Accessibility IS usability
Still reeling from the incredible accessibility presentation I attended last night.
While demonstrating how a screen reader works, Scott Mayer, a blind man from American Family’s usability department, almost off-handedly said, “A usable site IS an accessible site.”
To me, that was the night’s most cogent statement.
As UX people, I wondered, do we truly give accessibility the consideration it deserves? Especially given that (and here’s where I become US-centric) nearly 20% of people in the US have some sort of disability. Think about that. 20%. Are we helping to make the internet easy to use for such a huge chunk of the population?
Ah, but me, I’m not a numbers person. To me, this is a more tangible way to look at it: If you lost your eyesight today or were seriously injured in an accident or were stricken with a debilitating disease or lost your hearing, etc, would you be able to use the site you’re designing or redesigning?
And think outside the stuff you create.
Say there’s a radio station that has lots of shows you like to stream online. Over time, you lose your ability to hear. Does the station’s site support you? If not, do you just move on, never looking back, la-di-da-ing as you go? I doubt it. You’d demand a transcript or something equally concrete to keep you connected to the programs you love.
Carol Voss from IndependenceFirst, where the presentation was held, said that her co-workers, 50+% of whom are disabled, jokingly refer to her as a TAB (Temporarily Able Bodied). That’s a compelling way to look at it. It means we’re all seconds away from losing everything we take for granted. And in the event that happens, we should never be wrenched away from the resources we value.
If, as we claim, our goal is to make usable and even user-friendly websites, we have to expand our sense of what defines a user. Sure, it’s impossible to design for everybody all the time, but there are definite considerations that can be made within every project that will make life easier for the person that you could easily become.
