Is there such a thing as an accessible shed?

After being on the waiting list for about three years, and dreaming of owning an allotment for the best part of 40 years, I finally got one last month. It’s great, I love it. It’s full of weeds and brambles but I can see the potential, I can visualize all the beds and the fruit and the stands of sweetcorn. It’s going to be glorious.

But it doesn’t have a proper shed!? That’s not right, an allotment without a shed. It needs a shed.? And it’s my allotment, it’s my dream, so I want to build the shed myself.

But I can’t.? I’m a very determined and very independent person so I can usually find a way to do most things, but I can’t build a shed. I don’t have the tools, the skills, the strength or the correct number of arms (four is the minimum required).

I can buy the tools, and I’m sure I could learn the skills. But I’m a woman of a certain age so it’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever have the strength, and I’ll certainly never have the right number of arms.

The solution is simple – I just have to get someone to do it for me.

But that’s the whole crux of the matter – yes, I can get someone to do it for me, but I don’t want to! I know I sound petulant, but my dreams and my independence are important to me. They are, after all, who I am. It infuriates me that this is something I simply can’t do no matter how much I stomp my feet.

This got me thinking about people who have disabilities that mean they need accessible websites, and why business owners are so reluctant to make their sites accessible. I think the answer to that is that most able bodied people don’t understand why it’s such a big deal. After all, if someone can’t use a website they just have to ask someone else to do it for them, don’t they?

But imagine someone who is visually impaired who needs to buy a new pair of trousers. All they want to do is to find a trouser-selling website, click a button and, hey presto!, have the trousers arrive in the post the following day, in exactly the same way that most people do these days.?

Only they can’t see the button, and their screen reader can’t tell where the button is, and even if they could see the button they don’t know what the trousers look like or what size they are. So what do they do?? They may go looking for a site which their screen reader can read properly, or they might just wait until mum or partner or best mate comes home from work and ask them to do it instead.

Does that matter to you, the website owner? Well, yes, you’ve lost a sale, and a potential long term customer, but more importantly than that you will certainly have left your visitor feeling just that little bit more worthless.

So yes, it does matter, because inaccessible websites are a constant, small, infuriating erosion to the disabled person’s feeling of independence and self worth. How would you feel if you couldn’t order your own trousers? Probably not too bad the first time, but what about the second or the third or the hundredth time? And what if this happened multiple times every single day of the year?

Unlike the impossible task of finding a way for a middle aged woman to build a shed herself, there IS a way to give digital independence to people with disabilities and it really isn’t hard. It takes a bit of thought and a bit of planning and maybe an extra few pounds, but once your website is accessible you can know that you may have transformed someone’s life and given them just that extra little bit of independence to let them fly.

As for me and my shed, I’ll give in and find someone to help, and in the meantime I’m sure I’ll find something a little smaller that I can still hit with a big hammer!

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