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UI/UX Design for Users with Dyslexia

As of the third quarter of 2018, Google Play had 2,100,000 apps and the Apple App Store reached the milestone of 2,000,000 apps. Windows store and Amazon Appstore together had some more than 1,119,000 apps in the same period.

As the number of apps for every platform is continuously growing, the competition gets more and more fierce.

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Trying to reach out to every potential user, numerous businesses have learned that they are not accessible enough.

To offer their goods, services, and benefits to the broad audience without any limits, brands work on their accessibility. A recent update of Instagram added automatic alternative text that allows visually impaired users to hear the descriptions of the posts using the screen reader. Instagram also implemented a custom alternative text feature that enables users to add a richer description of their photos when posting them. People who have screen readers enabled can hear this description.

Dyslexia is one of the accessibility issues that isn’t often considered by mobile and web app developers. In this post, you will learn why things need to change and how to do it.

What is Dyslexia and Why It Matters

Dyslexia is not a disease. It is a language-based learning disability that is very often a cause of writing, reading, and spelling difficulties in children and adults. If you haven’t heard of dyslexia before, you will be even more surprised to learn that this health condition is not that rare.

Around 5-10% of the US population has dyslexia according to the stats provided by DyslexiaHelp. Since not every case of dyslexia is diagnosed, some researchers suggest that as many as 17% of the population in the US alone can have this condition.

Children of all intelligence levels can have dyslexia. This condition does not depend on a person’s ethnicity, gender or socioeconomic circumstances and it’s not something you can cure. It is a life-long condition that requires intervention.

With proper help and accessible materials, a person with this condition can succeed academically and in other aspects of life as well. Nonetheless, one needs to consider it when developing a mobile application for the general audience.