My first dates with Accessibility
Adapted from a talk on Perspective: An ode to accessibility. A journey to discovering that beyond, time and resources.. the fight for more accessible products and services begins with perspective.
For the last 2 years I have been having secret dates with accessibility. Our courtship began when I was designing a spend analytics tool within my company. It was great.. It was a relationship fueled by the passion of discovering and learning something new. I grew to love the little I knew about accessible web design and I longed to share my relationship with those around me. Naturally, those closest to me were the first to hear about all of this.. and my excitement was met with a plain, “Oh, alright.”
I couldn’t clearly translate what I was feeling, or what it meant.. I was so consumed by my learning that whatever I tried to explain sounded like gibberish because it was filled with stories within stories within facts. Looking back, this is possibly because I wanted to let it all out at the same time, so that everyone would fall in love with my love.
My new interest may not have been met with excitement for many reasons. Many in my immediate environment, had no reference for what accessibility meant in real life. They thought accessibility demanding, stuffy and boring, so being seen with accessibility, was rather corny.
Now, accessibility, and more specifically web accessibility, isn’t new.. and mine is not the first love affair to make it’s way to the internet. But as the saying goes.. “every love story is beautiful, but ours is my favourite.”
Dating [Accessibility] in South Africa
I’m a designer living and working in South Africa. Now a little research will show you that a lot of disability rights are baked into other laws; labour laws, educational policies.. and in there, there is little or nothing regarding access to technology. This means that what should be a basic right, is not awarded to some and somehow, an inaccessible app or website becomes an acceptable option. Working in the financial sector means my application of accessibility is often framed by this. To me and many others, access to managing your finances is a basic right and inaccessible banking platforms, threaten that right.
So, I must admit, in the midst of all this.. my love affair with accessibility was a well known secret. Until a few months ago.
I got the opportunity to share some of what I had come to appreciate over a series of design gatherings. There have been quite a few “ah-ha” moments along this journey of mine, and I’d like to note a few:
Not all abilities are made equal
Over and above permanent disabilities, I learned about temporary vs situational vs permanent disabilities and how all three within one spectrum can share functional limitations. That is, a person with a motor impairment resulting in hand tremors, could have the same or similar limitation ranging in severity as a person with an injury to their dominant arm. That’s when I discovered the Persona Spectrum in Microsoft’s Inclusive Toolkit which completed a picture I had been slowly forming. That putting people at the centre of your process does not change when you are designing for those with disabilities, the need probably increases when as a team can’t rely on your shared experience to fill in any blanks.
Enter senescence, stage right
Senescence is the “the condition or process of deterioration with age.” In the past couple of years, the world average for life expectancy has gone up. Thank you modern medicine. What this doesn’t always cancel out is everything that comes with old age. Bad eye-sight, arthritis, possible affected cognition due to various factors. What is fascinating though, is that this is in parallel with our increased reliance on technology and all the good stuff it brings. So it’s something to think about as a maker of things; acknowledging there are nuances, how many products would serve you and your generation into your old age?
You’re not designing for fringe cases
Humans often understand the world through categorization and there’s no shame in that. This also means that we may fail to acknowledge that by nature grouping combines a few, and excludes others. Now sometimes that’s okay, and at times it’s necessary… but most times it’s just plain rude.
At the time of my research, the current world population was sitting at 7 632 819 325 (over 7.6 billion) people. It is understood that around 10% of the population is living with disabilities.. that’s about 763 281 932 (over 763 million) people with 80% of that in developing countries, including South Africa. Let’s pause there and break down that number. If you were to take the population of the United States of America, which is the world’s third largest country by population, multiply it by three, then add Columbia to that number… That’s a whole lot of people experiencing the world differently at a functional level.
So, if we can get anything from these figures, regardless of them being broad, it’s that if you were ever looking for a reason for accessible design, there are over a million.
In our places of work, school and fun.. we don’t often encounter people living with disabilities and so to many this may translate as it meaning that they are few and far in between. But if observed from another lens, it tells a different story. As human beings, we have long adapted to our environment; be it physiological, genetic or cultural. However, as we have advanced technologically, and started to make our environments adapt to us, we have left our fellow humans out in the process. As a result, by not intentionally including people living with disabilities, we exclude them from participating in this new world we are creating. So naturally, we see them less in our daily lives, and so we continue to assume that they must be doing just fine.. an assumption we hardly seek to validate. It’s a vicious cycle.
Data at face value: It’s a ‘No’ from me
You may be from one of those places that says, we don’t have disabled users, or that ‘only 4% of our users have a disability’. In my world, I work on a decent amount of colleague platforms and we know who the main users are, we see them everyday and they all APPEAR to be abled. That may be true some of the time but it does not take into account people’s changing abilities, it also assumes that the same people will never leave the company to make way for new employees with different abilities.
Beyond that you might be using data to dig yourself into a hole.
Let’s say yours is a public transport system, and your stats only pick up 4% of your active users as having a disability. Do you get curious to know more? To understand their experience or maybe to understand if this is everyone? Well, your data can give you facts about a person but it can’t tell you what makes them tick. If you don’t investigate, you’ll see 4% as a true representation of reality, but you may not know that the ones that aren’t counted refuse to be subjected to inaccessible spaces or technology. Someone with a disability may find ways use your product or service out of necessity, but that doesn’t mean that they would have anything good to say about it. And so, in this case, your data only exists to confirm your biases.
Innovation can be born out of Inclusion
After being exposed to the web content accessibility guidelines in their various versions online, I was initially quick to bid adieu to creativity.. but I was wrong. As I dug around, I unearthed an impressive number of accessible tools and assistive technologies. It’s mind blowing to think that something like Siri or similar voice assistants, that we may deem to be a way for companies to sell products is something that empowers the lives of those who can afford to make the most of the technology. Imagine technology empowering you to do the thing that you would normally need help to do if you had a disability; like open a door, turn on your lights or make food for your family. I no longer view Siri as gimmick, I now view Siri like the Lobby Boy from The Grand Budapest Hotel; invisible, but always in sight.
Fun fact: A brand new iPhone can be used straight out of the box by a blind person and yet you can buy the same device, and not have a clue that it has accessibility features. Designing with accessibility in mind isn’t like being an only child for years then suddenly having to share everything. If anything, you gain more than you lose as accessibility has benefits for everyone.
Conclusion
The tools and technologies are around us and they keep getting better and we need to come to the table. It’s not hard work per se, you already work hard.. it’s more of a different perspective on how you approach your work and it’s important because you are making things for people to use; and with people there are few absolutes. Heydon Pickering, whom I love, said this: “The potential audience for your website or app is anyone human.” It’s a cool concept to keep in your back pocket next time you design for people.
