Background on digital accessibility
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has until April 2026 to comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1 Levels A and AA. This collection of best practices was created to help GIS content creators comply with this law, with a focus on digital GIS products. The Massachusetts Accessibility Center for Consulting, Education, and Supportive Services (ACCESS) describes the federal ruling and is a comprehensive resource for digital accessibility information and needs.
Understanding our audiences
Making products accessible is more than just complying with the law. It ensures everyone can use and benefit from our products. People interact with and understand content in different ways. Disabilities can affect vision, hearing, mobility, cognition, and more. When designing interactive and visual-focused web content, we have to consider a wide range of needs, not only visual impairments.
Creating accessible products allows people with disabilities, disorders, and chronic ailments to participate in everyday activities. Creators who do not experience disabilities may not immediately recognize barriers in their design. This is why accessibility must be intentional. It requires planning and thoughtful design decisions from the start.
Accessibility is also a form of usability. When we design for people with disabilities, we improve the experience for everyone. Clear language, simple layouts, strong color contrast, consistent navigation, and reduced complexity make products easier to understand and use. These improvements benefit all users, not only those with specific accessibility needs.
Designing with accessibility in mind strengthens the overall quality of our work. It encourages us to simplify content, reduce unnecessary complexity, and focus on what the users truly need. Clear and focused design helps ensure important information is easy to find and understand.
Maps as communication tools
A map is a communication tool. It transforms data into meaningful information that answers users’ questions about the world. Like any communication tool, a map is only effective if people can understand it. If users cannot access or interpret the information, the map does not meet their needs. Designing accessible maps ensures that more people can find the answers they are looking for.
General accessibility design principles
Keep the following three design principles in mind when developing an accessible application. By keeping these considerations in mind from the beginning, you will create a more accessible application with clearer motivations.
Have a clear purpose in mind
- What is the primary goal of your application?
- Identifying the main purpose of your application early will help you focus the design of your application around this main purpose or goal.
- Identify primary user goals (user stories) before beginning development to ensure your application and data support these goals.
- Does your application allow the user to answer questions with the presented data? Create a list of key information to help in the development of both data and the application.
- This can help identify if the data (both its spatial and attribute components) allows for these questions to easily be answered.
- This will also allow you to easily write a text alternative explanation of your application.
Consider the audience
- Who are your target users? Different user groups may have very different relationships to the topic, or familiarity with the data and GIS tools. These differences could affect how you create the application and explain its takeaways.
- How will your target users understand the data? Answering this question informs how data is presented in your application for specific user groups and what information is provided within the application details.
Plan ahead
- How will your target users be using the application? Understanding if users will be using the application on a mobile device or a desktop computer may impact design decisions.
- Does the data support the types of feature selections a user might want to make?
- If you are developing new data for your application, spend time developing the data schema to ensure user questions can be answered.
- If your application uses existing data, ensure that this data can and will support the questions a user might want to answer using your application.
- Is the attribute table properly formatted so data can be exported to another format? Or is data available in an alternative format?
- Providing an alternative way for users to interact with your map is important. By providing users with options for alternative data formats, you give them a level of control over how to consume and interact with the data.
- Whatever alternative format is provided, it should not lose the original intent, meaning, or nuance and should facilitate all users’ ability to effectively and efficiently carry out work and get information.
- Is your application and its datasets able to handle data updates?
- Consider whether the dataset attribute schema may change in the future and consider how those changes would affect your map or application. Try to make sure that your data visualizations do not become redundant or outdated as datasets mature. Plan for longevity rather than single use.
- Create a read-only hosted feature layer view of the data for use in your map, while preserving the original hosted feature layer (or another view) for editing. This will ensure you are easily able to make data updates without overwriting the hosted feature layer (which can occasionally cause issues).