Accessibility should be your first thought, not an afterthought.
It is rare that I see something on the internet that makes me genuinely angry. But today is one of those days. Take a look at this blog post:
Do you see anything wrong here?
I’ll give you a hint: try to open this page in your browser’s reader mode.
It doesn’t work?
Yeah, because the author decided to post an image of handwriting and now the browser isn’t detecting any text!!
What does this mean?
- I can’t use the built in text-to-speech because there is no text
- I can’t open the page in reader mode, which means I can’t adjust the contrast and have to read black-on-brownish-gray
- I can’t change the font size
Insult to injury, he then writes backwards for a couple paragraphs. So even if I had a screenreader that could use optical character recognition to read text from images, it would have just started saying gibberish at that point.
At the bottom of the page, the author reveals he actually went to some significant effort to make the text copy-paste capable. To which I say: I don’t want to have to copy and paste your entire essay in order to read it, and if you’re that technologically skilled you should be able to add alt text to your images. Did it just not occur to you to do that? Did you even think “what will happen if a blind person tries to view this post?”
The other major offender from this week is Ghost Font (Warning: the linked site has autoplaying gifs that may cause eyestrain/ headache/ nausea if you are sensitive to that)
The premise of this project is that if you encode all of your text in a gif or video that cannot be read while paused, AI won’t be able to read it. To which I say: congratulations: you prevented the AI! You also prevented anyone who uses a screen reader, motion sensitive people, and probably around 40% of even completely abled people because this is really hard to read!
The maximum amount of characters they let you type in the demo on the website is 36, presumably because they know this thing falls apart unless the font size is extremely big. But even with that few characters, it’s still really hard to read! It’s to the point where to read it I would have to find one letter at a time and write them down, only revealing the message at the end. And this is when the letters are still three or four times the height of the perfectly readable static letters elsewhere on the page!
This person at least put captions on their images, but most of them are unhelpful if you couldn’t see the image and only a few of them are what I would actually call an “image description”. As far as I could tell, there was no alt text.
Inaccessible design is bad design. I don’t care how good the other aspects of the design are: if it’s not accessible, you need to keep working until it is.
- If you are designing something visual, you have to consider what will happen when a blind person attempts to use it. That means putting alt text on your images. Yes, all of them.
- You should also be considerate of people who are sensitive to eyestraining colors, motion, or flashing lights. I am not saying you can’t make websites that are fun and creative and full of images and gifs and neon. I’m saying if you do that, you should also make an accessible version of your website, and the accessible version should be the first one people see. Then on it you add a link to the “fun” version of the site.
- If you are making something with an audio component, you should consider what will happen if a deaf person tries to use it. That means subtitles that contain equal amounts of information as the actual audio. Don’t put [speaking spanish], put the actual words that the person said. Don’t put [music], put the name of the song or the intended emotional effect, such as [heroic music, building towards a crescendo]. You should also caption your sound effects.
- If you make a podcast, you should have transcripts, and I should not have to dig through your website for 15 minutes in order to find them. They should be in the same place where the link to the podcast is.
- If you are building something in the physical world, you need to consider how wheelchair users, people with chronic fatigue, and exceptionally short people will be able to navigate it. The ADA is a minimum standard here. It’s not just having elevators, it’s “how far out of their way do people have to go to use the elevator?” It’s having longer ramps than are legally required so the incline is more shallow. It’s having benches in a lot of places. It’s having literally any plan for what someone who can’t reach something is supposed to do.
- You should also be considerate of people with cognitive disabilities. That means having maps and clear signage. It means things like having “sensory friendly” days where you turn off the big obnoxious overhead speakers. And yes: days. Not hours. Certainly not the undesirable hours of the day. Would you like it if the only time you could comfortably shop for groceries was 6:30-8:00am on Thursdays?
- You should also be considering the many many disabilities that I have not mentioned. People who have limited fine motor skills. People who don’t have hands. People who can see but can’t read. Powerchair users. People who need their assistant/ caregiver to be able to accompany them at all times. Pregnant people. People who can’t speak. Your fire exit plan should explain what someone who can’t use the stairs is supposed to do. Your hallways and intersections should be wide enough for even the bulkiest wheelchair to turn around easily in. Your staff training should include what to do if someone has a seizure, or a psychotic episode, or a panic attack, or an autistic meltdown. The list goes on.
Is it more work to do this? Yes. Is anyone going to give you a prize? Probably not. Should you do it anyway? Yes. Why? Because you should care about disabled people. If for no other reason, then because one day you may be one.