Accessibility
01 / Basics
Key question
Who are we designing for?
Around 1.8 million people with disabilities live in Switzerland. In addition, there are older people, individuals with temporary impairments, and anyone finding themselves in a challenging situation: on a noisy train, holding a child, or in glaring light. Accessibility means designing services and products so that as many people as possible can use them.
Learning objective: You can explain what accessibility means, name the four WCAG principles, and identify barriers in a service.
Accessibility is not an add-on, but quality.
1.1 / Disability and Context
Barriers arise between people and their environment.
The same limitation can be permanent, temporary or situational. Microsoft's inclusive design model illustrates this clearly: designing for permanent limitations automatically benefits everyone else, too.
01
Permanent
For example, only one arm, blindness, deafness.
02
Temporary
For example, a broken arm or an eye infection.
03
Situational
For example, a child in your arms, noise on the train, sun glare on the screen.
This is known as the curb-cut effect: dropped kerbs were built for wheelchairs, and today they are used by prams, bicycles, and wheeled suitcases.
Design for the edges, and the centre will take care of itself.
1.2 / The Four Principles
Perceivable, operable, understandable, robust.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the international standard for accessible digital services. They organise all requirements into four principles: content must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.
Each criterion has a level: A is the minimum, AA is the standard target in laws and contracts, and AAA is the highest. The current version is WCAG 2.2.
The goal is AA; the benchmark is people.
1.3 / Law and Responsibility
Accessibility is also an obligation.
In Switzerland, the Disability Discrimination Act requires federal services to be accessible, with the eCH-0059 standard implementing WCAG AA for this purpose. In the EU, the European Accessibility Act has also applied to many private-sector services since June 2025, such as online shops, banking, and e-books. This also affects Swiss companies selling into the EU.
More important than the obligation is the mindset: accessibility is just as much a part of good design as legibility or structure. It belongs at the beginning of the process, not at the end.
Thinking ahead saves a lot of work later.
Exercise
Find barriers in everyday life
Task: Examine a digital service you use often for accessibility barriers.
STEP 1
Choose a task, for example buying a ticket or filling in a form.
STEP 2
Complete them without a mouse, using only Tab, Enter and Space.
STEP 3
Increase the text size to 200% and see what gets lost.
STEP 4
Note down three barriers and assign them to the four principles.
Evaluation: Which barrier surprised you the most, and who would it exclude in everyday life?