Using my Slide UX Tech & Learning budget, I recently got the chance to attend the #a11yTO - Accessibility Toronto conference. As a UI designer, I wanted to deepen my understanding of digital accessibility.

Guest speakers came from all over Europe and North America. The talks were each 20 to 40 minutes, and covered everything from the technical aspects of digital accessibility to people's lived experiences with disabilities.

Deep knowledge of accessibility isn’t making the cut for design curriculum.

Going into the conference, my exposure to accessible design focused on the basics. Like most designers, I pay attention to color contrast, ensure text and image sizes are legible, and things like that. But during my own time in a UX bootcamp, the accessibility section was very small.

At the conference, I felt relieved to find out that I wasn't alone with my limited knowledge. According to Anna Cook, an inclusive designer at Microsoft, a whopping fifty-eight percent of designers learn nothing about accessibility through their education, whether it be through their bootcamp, self-taught, or even in university.

I learned a lot over the course of the conference, but one of my favorite sessions was “A web of anxiety: Accessibility for people with anxiety and panic disorders" by David Swallow, Principal UX Consultant at TPGi.

Making the web a less stressful place

We’ve all felt stressed the last couple of years. For many people who experience panic attacks or anxiety, it has been even more intense. As the pandemic turned us toward doing even more things online, how might our digital experiences fuel our anxiety?

What is anxiety, and how do our digital experiences fuel it?

We all know what anxiety feels like; it's characterized by feelings of fear and dread. When anxiety gets extreme, it’s actually a mental illness. And then, there’s panic disorder. That’s when a person experiences sudden, intense feeling of fear, sometimes for no clear reason. These two disorders are quite similar in many ways.

When I asked Sliders to brainstorm websites and apps that made them feel stressed or anxious, I opened Pandora’s box.

Four Ways Websites, Products and Apps Provoke Anxiety

According to the presenter, David Swallow, there are at least four main ways that digital experiences fuel these feelings.

• Urgency. Think of hotel booking sites or even ticket sites. They're always some sort of countdown or urgency to either book now, or it'll all be gone. As someone who was a victim of the Taylor Swift Ticketmaster fiasco, I can testify that it's stressful to complete a web form accurately while a timer ticks away the seconds.

• Unpredictability. Facebook and Instagram both have a double tap interaction. At one point, Facebook's double tap interaction was to zoom into an image, while Instagram's was to like the image. The result? People intending to zoom in might actually like a photo. Who hasn’t been lurking on ancient history of someone’s Instagram accounts, and accidentally liked a post from 4 or 5 years ago? Frustrating and anxiety inducing.

• Powerlessness. Ads on Youtube are one of the worst offenders. As viewers, we are randomly assaulted by unwanted video interjections while we try to watch the thing we're actually interested in. The ads are forced on us against our will. If you've got audio on, it can particularly embarrassing when the topic of the ad isn’t something you planned on blasting to those around you. (Who hasn't experienced the embarrassment of a poorly timed condom ad?)

• Sensationalism. This one’s more about content than UI, but it definitely impacts the user experience. Sensationalism often takes the form of clickbait headlines, intended to drive traffic. Does red wine cause cancer? Or does it prevent it? Perhaps we should all know better, but if you're like me, you use the Internet to Google symptoms from time to time. One can get pretty anxious, not knowing what’s true and what is just trying to win the SEO battle to score some ad revenue.

How can we combat anxiety with our UI designs?

There are many things we can do to reduce the psychological harm our user interfaces may cause. Here are a few suggestions:

• Consider the implications of urgency or sensationalism before using them as a design tactic. Questions to ask:

  • Is there real urgency, or we manufacturing it to drive the user to do something?

  • Is this misleading? Does it help people or hurt them?

  • Is this aligned with how our brand wants to treat customers?

• Clearly explain what will happen next in confirmation and error messages. This provides predictability and empowers the user.

• Let users know before they take any final or absolute action. Empower them to check their inputs, and make it clear how they can change inputs.

Every product is different. Through regular research, we can learn what may causes anxiety and panic in our products, and address it.

Why does this matter to the business?

Putting the customer first has long been a principal for most businesses, and this is another way we can do that.

Good customer experience impacts top line revenue, because customers that enjoy doing business with us will keep coming back, and will refer others.

Smart customer experience practices can further impact profits - when we make good decisions in the design phase, we can save substantially on the cost of rework down the line.

Deque Systems, a company that helps advance digital accessibility, found that sixty-seven percent of accessibility issues originate with design. So it starts with us.

A common bias is that it's too expensive to bake into a product, so it's an afterthought rather than a requirement in the early stages of product.

Here’s the catch. Addressing accessibility problems can take up to six times longer to fix once they reach the development stage, up to twelve times longer in the testing stage, and a whopping and thirty times longer once they hit production.

If we prioritize accessibility in the design phase, it takes much less time and money than addressing it later on.

How can we combat anxiety with our UI designs?

Some companies are already tackling these issues.

• Some brands offer options to turn off the features that create false urgency. For example, Netflix viewers can turn off the countdown that autoplays the next episode.

• Monzo, an online bank in the UK, found that people with bipolar disorders sometimes make unnecessary frivolous purchases late at night. The following morning they end up confronting that reality and feeling depressed. Monzo tackles this by delaying transactions until the following morning. So that's one way of improving the user experience.

As product managers and designers, we are in a unique position to influence these decisions. We should always encourage our companies to make ethical choices and treat users fairly, and seek out employers who align with those values.

My takeaway

The #a11yTO conference broadened my understanding of what how accessible and ethical design overlap. It starts with us. I still have a lot to learn about digital accessibility, so I'm glad that Slide UX supports personalized learning opportunities like this one. I'm motivated to apply the techniques I learned within my daily work, and to continue learning about how we can make the web a less stressful place.