<aside> <img src="/icons/forward_gray.svg" alt="/icons/forward_gray.svg" width="40px" /> This guide is an overview of why accessibility in all its aspects is important in an ever growing community and how to make your spaces, creations and socials accessible to the largest audiences.
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Accessibility is the design of products, places and media made to be usable and comprehensible to most people, may they be disabled, speaking another language or not at all.
Designing accessibility is per se always positive even to less affected people: it is about widening access without flawing or alienating the base product / space. And more generally, accessibility can lead to live improvements for a general audience, this is called the cut curb effect aka when features designed as disability-friendly become the new norm due to easy use / simplifications.
You have nothing to lose making your content accessible, it could even be very beneficial to you if you are selling products or seeking audience enlargement.
Everyone, but the people the most impacted by accessibility especially online are visually impaired, physically impaired, dyslexic, autistic and more generally neurodivergent people.
You may think that the visually impaired would not be playing online games, or using mods but that would be far from reality. Visually impaired people could be a spectre of very different disabilities going from colour-blindness to legally blind people. Visually impaired people are playing games online, just like everyone would.
Same goes with physically impaired people, the range is almost infinite and there are multiple ways to get content usable for ones with hands, arms, spine, head and etc issues.
In the end, all of these life quality improvements will be beneficial to general audiences at some point. Let’s also not forget that FFXIV’s modding community is communicating almost exclusively in English, even though it is considered as the most widely spoken language non-native speakers might also be struggling to translate texts as well. Accessibility can totally help translation, comprehension and communication.
There are multiple possibilities to change or adapt your content and we will review some of them here. It might take some time for you to adapt to new ways so do not be afraid and stressed out, go slowly on your path. Any small improvement is a big step towards inclusivity for all.
Although this community revolves around aesthetics, aesthetics should not disadvantage accessibility. This might encounter opposition, but the simpler the font, the better access you will provide to audiences.
In marketing, packaging so you keep a visual coherent to your product and provide accessibility is a big thing. Most brands will opt for the easy option: keeping a complicated logo or design and repeating branding and information in a sans-serif easy to read font as a subtext.
Ex: