I read a lot of articles about accessibility, and also try out a lot of accessibility-related products. Some of them are very, very good. Others are cringe-worthy. These are the signs that I use to determine which to read to the end or continue using, and which to close the browser tab on partway through.
The author/product developer does not have access to lived experience
It’s never enough to “comply” with whatever WCAG standard you have chosen to follow. People who work in accessibility and want to be good at it must understand how people with disabilities process interaction flows and data to make it usable.
Example: If slide text announces in a training deck, but then the software forces the user to read through the text again to get to the “next” button, that’s a problem. It’s technically compliant but inefficient and unusable.
Having an accessible product is a great start. But unless the associated services like customer support, documentation, and training are accessible, it isn’t enough.
Unless you have the lived experience of being an assisted technology user or worked with native users of assisted technology for an extended period, you might not understand these issues. That is why it is so important to involve people with lived experience in learning about accessibility. You must interact and get feedback from people with the lived experience of having a disability or multiple disabilities. In this case, more is ALWAYS better. This interaction is no different from any other dimension of diversity, inclusion, or belonging.
Moreover, you can’t write or develop something, then retrofit it to include lived experience. Reactive accessibility is always inferior. Hiring a disabled person or even group of disabled people after a product has been created is not a valid approach to accessibility. Lived experience must be involved from the outset.
The product places the burden on the disabled individual to be more included
Sign language gloves are the classic example of this. Sign language gloves, often hailed as an innovative solution for bridging communication gaps between deaf individuals and those who don’t know sign language, have significant flaws in their design and application. These gloves attempt to translate American Sign Language (ASL) into spoken words by detecting hand and finger movements. However, ASL is a rich, complex language that relies not only on hand gestures but also on the speed, location of the sign in relation to the body, and crucial facial expressions that convey tone and meaning. By reducing ASL to mere hand movements, these gloves oversimplify the language, leading to inaccurate translations and a diminished communication experience. The burden of adapting to this inadequate technology falls unfairly on deaf individuals, forcing them to adjust their natural signing to fit the gloves, rather than allowing the gloves to accurately interpret the full depth of ASL.
Financially, the cost of these sign language gloves can be prohibitive, placing an additional strain on deaf individuals who may already face significant disability-related expenses. Expecting them to pay for a device that fails to fully capture the nuances of their language adds insult to injury, further marginalizing a group that is already underserved. Moreover, these gloves shift the responsibility of communication onto the deaf person, rather than encouraging society to learn and embrace ASL in its entirety. Instead of relying on such flawed technology, resources should be directed toward promoting widespread ASL education and ensuring that communication is accessible to all, without placing the onus on disabled individuals to adapt to oversimplified and costly tools.
The author/product developer fails to understand disability intersectionality.
I looked at the mobile web interface for one of the web overlay tools recently. I don’t use mobile a lot because of my level of vision loss; there isn’t a lot of screen real estate to work with. This particular overlay had some good profiles (which frankly could use some fine-tuning, but it’s an OK starting place). But, it DOESN’T allow for multiple profiles to be set simultaneously.
I can select a vision loss profile, OR I can select a motion-sensitive profile, but I can’t have both.
Unfortunately, I am both.
That is one of the main reasons why W3C never mentions specific diagnoses or disabilities in the WCAG standards. Disabilities are intersectional. When you have one disability (especially an autoimmune-based one), you will likely get MORE than one disability. That indisputable fact completely invalidates the approach taken by this overlay on the mobile web.
Some authors/product owners understand disability intersectionality but fail to understand the intersectionality between disability, gender, LGBTQ+ status, and poverty.
- People with disabilities frequently don’t have the money or support to buy new devices that will work better for their disabilities.
- People with disabilities frequently don’t have the money, time, or emotional energy to try the next greatest treatment for their condition.
- The lack of accessible tools in education and the workplace, combined with healthcare being tied to employment in the US, keeps American people with disabilities from breaking free from the disability/poverty cycle.
The more historically excluded categories a person with a disability identifies with, the greater the discrimination that individual will face.
The author/product developer uses outdated language regarding disability
If I see an out-of-favor term used (such as suffering, wheelchair-bound, impaired), the first thing I do is check where the author or company is located. If it isn’t obvious from the article and I don’t know the author, I will go so far as to look them up on LinkedIn. If they are in a developing nation, I might give them a pass.
Language in the EU, APJ, and North America, however, has evolved significantly. People’s first language (or identity first) is essential. Labels like “low functioning” or “high functioning” are binary, discriminatory, and ableist. They stigmatize the individuals being labeled and convey nothing about the strengths that individual might possess.
The author/product developer treats neurodiversity as a single thing, not a spectrum of multiple conditions that may intersect.
Neurodiversity is not a single concept.
Neurodiversity is a category describing a vast group of issues including but not limited to autism, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, ADHD, and Tourette’s Syndrome, to name a few.
Each of these conditions has an entire spectrum of its own. For example:
- The impact of ADHD on one’s living and work activities can be mild, moderate, or severe.
- ADHD can be diagnosed in childhood or as an adult.
- Some people with ADHD take medication, and others don’t.
Each of these elements alters how the user with ADHD interacts with a product. The product has to work for ALL the users, no matter what their answers are to those questions. Simulation is never a great approach to understanding disability (see my comments about lived experience above). Simulating neurodiverse states is impossible.
The author/product developer treats a particular disability as “more” or “less” important.
Good accessibility does not benefit a screen reader user at the expense of a keyboard-only user.
Good accessibility managers don’t spend their entire budget to make a product work for people with hearing loss but ignore switch users.
Excluding any group of individuals with disabilities is ableist and wrong. A rising disability inclusion tide needs to raise ALL the boats, not just the boats of a small subsection of people with disabilities.
The author/product developer uses “headcount” to make disability inclusion decisions
“How many people is this going to benefit anyway?” is a complaint I hear a lot from people who don’t understand that accessibility is a civil right.
Counting heads is the wrong approach.
Flip the narrative and ask yourself:
- How many people am I discriminating against if I don’t make something accessible?
- How much business am I losing because the people I am discriminating against are shopping at my competitor?
- How much am I increasing my company’s chances of a very expensive lawsuit if I don’t include people with disabilities.
The author/product preys on prevalent fears and myths surrounding disability.
There are too many myths and misconceptions about disability to count. Incorrect assumptions about disability are frequently triggered by fear, ignorance, or prejudice — sometimes all three. Promoting an article or product through continuous negative disability imagery is ableist because it creates barriers for people with a disability to be treated equally.
Any article or product hinting that all the reader/user has to think about is ten things to get accessibility right is delusional and misleading.
Accessibility is a program not a project.
- If you work from a checklist, that’s a project.
- If your accessibility efforts have an end date, that’s a project.
- If you believe the mistruths promoted by overlay companies in Internet ads and soon coming to primetime television, and think they are going to solve your accessibility issues, that’s not only a project, it’s an invalid project.
Accessibility might be a hot blog topic or sales opportunity to you, but it is the chance to live an equal life for some of us. You are doing people with disabilities a disservice when you write an article or create a product that does not take full equity into account.