Accessibility of a Software
Accessibility.
It is always a dearest subject to me.
Just like how error handling, testing, etc., are integral parts of any software engineer’s development process, why is accessibility not considered important?
To be able to build something that can be accessed by everyone regardless of their ability or disability should be everyone’s responsibility.
After working with a few Indian/Bharatian startups, I’ve realized that people don’t actually care about accessibility. Not voluntarily at least. The max I’ve seen is products being built with `tab index` as this is a hard requirement for the customers in a few cases.
Not blaming anyone, even when I was building my own product, there was very little work that I did in terms of accessibility.
But now after switching to a bigger company, I can see the concepts of accessibility being adhered to in every aspect of the product, not only it’s legal but also a moral obligation for every one of us to build things for everyone.
Just like Satya Nadella explains in his book “Hit Refresh” how his son, who was born with cerebral palsy taught him empathy and influenced Microsoft’s vision of ‘accessibility’, only when we face the situation ourselves, will we realize it.
So, before we face this problem by ourselves, let’s start doing something about it. Perhaps cultivating the habit of including accessibility in whatever we build could be a good starting point.
At the end of the day, accessibility is all about inclusion:
How are you going to make sure that a person who lacks vision can still buy a dress from your site? Or are you going to exclude him?
How are you going to make sure that a person with a feature phone can still make a payment while purchasing groceries? Or are you going to exclude her?
Perhaps it’s time to think about this topic more seriously and start doing something about it.
Here is an interesting video on accessibility:
