Background

What is this website for?

Communication is a lifeline. Our capacity to navigate the world and to play an active role in society is increasingly dependent on our ability to orient ourselves visually, to recognise and read the signs and symbols that surround us. Communication design helps to make people, knowledge and the world more accessible.

This is why free access to information and communication is a key objective of the UN Disability Rights Convention, which entered into force in 2009. Germany numbers around a million people with visual impairments, who have less than 30% vision even when wearing glasses or contact lenses. ¹ Given current demographic trends, this figure will continue to increase in the coming years. People without visual impairments also benefit from easily legible design in certain conditions such as poor visibility or lighting, or if they are under stress or have reading difficulties, for example. Inclusive communication design makes information readable and understandable for the greatest number of people possible – irrespective of their eyesight. It is both accessible and attractive.

What this website doesn’t do

Communication design is a complex area, extending from typography through editorial, packaging, information and corporate design to interaction and web design. By and large, the basics of legible typefaces and readable text design apply to all media and all fields of application. However, the development and programming of digital media is subject to a whole host of rapidly changing technological demands that exceed the scope of this website. They are dealt with in detail in other places. For this reason, we have limited ourselves to providing general information and citing reference sources. Similarly, we have chosen not to address the subject of tactile and hearing aids. In the interests of inclusivity, we have chosen to focus on design solutions that are equally suited to visually impaired and sighted people.

In addition to functional requirements, design decisions are dictated by aesthetic considerations, conventions and fashions, the demands of cultural diversity and the desire to create original identities. If it does not wish to find itself in a sort of ‘accessibility wilderness’, inclusive design must also take these factors into account: aesthetics are also an important aspect of accessibility. They determine how people experience and feel about the things they perceive. These recommendations are emphatically not intended to be taken as a set of rules cast in stone; they are not a template for some sort of ‘correct design’. On the contrary, they hope to raise awareness and aid decision-making. They neither call into question the design skills and empathy of designers nor do away with the need to check and challenge individual designs: both remain indispensable.