With rising vision impairment rates, the restaurant industry must adapt to provide accessible and inclusive experiences to customers. Vision loss is expected to increase by 55% by 2030, affecting 600 million new people. As such, restaurants should expect a growing number of customers with vision issues who may often feel frustrated while dining out.
A well-designed menu can make a big difference for customers, empowering them to take charge of their experience in your restaurant. Being able to read and understand your offerings can eliminate confusion and stress for both customers and staff. Fortunately, creating a vision impairment-friendly menu doesn’t have to be challenging and can typically be remedied by avoiding common menu design mistakes. Doing so can make your menu easier to read and navigate, even for customers who don’t struggle with sight.
Here are some tips for creating a menu that can accommodate customers with visual impairments:
Blurred vision can make it difficult for people with vision issues like nearsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism to read menus, and illegible design makes the experience even more frustrating. While customers can correct their vision with prescription glasses — with retailer Frames Direct featuring high-quality frames that address single vision, progressive no-line, bifocal, and multifocal needs — to read and see better, glasses from top brands won’t remedy a poorly designed menu. Small text, overly decorative typefaces, a too-light font weight, and minimal spacing between lines make your menu hard to read.
Choose one or two minimalistic fonts for your menu items and avoid using too many to avoid confusion. You can have the dish’s name in bold with a description in a lighter font. Make the text large enough so that glasses wearers won’t have to hold the menu too close or far away to read. Avoid overcrowding the page and provide ample spacing to ensure that customers won’t confuse one item for another.
Images and icons are added to create visual interest in a menu, highlight certain dishes, and provide information for those with dietary restrictions or preferences. However, they can also be helpful for readers with visual impairments, allowing them to visualize your food better. You don’t need to add pictures for each menu item; instead, focus on images of your bestsellers, signature dishes, or specials to emphasize popular offerings that make your restaurant stand out and keep people coming back. Ensure these images are in high resolution and edited well to help customers distinguish the food items on the plate and make the dish look appetizing. Make them large enough—typically as large as the text—to capture every detail, but avoid cluttering the pages with too many.
Add a caption so customers know which menu item is pictured. Icons can help indicate certain ingredients or the taste of the dish. For instance, a plant can symbolize vegetarian or vegan food, a chili pepper or flame signify spiciness, and a star may highlight bestsellers. Make each icon large and distinctive so customers can spot and distinguish them from each other. Use appropriate colors to make them easier to differentiate on the menu.
People with visual impairments have different ways of reading depending on their level of vision, convenience, and personal preference. They may have varying assistive devices or feel more comfortable reading in a certain format, so you can create and offer different menu options, such as physical and digital, to accommodate their needs. Some customers with visual impairments may prefer to read a digital menu, as they can use text-to-speech technology or screen readers to describe the menu items.
Smartphones have built-in accessibility features for people with low vision, such as Apple’s VoiceOver on the iPhone, and customers may be used to these tools. Your menu should be optimized for digital formats to enable accurate screen reading. Ensure that each page has sufficient information and has a legible layout for clarity. However, other customers may be more comfortable with physical menus, preferring to use tools like glasses or magnifiers to read. Offering well-designed menus in both formats can accommodate various vision impairments and assistive devices to ensure inclusive dining experiences for all.
Check out Menubly for more insights on menu design and how to grow your restaurant’s online presence.
