How can I design surveys to be more accessible?
Accessible surveys are designed to be accessible to people with a diverse range of hearing, movement, sight, and cognitive ability. There are two requirements for a survey to be accessible:
Content that may be difficult for impaired users to navigate or that screen readers cannot interpret should be excluded.
Necessary messaging should be added to ensure that impaired users can understand how to use the survey.
Recommendations for Building Accessible Surveys
If you're planning on sharing your survey with respondents with disabilities, you'll definitely want to follow accessibility best practices. If you're planning on sending your survey to a large group of people, and thus are not sure of respondents' abilities, we recommend following our accessibility recommendations.
Avoid question types that are not accessible or are difficult to use
Date - The date picker is screen reader accessible however it can be difficult for respondents using screen readers to use. We have added keyboard controls to the date question calendar to improve navigation via screenreader.
Avoid Question Logic It's always best to avoid hiding questions with question logic as screen readers have trouble deciphering live questions from hidden questions.
Avoid using images in your survey Including images in your surveys is not inclusive for respondents with sight disabilities. If you do use images make sure they are accessible. Screen readers read the "alt" attribute within the HTML of your images.
Avoid using videos in your survey Including videos in your surveys is not inclusive for respondents with sight disabilities. If you do use videos make sure they are accessible. Consider adding a YouTube video as they are the most accessible and familiar. YouTube allows you to add closed captions to your videos making them much more accessible.
Use people-first language Be mindful of the language you use when distributing your survey to people with disabilities. People-First Language is a linguistic practice that ensures the language and sentence structure used when addressing your audience emphasizes that they are people with a disability, and not "disabled people." People-first language avoids language that would potentially cause a person with a disability to be dehumanized.
In sentence structure, name the person first and their condition second so you're emphasizing that they are people first, not just a condition.
Use an accessible survey theme and/or enable Low Vision Mode Simple, clean survey themes are most accessible. Good color contrast is important for visually impaired users. Our default survey theme has the WCAG recommended contrast ratio of 7:1.
If you choose a different theme or use tools to style your theme, consider enabling the Low Vision Mode option.
To evaluate the color contrast in your survey use this color contrast checker: http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/
Avoid the One-at-a-Time Survey Interaction On the Style tab under Layout, you can choose both a Desktop Interaction and a Mobile Interaction.
The default desktop interaction is the Standard Interaction in which survey respondents will experience your survey much like how it is displayed on your Build tab. The default mobile interaction is the One-at-a-Time Interaction in which survey respondents will see one question at a time. When the respondent submits the question it will slide to the left and the next question will slide in from the right.
We recommend the Standard interaction as it is most accessible for screen readers. To change your interactions go to Style > Layout and customize both the Desktop Interaction and Mobile Interaction.
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