In the busy world that we live in, stresses and frustrations can easily come to fruition. At times where emotions are heightened, the need to gain instant access to digital information is pivotal.
I’m sure all of us have had feelings of stress when accessing a website or app before. From a website taking forever to load, a sea of annoying pop-ups taking over your screen, pressurising sales tactics giving you anxiety, to illegible CATCHAs preventing you from completing an online action, can all be very frustrating. However, at certain times in life when people are already feeling overwhelmed, such as if they didn’t get the exam results they were anticipating or an unforeseen issue occurring at home or with finances, these added online issues may be enough to tip someone over the edge.
This blog looks into ways to support your online audience during emotive times by providing a clear route to information and a stress-free and calm digital experience.
Why should this matter to businesses?
I’m sure no one would want their online content to intentionally have a detrimental effect on their users. Some organisations may not even realise the impact on someone’s health that certain site elements may cause. Whilst other businesses may simply be unaware of what fixes can be made to eradicate feelings of stress or anxiety for people accessing their content and how to enhance their user experience.
If you think about the examples that we mentioned previously, whether as a customer who is seeking an emergency call-out to fix an issue like a burst water pipe at home, someone trying to pay a bill before they go overdrawn, or a student who is scoping out an alternative course during clearing, emotions would be running high during these instances. If these users were then bombarded with distracting features or struggled to find a direct route to the information or services that they required, many would be unlikely to return to that website or business by choice if they had a negative and stressful experience in the first instance.
Unfortunately, at times, some people are left with no option of going elsewhere, such as when on a local authority website or if their heart is set on a higher education course in the area that they wish to live in. So, it’s an organisation’s responsibility to provide an inclusive level of care, where everyone has equal access to content, and aim to provide a positive experience whilst doing so. In fact, if you are in the public sector, it’s also your legal requirement to make this the case.
If you want your online audience to remain just that, it all comes down to good customer service and the need to show your visitors that you care about them and prioritise their needs.
In return, you’ll:
- Have a heightened reputation
- Gain a greater reach through having loyal users
- Not have your revenue impacted
- Avoid lawsuits for not providing an inclusive platform
Inclusive design to aid the user journey
If entering a website with already pent up stresses, the last thing that you want to be faced with is not being able to swiftly find information that could help to alleviate issues that are causing these feelings. The key to this is through clear and consistent accessible design.
You can easily reduce anxiety for users by having consistent web page layouts site wide. This will enable users to know exactly where they can expect to find key information on each page. Beyond having a robust search and filter elements, you can steer site visitors on a clear path to their required content through the use of strong taxonomy and clear navigation.
This can be achieved by providing:
- Clear heading structures
- Striking call to action blocks
- Page summaries
- Content in a logical order
- Scannable text, broken into bite-sized sections
- Visible and descriptive navigation
- Alt text, either describing an image or giving a direction if it’s a link
- Breadcrumb trails
- Sitemaps to assist users of assistive technology
All written and designed in a user-friendly and inclusive way, that works with a wide range of assistive technologies.
How to create a calm space for users
Being confronted with a series of distracting and disorientating site features can cause more than just undue stress. Some of these elements may prevent people from being able to navigate your platform altogether, or even be a danger to some user’s health.
This includes website elements such as:
- Features that automatically play, such as videos and audio. A blind or visually impaired user that enters a platform with a screen reader, may find it really disorientating and not be able to hear their screen reader if met with a video or audio blaring out at them. If they can’t hear their screen reader, they may not be able to navigate away to another page or to where the video is embedded (providing that the element actually has media controls available) to even be able to pause it. Resulting in them most likely leaving a platform altogether.
Furthermore, if videos have flashing elements that start playing as soon as someone enters a page, without prior warning, this could trigger a seizure with people who are photosensitive. - Scrolling carousels. Similarly to automatically playing media, if carousels can’t be controlled by the user, this can result in making some users unwell. This is due to the movement being too fast or distracting, which also makes the text hard to read. Many of these carousels also leave other users, such as people who use a keyboard to access a website, not able to access the information provided in a carousel.
- The need to remove animations, such as on background displays or within cursors, due to them being distracting or causing symptoms like dizziness.
- Pop up adverts are annoying at the best of times. However, if in a rush and trying to access information fast, they can be a real hindrance. Many pop ups can’t actually be bypassed by assistive tech users, who rely on a keyboard to navigate a website, if it hasn’t been coded to be inclusive. This, along with, users with low vision may struggle to see where to close a pop up window if not clearly displayed.
- We’ve all entered a website that has sales tactics with misleading numbers in place that heightens urgency to rush you into making a purchase. These tactics can be overwhelming and cause a sense of anxiety if used at the wrong time.
These are simple considerations, which can help to alleviate stress levels and protect your site visitors.
Ways to support users when completing online actions
There’s nothing more frustrating than an online form crashing or losing data that you’ve spent time completing, let alone if this happens multiple times. Which is often sadly the case for users of assistive technology.
Online forms come with a host of problems when it comes to making them accessible. However, there are ways that you can assist users when completing online actions, which include:
- Making sure all instructions are clear and easy to understand. Let users know what to expect during the process and what will happen after completion of the form.
- Ensuring all form elements can be completed using only a keyboard.
- Removing page timeouts to give users time to complete online forms.
- Labelling each form field, so that assistive tech users can identify them.
- Ensuring information can be auto-populated, so users don’t have to enter information multiple times.
- Checking your colour contrast ratios on form labels to assist users with low vision.
- Thinking about your button designs. Consider the spacing between buttons, and if you are providing a visual indication of where users are when tabbing through form elements.
- Simplifying the authentication process by removing cognitive functions tests (CAPTCHAs).
- Letting users check their completed data before submission.
- Clear error messaging that lets users know what information they have not completed correctly and how to fix the issue.
- Ensuring contact information can be easily located if further assistance is needed. Details need to be in a consistent location and provided in varied formats to be inclusive. This includes providing a contact telephone number, online contact form or email address, and access to a BSL interpreter.
All of these stress-relieving solutions can easily be implemented by organisations and your online audience will appreciate you looking out for them.
HeX’s inclusive services
If you need help or advice on making any of these features accessible, we offer training and consultancy to guide you through what is needed to be inclusive. More so, we can demonstrate why these changes are so necessary, with live demonstrations using assistive technology devices and software.
Alternatively, you can take a free accessibility test to find out where your website might be failing to meet web standards.
