Web Accessibility

Quick Summary

An introduction to web accessibility, providing a basic context around this subject. Also sharing my personal journey and experience with A11y in web development.

Despite the fact that the discussions around A11y has been around for quite a while now and the web community has been fairly progressive in that direction, it is still not a surprise to find a website or app with poor accessibility or product developers not paying attention to inclusion.

So let's talk a little about the importance of web accessibility in product design and development.

Getting Introduced To Accessibility

Let me start by sharing a video which is an interview of Marie Van Dreissche by Rufus Deuchler at Adobe live from 2019.

Watching this interview and several other talks by Marie and other inclusive design advocates, I got a much better understanding of what web accessibility is really about.

Prior to this, I had a very basic idea about A11y and had watched Sara Soueidan talk about it at an event. However, at this point it was still from a perspective of how developer thinks about their code instead of a product design perspective.

Accessibility is not just about improving the product's SEO ranking or making the code more symantic. We should start by understanding A11y from a design POV of real world objects. For example, Does the public transport (Bus/Train) you use has a wheelchair accessibility in place? (making the person get up from the chair and carrying them onboard does not count)
do you think the washing machine that you see or use can be used by a person with limited vision?

These questions would also apply to the website/product that you design and develop.

Does it really matter for your product?

Well, at least if you care about the law, then yes. Here's a list of countries with Accessibilty/Non-discrimination law that makes it mandatory for the website/app to meet the given web accessibility standards.

https://www.w3.org/WAI/policies/

Generally the law applies on government and public sector websites. However, some of these countries/regions enforce these standards to the private sector as well.

Lawsuits against orgs. breaching these laws have been rising recently and companies have no choice but to ensure that their product meet the standards.

It is kind of strange that we need a law on this, for people to actually start caring about the subject. Like, why would you not want include someone from using your great product just like everyone else.

There's a lot more to talk about on this topic, but that's it for today!

Thanks for reading.

Links

• https://www.marievandriessche.nl/index.html

• https://youtu.be/OTKVApBU6jY

• https://www.sarasoueidan.com/

• https://www.w3.org/WAI/policies/

• https://web-directive.eu/