Inclusion for All: The Significance of Accessibility in the Digital Age

Accessibility is a sensitive topic when it comes to the product. Making a product accessible often seems like it wouldn’t be worth the time and effort, but doing so can be helpful to some but useful to all in terms of experience.

Before we go deep into this I’d love to share a story of a real user who seriously needed accessibility to a product. I encountered this wonderful person during one of my product research & her story made me stop for a moment and think about accessibility. Here we go…

Meet Sanchi, a bright and ambitious young woman in her mid-30s who works as a “lead software engineer”. Because of her expertise in full-stack development, Sanchi is a respected senior engineer at her company. She also frequently offers free seminars to college students on weekends to share her expertise on various technologies and how to stand out in a competitive industry.

After many years of developing and mentoring, Sanchi started to experience vision issues. Gradually, her eyesight became increasingly shadowed. She eventually reached a point where she was unable to ignore it any longer. She then went for an eye examination. The optometrist told her that her vision had indeed deteriorated. After some tests, she was hit with the news like a sack of concrete to the chest that she is suffering from the disease named Usher syndrome. She had an eye condition that was gradually impairing her vision. It had no known treatment.

As time passes this problem with her vision get increased and makes it difficult for her to see small text and images on screens. Despite this, Sanchi never gives up, has always been tech oriented, and has a passion for creating software and mentoring others. She continued to use technology for her work, accompanied by assistive technologies like a screen reader, to help her as her eyesight deteriorated. But to Sanchi’s dismay, She discovered that a lot of websites, applications & tools were not accessible to her because they were poorly designed.

As time went on and tragically took Sanchi’s 65% sight. With time she also developed new skills in writing the journal to start a blogging website where she highlighted the challenges of people with disabilities, bringing awareness to the ways they lived adapted lives.

One day, Sanchi came to know that her client is planning to shift her project’s existing framework to a new one because of cost efficiency. Excited by the prospect of the new technology framework, Sanchi decided to give it a try. However, when she started using the product, she quickly realized that it was not designed with accessibility in mind. The text was small and hard to read, the images were not labeled, and the navigation was confusing and difficult to use.

Frustrated and disappointed, Sanchi tried to reach out to the technology framework company behind the product to express her concerns and suggest ways to improve accessibility. Despite her best efforts, however, she was met with silence and her feedback was ignored.

In seconds of minute, now she had to drop that project for which she is working so hard for the last few years. Technology can be incredibly enabling… or disabling.

This is why?“Accessibility Matters”

Disability can happen to anybody at any time, including you or someone you care about. The majority of people are unaware of how important it is to build accessible interfaces. It is a necessary component that also has advantages for those without limitations. There is much overlap between accessibility and usability, and both contribute to a better overall experience. The more accessible a digital product is, the more usable it is for everyone, and the more usable a digital product is, the more accessible it will also be.

Although some details of this Sanchi story, including names, have been fictionalized, it is based on the actual account of a beautiful person who experienced those same difficulties. However, Sanchi was not the only individual to go through those challenges. And Sanchi was not the only person who had to deal with these difficulties and exclusion due to accessibility. It doesn’t have to be that way; there are over one billion people with disabilities in the globe who daily encounter very real and severely restricting restrictions with digital products. Design that is usable and accessible.

As?Designers, we can contribute to creating a more inclusive digital environment for all users.?“Accessibility is essential for some, useful for all.”