Accessibility in Software: Build for Everyone

Too often, software is built for a typical user — someone with perfect vision, hearing, motor skills, and context. But the truth is, users bring a range of abilities, devices, and constraints. Good software meets them where they are.

Accessibility isn’t just a legal checkbox or a UX nicety. It’s a quiet marker of software maturity — and it reflects how much you really care about who you’re building for.

Why Accessibility Deserves Your Attention

Modern digital products are expected to be fast, clean, and functional — but also usable by people who interact with them in different ways. That includes users navigating by keyboard, reading with a screen reader, operating via voice input, or needing higher contrast to perceive visual elements.

Accessibility ensures that these users aren't just able to access your product — they’re able to experience it fully.

And when you design for the edge, you often improve the core. That’s what makes accessibility not just an ethical priority but a quality one.

What You Should Be Thinking About

If you’re building or shipping software, accessibility becomes part of your responsibility — whether you're writing code, designing UI flows, or testing features.

What does that responsibility involve?

Making sure content is readable and structured clearly.
Ensuring every feature works without a mouse.
Labeling buttons, forms, and images so that assistive tools can interpret them.
Keeping interactions predictable and focus flows smooth.

It’s not about knowing every regulation. It’s about caring enough to ask: Can someone with different abilities use what we’ve built — confidently and independently?

How to Approach Accessibility as a Practice

Rather than treating accessibility as a checklist at the end, bake it into each step.

In design:

Avoid relying solely on color to convey meaning.
Choose typefaces and sizes that are easy on the eyes.
Keep layouts consistent and reduce cognitive overload.

In development:

Use semantic HTML wherever possible — it helps screen readers parse the page accurately.
Add meaningful alt text to images, and aria-labels to interactive elements where needed.
Ensure all functionality is available through the keyboard.

In testing:

Use a screen reader to navigate the app as a real user would.
Try operating your app without a mouse.
Use tools like Lighthouse or axe, but don’t rely on them alone.

This isn't about perfection. It's about progress. Each improvement increases the number of people who can benefit from your work.

What It Looks Like When Accessibility Works

You know it when you feel it — or more accurately, when you don’t feel blocked.

You can navigate the entire interface without a mouse.
Forms clearly tell you what’s required and why.
Buttons and controls have clear text or labels, even when they’re just icons.
When you move through a modal or menu, the experience flows — you’re not stuck, confused, or lost.

Good accessibility is invisible in the best way. It feels intuitive, respectful, and inclusive — even if you never need it yourself.

How to Spot When It’s Missing

Sometimes, poor accessibility is obvious. Other times, it lurks in small but frustrating details.

Here’s what you might notice:

The tab key skips crucial buttons or lands nowhere useful.
A screen reader reads “button” or “image” with no context.
Contrast between text and background is so low it’s hard to focus.
You submit a form and get an error — but no explanation.

If you're testing your product and you find yourself saying “Oh, I guess you can’t do that unless…” — that's a sign something's off.

A Simple Way to Keep It Top of Mind

There’s a helpful mental shortcut that guides accessibility thinking: POUR.

Perceivable — Can the user perceive the information?
Operable — Can they interact with it?
Understandable — Is the behavior consistent and intuitive?
Robust — Will it work with different tools, browsers, and environments?

You don’t need to memorize the rulebook. Just ask yourself: Would this work for someone navigating differently than I do?

Where It Might Not Be Priority — And Why That’s OK (Sometimes)

There are edge cases where accessibility might not be top of the list:

Internal dashboards for a known, small team
Disposable prototypes not meant for end users
Backend APIs or CLI tools with no visual interface

Still, good habits are worth practicing even here. The easier you make things for one group, the easier they often become for everyone else.

Final Thought

Accessibility is one of those things that doesn’t announce itself loudly — but you can feel its absence immediately.

Taking it seriously isn’t just about following rules or meeting guidelines. It’s about being proud of what you build — because it works for more people, more reliably, more often.

And when you build like that? You're not just writing code. You're creating trust.

Interested in more like this?
I'm writing a full A–Z series on non-functional requirements — topics that shape how software behaves in the real world, not just what it does on paper.

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Accessibility in Software: Building for Everyone, Not Just Most