Stop being confused about where to start with accessibility. 
Graphic designers often ask if accessibility laws and guidelines apply to print design, not just websites, documents and other digital content. The answer might surprise you.
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Do accessibility guidelines apply to print?
Well, the answer might surprise you.
Many accessibility laws require what’s referred to as “ICT” to be accessible. ICT stands for information and communication technology. This is digital in nature, so think websites, software, apps, digital documents, etc.
WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, apply to digital content. Digital content has both a visual aspect but also a technical and functional (interactive) aspect as well.
There are no separate guidelines specifically for print, and print doesn’t have the interactive aspect to it like digital content does, of course.
But you can still apply the visual accessibility guidelines and best practices to print design work—books, flyers, magazines, ads, billboards, package designs and more. Doing so will benefit all sighted users.
It only benefits sighted users, of course, because print relies on the ability to see, unless it’s Braille, whereas digital content can be voiced allowed as well.
So when accessibility isn’t considered with print design, you can end up with hard-to-read or hard-to-understand content.
Let’s take a look at a few examples.
A Board Game With Visual Accessibility Issues
One is a board game with visual accessibility issues.
My husband and I were playing the 80s version of Trivial Pursuit the other night. We had some lights on. We weren’t playing in direct bright light or anything. But I couldn’t help but notice some accessibility issues with the board.
For instance, the Movies category is written in yellow text on a white background. The Roll Again spaces have white text on light gray. These are hard to read in any light, but even harder to read with some glare from the overhead lighting in our family room.
It may be impossible for people with low vision or other types of visual disabilities to read them due to the lack of sufficient contrast.
The Sports & Leisure category is in light green text on white, also hard to read for some people.
But here’s another issue: the spaces on the board where you move your playing piece represent categories. You go to a category based on the roll of the dice and then moving to the space for the category you want to have a question asked.
There are six of them—pink, blue, orange, purple, light green and yellow. These spaces are differentiated only by color. Most of these pieces do not have sufficient contrast between each other. So this presents a problem for individuals with color blindness.
Individuals with red-green color blindness will have a hard time playing this, for sure. They would need to ask someone else to guide them to the color of the space on the board they want to go to.
Those with deuteranopia—a type of red-green color blindness—will see the yellow and green spaces as yellow, not even being able to tell them apart!
They will see the purple as dark blue. And, remember, blue is another category on the board.
They will see the orange as a mustardy-olive green. Really, the only category they would be able to make out easily would be the blue one, which is its original color and the one most differentiated on the board.
Individuals with protanopia—another form of red-green color blindness—will see the yellow and green spaces as yellow, the purple as dark blue, the orange as a mustardy-olive green and the blue as blue. Similar to those with deuteranopia but more on the cool side, than warm side.
Those who have tritanopia, a form of blue-yellow color blindness, will see light pink instead of yellow, gray instead of light green, reddish-brown instead of purple, pink instead of orange (an only slightly darker version than the yellow appearing as pink) and then blue as a dark turquoise.
Besides that, if any players have color blindness, all players would need to reference categories by name rather than by color to make sure they go to the category they intended.
Super confusing, right?!
Let’s take a look at the question cards. The front of each card includes a question for each category, with a chat bubble in one of the six different colors to correspond with the categories. There is white text in each chat bubble with an abbreviation for the category name. The back of the card includes the answers to each question.
People with color blindness may struggle less with these, if they can read them, because there is abbreviated text naming the categories.
But there is another issue. The white text doesn’t have sufficient contrast with each of the different chat bubble backgrounds. So the white on yellow, white on light green and white on orange may be hard or impossible for some players to read.
If they cannot make out which category is which, how will they know which question to read another player?
Usually when you play a board game, you don’t have to ask your opponent for help. Kind of defeats the purpose.
A Product Label With Visual Accessibility Issues
Let’s talk about another example, this time a product label.
The front of the label has a beautiful shiny, metallic bronze-colored ink for some of the text. At the bottom is some smaller text in white on that bronze-colored background.
The back of the label has more reversed text on the shiny bronze background as well as some of the bronze text on a white background.
It’s beautiful and, believe me, I love me some metallic inks! What I loved about the days of two-color printing or using spot colors sometimes with CMYK was using neon or metallic inks.
But metallic inks can make text harder to read, especially in this case, mostly because of the lack of contrast against the white background. The shine can potentially be a factor, but more so if there is a lot of text, not just used here and there.
In this case, the product name will be hard to read for people with visual impairments.
A Logo With Inaccessible Contrast
My next example is a logo with visually inaccessible contrast. So what does that mean?
I mean, this logo is yellow and it’s on a white background. The logo has about a 1.7 to 1 contrast ratio with the background.
But thou doth protest: Logos don’t need to meet contrast requirements.
You’re right! They indeed don’t!
But think about this: do you want someone to have issues seeing the logo? Recognizing whose product it is?
Isn’t the purpose of a logo to be able to recognize a brand? What if some people cannot see it?
A Product With Insufficient Contrast
Let me make my case with a health product.
The ingredients, directions—even a warning—are in white text on a beautiful sea green background. Not only that, but the text weight for most of it is a bit light—thin—making it harder to read.
Think about any kind of product in general that includes directions or a warning. What is the impact of someone not being able to read that text? It could be pretty disasterous.
Accessibility and Street and Highway Signs
So we’ve talked about how visual accessibility can affect someone playing a game, reading a product name, recognizing a brand and how to use a product.
What about driving? Street signs… Highway signs…
Years ago, I learned that highway signs used reversed text (white text) on a dark background, because the text is more readable from a distance, especially at night. Reversed text also appears larger.
I found an article on highway signage that confirms this. It also says that a study by the Outdoor Advertising Institute showed that reversed text is actually up to 40% more visible. Unfortunately, I cannot find a link to that.
But my point is think about how important being able to read signs is!
The work that we do as designers plays a huge role—some more important than others—in conveying brand recognition and trust as well as communicating information to readers, consumers, patients and so forth—or not, if that work is not accessible.
I know designers want to design pretty things but what good is your work if people cannot read it or understand it, if all the hard work you put in is lost on part of the audience?
And, hey, I haven’t always designed with accessibility in mind. I’m guilty of having used lots of yellow on white, white on turquoise, etc. and even some really crazy color combinations before I got into accessibility.
Edgar, our rooster, understands a bit about accessibility. He is not a fan of red, hot pink, or lots of loud patterns. And he has let me know that!
Learn More About Accessible Design
If you’re interested in diving deeper into accessible design and without all the technical stuff, check out my Accessible Branding and Design course.
You can increase the value of your work with minor design tweaks. It’s much more than contrast, I promise you.
Madeline, who took the course, said:
“This is one of the only courses of its kind available. It is a must-take for all designers so we can ensure that our work is inclusive and viewed and comprehended by the most amount of people.
“I wanted to become more confident in advocating for accessibility and why it is so important. The course helped me achieve this goal.
“I’ve noticed that when I’ve brought up accessibility in my workplaces, people are not only impressed and intrigued, but they listen and want to integrate accessibility into their work.”