What is accessibility?

If this term is new to you, here’s an explainer:

Accessibility is the practice of making sure that things are usable bye veryone, regardless of their physical or cognitive abilities. Typically, when we think of accessibility in the physical world we're imagining features that improve access or usability, such as wheelchair ramps, automatic doors, and hands-free faucets.

Digital accessibility is the practice of ensuring that apps, software, devices, entertainment, content, etc. can be enjoyed by people of all abilities. For devices like computers, smartphones, and tablets, a lot of the accessibility features are already built in. Some everyday examples of these digital-world features are resizable text, dark mode, voice interfaces, and keyboard shortcuts. Other examples are captions for videos and screen readers that read the contents of the display to a user, often a blind person.Accessibility features like these are often referred to as assistive technologies

But not every app, website, or game plays nicely with those built-in features — in fact, the vast majority don't. If you're fully sighted or hearing or have use of your hands, it's likely that you won't notice these issues. But what if screen readers or captions are the only way you can access the content? In those cases, accessibility issues can easily become barriers that leave you unable to book a hotel room, make a reservation, watch a movie, order online or a host of things that you'd be able to do otherwise.

If people who are disabled are kept from performing the same everyday tasks as those who are fully abled, isn't that a form of discrimination? It is, according to laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Most courts see these barriers as interfering with the civil rights of disabled people. Since 2017, there’s been a tidal wave of civil rights lawsuits related to accessibility, and they don't appear to be letting up anytime soon.

Big Tech companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google have entiredepartments that have dedicated decades to ensuring that their platforms anddevices work well for disabled folks. These firms have included scores ofaccessibility features in their operating systems, and often by creating newassistive technologies of their own.

Most barriers arise when the makers of other tech products —developers, designers, and other innovators — fail to check that their work supports the assistive technologies that are already built in. There are a few ways to ensure that tech products don’t exclude disabled folks: first, there are automated testing tools for catching the most obvious issues. Next, companies can include people that use assistive technologies when they perform user testing. Most importantly, companies should always include disabled people in the process when they’re coming up with new products. Unless a tech company has made these types of testing part of their regular quality control, then it’s more than likely that their products will contain issues that present barriers for some of their users. 

If you’re shopping for tech products for your business — like conferencing tools or websites — the legal responsibility is on you to make sure that they work for people of all abilities. There’s no official badge or logo that guarantees that the products are accessible, so you should always look for an accessibility statement on the manufacturer’s website.