrast: It is crucial to use a color contrast that is sufficient enough between the text and background of any visual content. This ensures that individuals with visual impairments can easily read and comprehend the information without any difficulty. By maintaining a high level of contrast, you can make your content more accessible and inclusive to a wider range of audiences.
Conclusion
By following these guidelines, you can design digital forms that are accessible and easy to use for all individuals, regardless of their abilities. It is important to remember that accessible forms are not only a technical obligation, but also a chance to offer a more welcoming and fair online user experience for all users.
