In every organisation, there is some aspect of UX that needs to be ‘sold’. It may be user research, or testing, but by far the most common aspect of UX that people need to be convinced of is accessibility.
A young man died recently from a fatal allergic reaction to dairy at the Byron burger chain. From the BBC News article:
- Clodagh Bradley QC, representing the Carey family, of Crowborough, Sussex, said regulations required allergy information in a restaurant to be clearly visible.
- Information on the Byron menu was “at the very bottom, in a really very small font, in black print, on a royal blue background” making it difficult to read, she added.
- Ms Leitner-Hopps [Byron technical manager] said: “It’s perfectly legible in my opinion.”
Black print, on a royal blue background? And in a “very small font”? It’s no wonder the information was missed – and even though the menu also has an instruction to tell staff about allergies, placing the responsibility on the customer when a life is at risk simply isn’t acceptable.
Accessibility matters, not only in circumstances like this, but simply because making your product or service accessible means making it accessible to as many customers as possible – and that’s just good business.