When I first started building websites back in the late ’90s, the internet was a very different place. In those early days, the idea of accessibility wasn’t something I was deeply familiar with. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that I started hearing about concepts like ARIA and the importance of making the web inclusive for everyone.
At first, it felt a bit abstract—like a nice idea that was hard to fully grasp. But as I learned more, I realised that accessibility is about real people with real experiences, and that we, as creators of the web, have a responsibility to make sure everyone can access and enjoy what we build.
In the physical world, we use our senses constantly and often without thinking — to navigate a space, judge distance, detect danger, or simply enjoy the moment. We rely on sight to read signs, hearing to detect speech or warning sounds, touch to interact with objects, and even smell or taste to evaluate food or sense something amiss. But what happens to those sensory cues when we shift into the digital world?
In this exploration, I want to take a closer look at how each of our five senses — sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell — influences the way we experience both the physical and digital worlds. While it might be obvious that vision and sound play a major role online, and touch is becoming increasingly important with modern devices, taste and smell may not seem as directly relevant — at least not yet.
Still, each sense tells us something about how we engage with the world around us. So how do we recreate, compensate for, or respect those senses when we design digital experiences?
Sight
When we think about sight, it’s easy to understand how vital it is in helping us move through our day-to-day environments. In our own homes, we know where everything is and can navigate comfortably. But when it comes to the digital world, every website is like a new environment. For those who are visually impaired, navigating a webpage can be a completely different experience. This is where tools like screen readers come into play, reading out the content of a page. But for that to work well, we need to ensure that the website is designed with accessibility in mind—using proper alt text for images, making sure headings are used correctly, and ensuring that the site can be navigated with a keyboard. By doing this, we create a space that’s welcoming and usable for everyone.
Sound
When it comes to sound and hearing, we often don’t realise how much we rely on it in our everyday lives, whether it’s listening to conversations, enjoying music, or simply hearing the sounds around us that help us feel connected. In the digital world, audio can be a huge part of the experience, from video content to podcasts and even the subtle sounds that let us know when we’ve received a notification. For those who are deaf or hard of hearing, ensuring that content is accessible means providing captions for videos, transcripts for audio, and making sure that important information is conveyed visually as well as audibly. By doing so, we make sure that everyone can fully engage with and enjoy our content.
Touch
Touch is definitely an interesting one. With the rise of touchscreens and mobile devices, the sense of touch has become really important in how we interact with the web. Haptic feedback, for example, can give us a little vibration when we tap a button, letting us know that our action was registered. This kind of feedback can be really helpful for users, especially those who might rely more on tactile feedback to navigate their devices.
When we think about designing for accessibility, it’s important to ensure that interactive elements like buttons and forms are large enough to tap comfortably, have visible focus states for keyboard users, and are spaced well to avoid accidental touches. The way we build touch interactions can make a big difference for users with mobility or motor challenges.
Taste and Smell
Taste might not directly apply to the web experience—unless we’re talking about food blogs or culinary experiences that might inspire someone’s imagination! Still, there are ways to think about how we design sensory experiences, even when we can’t transmit flavour through a screen.
As for smell, it’s not something that’s directly tied to the digital world right now, but who knows what the future holds? Technology is always evolving, and maybe one day, we’ll have ways to incorporate even more senses into our online experiences. In the meantime, we can be mindful about how we describe flavours and scents in digital content, helping to create vivid, sensory-rich stories that can still be experienced through words and visuals.
Conclusion
In reflection, our senses play an incredible role in our everyday lives. Whether it’s using our sense of smell to tell if our food is fresh, or relying on touch to feel the world around us—it’s clear that each sense adds a unique layer of richness to our experience. And when it comes to the digital world, it’s important that we don’t take any of these senses for granted. By making the effort to create more inclusive, accessible experiences, we ensure that everyone has the opportunity to fully engage with and enjoy what we create. In the end, it’s all about empathy, understanding, and making the digital world a place where everyone can thrive, no matter how they experience it.
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