Hey there,
Hope you are doing well and safe, and fingers crossed, vaccinated.
I just had a look at my last published article, which was on March 7. This means I finally came around to writing after nearly a gap of 3 months. Not exactly the idea I had in mind about the frequency of my articles here, but it’s been a rather harrowing and emotional time for me so far and I’ve found it easier to stay off the grid. I’m just glad that today’s the day I slowly come out of my shell of misery, and crawl back into the world to write about, well you know, stuff.
I don’t really have any viewpoints on the topic of accessibility and inclusion at the moment, but I do wish to list down a few things that transpired over the last 3 months, and which have been a shining beacon of light in my very dark weeks so far.
Better late than never
In the last quarter of my company roadmap, I was entrusted with the task of helping the tech team come up with an accessible version of the Swiggy app, following the response to this online petition by Aziz Minat. While the irony of me being a deaf person and not putting accessibility first in my design process earlier was not lost on me, I felt there was no better time for the entire organization to truly understand the ramifications of building an inaccessible product for customers.
Since the app has many moving parts and a lot of legacy code, we had to break down the accessibility integration into multiple milestones. We targeted a minimum set of accessibility fixes for the first milestone, and will be rolling out follow-up changes in subsequent milestones. We have also partnered with DEOC to provide an accessibility audit of our app and work on the inputs and insights from the final report.
I am happy to say that we are slowly but surely going towards an accessible-forward product building mindset, wherein everyone doesn’t leave accessibility at the last step of the overall process. We’ve also informed Aziz about our endeavors to work on making the Swiggy app usable with Switch access and Talkback/voiceover; you can see his update here.
Lunchclubbing with strangers
As a deaf person who didn’t speak to strangers for the first two decades of his life, I’ve come a long way towards being comfortable with talking to complete strangers without stalking their profiles or being prepared. Recently, I’ve motivated myself to be more spontaneous and not have a presentation for everyone I talk to for the first time, and I’ve come to love the natural flow of conversations and the element of curiosity that comes with these casual meets/calls. All of this would have not been possible without Lunchclub , which is bringing out a new-found sense of extroversion in me!
I’ve been speaking to plenty of interesting folks from Product and design for 6 weeks in a row, and I’ve been keeping in touch with them, because they all offer unique insights from their perspective on the same topic - a timely reminder for me that there’s no right or wrong way to do anything, only what’s the most needed thing at any point of time.
Some really cool topics of discussion from my calls on Lunchclub so far have been around
Designing for climate change and how to get started
Designing games to improve family quality time during lockdown
Building products for mental health, particularly to help caregivers of children with special needs
Finding out that BBC had a core accessibility team called “Ouch” back in the early 2000s - these folks were way ahead of their times!
Learning about cooking recipes
Learning about the design industry in the US and UK, comparing with the Indian design ecosystem
How to get into research and how to help the research community in India gain more traction, on par with design community
These Lunchclub calls give me something to look forward to, even during my darkest periods. I would strongly suggest that you give it a try, and the people are generally very chill and easy-going.
More power to the Stark folks!
I’ve been a part of the Stark community since the end of the last year, and have also written a guest article for them. That said, I’ve hardly been active in the last couple of months because of my personal issues. However, I diligently keep tabs on them through their updates and social media, and I’m chuffed to see the incredible progress they have made towards evangelizing accessibility in the tech world, not just for designers but also for engineers!
Stark recently launched their chrome extension, which allows anyone to be able to check a website’s content/component for contrast ratios and color blindness. If you think about it, it’s really an incredibly amazing feature for making your website experience as usable as possible! Whilst I’ve been using the Stark plugins for my work on Figma, I believe the chrome extension unlocks the power of accessible design for a wider section of the tech industry, and will hopefully encourage a more visible support of accessibility as an expected requirement, not a checklist.
I can’t wait to see what Cat and the Stark folks will come up with in the near future. The work they do is one of those small things that give me cause for optimism about my ultimate purpose towards a more inclusive, equitable and accessible world.
Twitter Spaces and ClubHouse
Since my tirade against Clubhouse last time around, Clubhouse has finally come out with the Android version. However, it seems that Twitter Spaces’ decision to launch on Android and iOS earlier has essentially put them in pole position towards a much larger user adoption, and I foresee weekly discussions on design and tech being a regular occurrence there.
Here’s the rub; though Spaces has enabled closed captioning, I am still not able to participate in an audio-only conversation. My primary sense is sight, and I simply cannot become engaged without being able to see the other person. I’ve come to realize that my initial criticism of Clubhouse wasn’t just due to the platform and user exclusion, but that Clubhouse was the first instance of a product that would make me feel excluded due to my own disability, not due to the nature of the product.
While there’s a chance I might learn how to become comfortable with audio only platforms the way I did with video calls on Lunchclub, i’ve to accept my deafness can deter me from enjoying certain things the way others can, and be okay with it in the end.
That’s pretty much it. I hope I draw inspiration from some more amazing folks on Lunchclub and write my next article sooner than later. Till then, stay indoors, eat well and exercise regularly, and put self-care and mental wellness first always!