Accessibility of Slack
User experience is about the overall feeling of satisfaction that users feel when interacting with a product. This group of “users” will include people with a wide variety of physical and cognitive abilities. 18.7% of Americans have some form of a disability; that’s nearly 1 in 5 users! It seems obvious that UX Designers should always be taking this into account when designing, yet many sites and applications remain inaccessible.
I wanted to dig deeper into an application I use regularly to see how their accessibility holds up. One app that I use daily on both mobile and desktop is the Slack app. I’ve talked about Slack before — I think it’s been revolutionary for digital team communications — but I had never paid attention to how accessible the app is. I’m lucky in that I don’t have cognitive or physical disabilities that affect my ability to use most products. Here I have looked into what Slack has to offer in terms of accessibility and where they are lacking.
Keyboard Navigation
Slack offers keyboard navigation options in their desktop application. When I started tabbing through the app to see what would happen, the following image popped up automatically:
This seemed like a good start, as Slack was obviously paying attention to the way I was navigating and attempting to help. Some useful keyboard shortcut options Slack offers are the ability to switch workspaces and navigation options for most of the menus.
Slack has a page of their website dedicated to keyboard navigation, which I found pretty thorough, albeit sometimes lengthy and complicated. The interactions on Slack can be complicated for a user with no accessibility issues, but I think that Slack has taken care to try to make it as simple as possible for everyone to get around without a mouse.
Screen Reader Compatibility
It is possible to use a screen reader with Slack and they have a help page about how to do so. Unfortunately, it would appear that this functionality only works with the desktop app for now. This is, of course, better than nothing, but ideally the web-version would be accessible as well. The instructions for use are extensive and text-heavy. I think screen reader functionality is relatively difficult with Slack because the program in and of itself is an overload of content that is constantly updating.
Visual Accessibility
Slack does a number of things to make their product accessible for people with visual impairments or difficulties. For starters, users can increase and decrease the size of text using a simple keyboard shortcut. This accommodates people who need to see text at a larger size to be able to read it.
Additionally, slack offers two accessible color schemes that are easy to access and switch to for users with color-related visual difficulties. This is a simple and obvious but necessary option to offer users. Although, I have to wonder — why not make the default color scheme accessible? The differences in coloring between the default and the accessible options are minimal. Why force someone to have to find these accessible themes?
Conclusion
In addition to the accessibility options shown above, Slack lays out an accessibility plan on their website, which details future accessibility goals and improvements planned for their product as well as their offices and physical spaces. Early on, many users complained to Slack about their lack of accessibility options — the app started without keyboard nav options! — but it seems like Slack listened to the feedback and has been working on improving ever since. It is good to see that they are a company continually thinking about improving and making their products useable for everyone.
Prior to watching this video on the importance of accessibility and user experience, I hadn’t spent much time thinking about what “accessibility” really means in the context of digital interfaces. Frankly, I’m blown away by the different technologies available to assist people with disabilities, and looking forward to seeing how these technologies get even better and more inclusive over time. Despite the tools available, there is a lot of work to be done to make the internet more accommodating and accessible to everyone. It has become clear to me that designing for accessibility cannot be an afterthought.
