A Step-By-Step Guide To Building Accessible Carousels

Most carousels come along with usability and accessibility issues. To avoid these issues, this article addresses step-by-step design considerations as well as semantic requirements for carousels to be accessible. It is intended to create an in-depth understanding of the implementation and its impact on users.

As widely used as they are, carousel widgets have a bad reputation among UX professionals. They are ignored by users (Nielsen Norman Group), only 1% interact with a carousel at all, and 89% of them only with the first slide (Eric Runyon). Jared Smith even responds to the question “Should I use A Carousel?” by saying, “Seriously, you really shouldn’t.” Others state that there isn’t one answer. You have to consider various factors, such as function, design, platform (desktop or mobile) and, most importantly, context. For whatever reason you include a carousel on a website, make sure it is user-friendly and accessible.