It should be the other way round

There is something strange about accessibility. Those of us who work with it every day think it’s obvious, something everyone should focus on in all communication. Why would anyone want to design or develop something that excludes groups of users? That seems completely absurd.

But despite legislation, standards and a growing general understanding of the concept, only a tiny fraction of products and services are accessible to everyone. And when accessibility does happen, it is the result of a series of conscious decisions – when it comes to procurement, testing and remediation. This requires not only decision-makers but also many other actors involved to have the knowledge and incentives to go the extra mile. Sometimes several miles.

Many large IT companies are making significant efforts in the area, but we are far from a situation where accessibility is the default. In most cases, it is still easier to get it wrong than right, regardless of whether you are a UX designer, graphical designer, developer or web author, which in turn means that most of what is developed, produced and published is more or less inaccessible.

We start too late and work backwards

It is both refreshing and at the same time a little sad that people who encounter accessibility requirements for the first time often have the same surprised look on their face and ask one out of two types of questions; the technically optimistic says something like: “But how come it isn’t automatically correct in the first place?” while the tired and negative is muttering different variations of: “Why is it so damn complicated to get this right?”.

It’s easy for those of us who have been around for a long time to smile a little indulgently, but these are in fact perfectly natural questions! As much as technology helps us these days, why is accessibility still something that requires awareness, skills, time and often extra effort? Or, as Roberta Lulli, project manager at the European Disability Forum exclaimed in a video a few years ago: “Why is it even possible to publish inaccessible content on a website?”.

It may sound a bit naïve, but what if all tools, from authoring tools and editors to code libraries and design systems, had maximum accessibility as a default setting in the standard version. So that, if you absolutely want to create unreadable contrasts, incomprehensible “read more” links, non-existent visual focus and illogical steps in all processes, you would have to look for an obscure setting and actively choose the inaccessible feature instead?

I realise that this may not be entirely straight forward to achieve, but with all the clever technical solutions entering the market, I allow myself to hope.

Susanna Laurin, Managing Director and Chair, Funka Foundation