Accessibility Awareness

First I’ll ask you this; as a designer, do you actually know what digital accessibility is?

You may be surprised to hear how many reply with something along the lines of: “Well yeah, sort-of?” or “Aren’t they guidelines or something? They’re not really clear anyway.” or a very abrupt, “no”.

I feel like this should really make me feel disappointed, and in some ways it certainly does. But if I’m being completely honest I’m not shocked. Many of us, especially those with a few years under our belt, are not conditioned to hone in on these senses—at least not at first. You see articles about accessibility popping up left and right in design literature more frequently now, just like this very blog post you’re reading. It’s awesome to witness the momentum it’s made over the last few years, and it gives me hope — but I know we can do better.

In some cases, I’ve also heard it referred to as just a “fad”. If you even believe this to be partially true I highly recommend you to reconsider that notion. Once you begin to realize what’s at stake, and how a portion of your audience isn’t capable of appreciating all the hard work that goes into your product—I can tell you from first-hand experience it…