Including accessibility in your brand guidelines

Brand guidelines have a huge impact on influencing a brand’s future and are at the forefront of making a brand’s communications accessible and inclusive.

Accessibility can help a company connect with all users, making products and services more user-friendly, ultimately leading to a more successful brand. Brand guidelines are a great place to start.

Most brand guidelines I’ve read over the years haven’t included any guidance on accessibility and many had colour palettes that would cause accessibility issues when using them.

You want to provide guidelines that inspire and provide creativity, but you also want to ensure all users can appreciate your beautiful designs.4

Here are some core considerations when creating brand guidelines or improving an existing one.

Why accessibility is an important consideration

If you don’t consider accessibility, you may exclude or deter a whole set of users from the beginning.

Ensuring content is accessible can help a brand reach a wider audience as well as improve users’ perception of it.

It will also improve user experience overall, which leads to higher customer satisfaction.

Lastly, for many companies, accessibility will be a legal requirement.

Brand proposition and values

Accessibility being a focus in your brand is a good way to show your commitment to inclusivity and social responsibility. Include these if they are a core part of the brand’s values.

Also, include how accessibility should be a key consideration for all content created using the guidelines.

It is a key document for driving change and ensuring content is produced in an inclusive way.

Colour palette and contrast

When creating a colour palette, try to craft a range of colours that provide options for producing enough contrast when combined.

You don’t have to make sure that all colours provide enough contrast between each other, but the fewer combinations of colours that pass, the more likely someone will create a design that will cause issues.

Your brand colours will often be used as the background with black or white for the foreground. Make sure to consider where and how your brand colours will be used and provide guidance on what text or background colours to use to ensure a sufficient contrast ratio is met.

Also don’t forget to think about how the logo will look on a white or black background.

Test your colours using a colour contrast tool such as Clear Contrast.

Typography

Typography needs to be legible across various-sized devices. Specify minimum font sizes and line spacing to maintain legibility.

Sans-serif fonts tend to be more readable on screens. However, typography is complex and there is not necessarily an easy solution as to what fonts are the best to use.

Focus on picking fonts with good legibility, containing characters that are distinguishable from one another. Also, choose fonts that feel easy to read.

If you want more detail, Vision Australia provide more information in their article Typography in Inclusive Design.

They have 8 tips for picking accessible typography:

  1. Choose typefaces with a taller ‘x-height.’
  2. Choose more open typefaces.
  3. Choose typefaces with larger white spaces.
  4. Choose typefaces without joined letters.
  5. Choose typefaces with recognisable characters.
  6. Look at the spacing between letters.
  7. Limit the use of ALL CAPS text.
  8. Avoid images of text.

Assets

Images must have alternative text if they are not decorative. You may also want to include how alternative text should be written, incorporating your brand voice.

Videos must have accurate, in-sync captions and audio descriptions. You could also encourage the use of transcripts and sign language.

Copywriting

Encourage copywriters to keep the language simple and understandable, avoiding jargon or technical language.

Keep the reading level reasonable to prevent excluding users from your brand.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

A brand guideline can be an area where you state your commitment to conforming to the WCAG. You might want to include references depending on how complex you want to make it.

A company can have separate guidelines on accessibility, but if that doesn’t exist, a brand guideline can be a good place to start pushing for it to be a priority.

The guidelines are a pillar used in various areas and will set the standard you want to achieve.

Final thoughts

If you have lots of information about accessibility, you may want to consider creating a separate document.

Validating the guidelines you've created may also be worth doing by testing it with a variety of potential customers/users.

Hopefully, this has helped you start incorporating accessibility into your brand guidelines. There is more to consider, but this would be a good start.