A few years ago, Bixal was fortunate enough to attend the Propelify Innovation Festival hosted in Hoboken, New Jersey. At a conference littered with “The Future of…” and “The Next Big…”-type talks, we were able to catch a talk with a topic around stakeholders who are often marginalized: “UX for the Blind, An Untapped Market.”
Two women were on the stage: Helen, who introduced herself as the CEO of Sociality Squared, and Mary, a Sociality Squared employee, who happens to be blind. Both women worked in the digital marketing space, where experiences are heavily driven by pixels and colors and content all absorbed by users from a screen.
In a question-and-answer-style interview, Helen asked some questions that people like Mary often receive, questions at the intersection of technology, digital interactions, disability, and accessibility. But, more than anything, Helen asked questions that humanized Mary’s experience.
Mary painted a picture of what it’s like to be blind. She told the crowd, “Imagine this. You are invited to a large networking event, like Propelify. However, you can’t see all the colorful badges, flyers, programs, and maps that everyone else has access to. Even little details that are left out can easily make disabled persons feel excluded.”
Mary addressed how UX designers can build a more inclusive world: Expand the scope of understanding of what your users look like. Stop thinking they are young and able-bodied, like yourselves.
She backed up her claims with some of the following statistics:
UX designers often talk a big game around empathy, but if we are going to put empathy into action, we should do all that we can to understand how disabilities, such as blindness, present specific design challenges and then take measures to address them.
Mary addressed how organizations can work together internally. Engineers and designers should be collaborating around accessibility from day one, not just as a last-ditch effort. It all boils down to the following point: Build in accessibility from the bottom up.
Web-users with visual challenges depend on assistive technologies to accompany their digital experience. For example, Mary said she uses a screen reader that picks up the text on a webpage. She navigates pages with keyboard commands and unique gestures.
Certain features and interface elements might hinder the screen reader’s ability to scan with ease. Images without proper alternative textual (alt-text) treatments can cause huge gaps in communication. Our designs should consider the limitations around the seen (interface), unseen (system), and assistive technologies used.
Web accessibility addresses these types of disabilities: visual, motor and mobility, seizures, auditory, and cognitive and intellectual.
In an extremely fast-moving tech industry constantly focused on the next big thing, this talk was a good reminder to slow down and reassess our own blind spots. Using Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and adhering to 508 compliance is more than checking off the boxes to conform to regulations.
This responsibility values experiences that span a different range of abilities, ones that some of us have never experienced, and we should start by having conversations centered around accessibility early in the discovery process of each project we take on.
Here are some web accessibility resources to get you started:
Section 508 Accessibility Program
Web Accessibility in Mind
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview
U.S. Web Design System
