Learnings about accessibility
Lately I’m starting to explore accessibility. When talking about that topic with people I see myself repeating some personal learnings. I’d love to share them.
We can’t change it now
Like so many other things, we have to accept that we can’t change the past. Encountering something that is excluding people is normal right now, but the way we deal with this fact, will determine it’s condition tomorrow. We should never blame ourselves or anyone for the current situation but rather provide forward thinking suggestions and ideas to fix it in the future.
It’s not a feature, it’s a requirement
In digital product development a feature describes a functionality that can be added to the core product to increase it’s quality. We prioritise these features on a big roadmap by what we think should be done. Multiple times I heard something like: “Yeah, we should tackle that in the future but we don’t have time for that now”, which means you should reserve a specific timeframe where you focus on accessibility instead of a feature. I think that’s the wrong approach and accessibility should be treated equally to quality, testing and usability. If it’s not accessible, it’s not finished (inspired by a tweet from Michiel).
No one says: I don’t care
There is the agile prime directive which basically says: People are good and act based on their current knowledge and bias. No one I talked with gave me the feeling that they didn’t really care. Considering this, we have to believe that the root cause of the status quo isn’t not caring or a limited budget but a lack of awareness and smart solutions.
The environment disables the people, not the other way around
Jake Abma said this and it completely has changed the way I’m thinking about the topic. A common mindset on accessibility is: “That’s for disabled people or people with special needs.” No. It’s so your environment does not exclude anyone. I tried to come up with a few examples that illustrate it better: Let’s say your building can be entered without having to deal with stairs. What would happen is: Every parent with a stroller, every parcel service worker and anybody that’s coming back from a long travel with a heavy trolley will have an easier life. Don’t dare to think it’s only for people in wheelchairs.
Let me know in the comments if you’d like to add anything or if you have questions. It’s especially interesting for me if you disagree with something. If you want to see more of this type of content please let me know by clicking the green heart.
Thanks for reading ❤
pssssttt: If you’re located in nothern germany, there is an accessibility meetup on August the 17th in Hamburg.
