Accessibility is not exciting
Want to make an impactful difference? There are no shortcuts.
A Stark conversation
On Thursday late night in India, I finally got to put a face to the names behind the awesome folks at getstark.co, courtesy of the virtual coffee event hosted by them. It was an unmissable opportunity to hang out with participants from all over the world, contributing to a shared dialogue on the current state of accessibility as well as some personal recounts from a few participants.
One of the main topics of discussion was about evangelizing accessibility in our team and organization, and there were multiple perspectives on this — ranging from “how can accessibility be defined in business terms” to “how does one really go about making accessibility a much needed dialogue in everyday design activities?” I even chimed in with my own take on the topic:
In my experience, unless we have a personal experience with disability, or know someone close who faces the same challenges, abled people won’t feel the need to consider accessibility early in the design stage. What one can’t feel or experience, one can’t find it important enough to think of and implement the same.
Other people rightfully pointed out that this was just one side of the story, and there are many abled folks genuinely invested in contributing to the accessibility space. However, the general consensus was that it requires constant dedication and evangelization of the benefits of accessibility towards both business and users, to make a11y resources become an early part of the process. There is a lot of work in convincing stakeholders about the business impact, in any company. The rest of the coffee sessions continued with interesting tidbits and opinions from the key members of the Stark team.
“Real” design
Today, in a conversation with a friend of mine, Shaheena, we touched on what design really is — essentially, the unaddressed aspect of designs which no one talks about in public. There is so much to design beyond glitzy portfolios, Dribbble shots, better paychecks and what not. In Shaheena’s words, design is not instant gratification; I say, design is your god-given gift to make a difference to people’s lives.
As a designer, our role entails a lot of grunt work, back and forth discussions between stakeholders for arriving at a consensus (or compromise) on the product’s direction, the infinite number of iterations we make for the design solutions, and the unfortunate situations where we realize we need to go back to the drawing board because we overlooked some critical data points or new information came to light. But ultimately the hard work is worth it, once it goes live and evokes effusive praise from your users and customers.
It’s about time someone puts out a detailed video telling the new generation of designers about this unglamorous part of design, and how design is a game of patience and craft that will bring in immense satisfaction when well done.
Being accessible
If you are keen on accessibility, and like me, would love to find a way to bring awareness and actionability to your team to design for the overlooked users, be ready to traverse a very long and hard road towards achieving the smallest of goals at a project and team level. We can make the impossible possible, but it will require methodical dedication and repeated practice to incorporate this type of sensitivity into our work ethic.
Here’s how I would set the ball rolling:
See how your designs are used by older people in your family, or anyone with cognitive issues in your circle. I wrote about how I try to consider the usability issues for my users by visualizing my mom or disabled folks as the end user, in an older post.
Provide business justifications for using accessibility practices to the leadership and business stakeholders.
Read up on the following resources: WCAG 2.1 guidelines , ARIA, the Microsoft inclusive handbook and many others. There are many sources on the internet to gather more information on accessibility.
Check out this video on the Stark youtube channel. Accessibility should be an MVP and not a checklist.
Use the Stark plugin in your Sketch / Figma / XD (upcoming) files to check for color contrast and vision simulator, and many more upcoming features. This plugin is a good way to reinforce the importance of cross-checking your colors and typography and making sure you have a solid design system.
Resist the temptation to use lighter colors or subtle colors in your design for the sake of making them look enticing. Think about contrast always, and choose brand colors and font weights that guarantee maximum legibility and visibility for all kinds of use cases.
If you are making your own website/portfolio, consider optimizing the experience for screen readers, allow larger font sizes and making your content in high contrast and readability. Cool transitions and parallax effects etc. are ok as long as the content is not in any way compromised. I love Notion and appreciate NoCode tools immensely for the time and effort saved, but sadly they are hardly designed/developed with accessibility in mind.
These are a good way to get up to speed with accessibility, but you would still need to facilitate conversations with your colleagues and friends, to even make it a topic of interest. The definition of a successful dialogue on accessibility is when designers and stakeholders treat design solutions to not just cater to the identified target users of the product, but also the unseen users with their set of limitations and dependencies.
A product that is designed with accessibility in mind will bring immense value to anyone who uses it, and it’s time companies acknowledge it and put money on promoting accessible practices in the organization — there’s a better reason for accessibility beyond avoiding lawsuits, after all.
My team and company are already onboard with the benefits and good karma that comes out of having an accessible design system, so I am very excited to see what the next few months will have in store for us.
Despite my emphatic posts on this topic, I feel that I’m barely scratching the surface of this fundamental human right to using technology products in any capacity. The best I can do is connect with people who have credible experience in this field, and continue to evolve my ideas on making an actionable framework for accessibility at different levels in the company. Attending the virtual coffee with the Stark folks was just the first of many opportunities for me to evolve into this role, and I look forward to more such engaging discussions in future.
Have a good weekend, y’all!