Designing digital experiences for mental health
We are all aware of the need to consider accessibility when it comes to our digital products and services. We have legal and moral obligations to do so. The internationally recognised Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) help us assess and improve the accessibility of what we make and maintain.
But how many of us think about the opportunity to improve or – at the very least – minimise harm to people’s mental health through the digital experiences we deliver?
Many of the WCAG criteria are particularly helpful in addressing aspects of engaging with digital content that can impact stress and anxiety levels. For example:
- giving users enough time to complete an action (Guideline 2.2 – Enough time)
- allowing people to review answers before submitting, and helping them avoid mistakes in the first place ( Guideline 3.3 – Input Assistance)
- managing people’s expectations and anticipations by avoiding ambiguous labels and providing consistency in navigation options (covered in a range of critera, for example Success Criterion 3.3.2 – Labels or Instructions and Success Criterion 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation)
We don’t always consider WCAG in the context of the role they play in supporting good mental health. And they’re not explicitly there to address mental health issues. But by making digital content perceivable, operable, navigable, and robust (the four principles of WCAG) we can go some way towards reducing the mental anguish people may feel when interacting with digital products and services.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
If you’re not up for reading WCAG through a mental health lens (let’s face it, that in itself could induce stress and anxiety in many people given the weight and complexity of the document) then the following resources provide some practical – and targeted – suggestions for designing digital experiences to support mental health:
- A web of anxiety: accessibility for people with anxiety and panic disorders [part 2] A short blog post discussing some of the considerations when designing digital experiences. Many are just good universal design principles, or are necessary as part of applying WCAG 2.1, but seen through the lens of mental health. (You can also access part 1 from this post).
- Design Patterns for Mental Health Referred to in closing in resource 1, this is a very cool pattern library being designed for the public domain with mental health in mind. It includes principles, patterns and practical examples to help you design digital experiences that support good mental health.
Post authored by Danielle Johnson.
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