DevPortal Awards 2023

It warms the heart of an accessibility consultant when the concept of digital inclusion is spread to wider audiences. Developer portals should of course be accessible, so I happily accepted to lead the jury work in the accessibility category.

I am not sure what I expected, but I was happily surprised to see several nominees doing a good job. Accessibility is often seen merely as a question of compliance. Therefore, to avoid problems, designers may choose black-and-white and developers go for traditional solutions. This year’s DevPortal Awards winner in the Accessibility category does the opposite:

Spotify for Developers stands out in comparison to other nominees because of its friendly and welcoming approach to inclusivity. The impression is playful, the colour patterns are joyful, and the design is making the most of each interaction. In my mind, that is how accessibility should be approached! Please note that the jury has not made thorough audits of all parts of the devportals, only spot checks and overall impression has been taken into account. None of the nominees claim to be perfect, and that wasn’t the intent of the awards either.

“The objective of having accessibility as a category in the awards is to emphasise the importance of inclusive design in everything. The winners are an inspiration for having an accessible developer portal without losing interface or interaction quality”, says Laura Vass, host of the DevPortal Awards.

Apart from congratulating the winner and thanking the team behind the awards as well as my fellow jurors, I would like to mention two good practices: The Nationwide Partner Portal clearly has ambition when it comes to accessibility, which is seen not least in the efficient visual feedback for keyboard users.

Another portal who deserves mentioning is the Chase Developer Portal, where there is still room for improvement on the overall accessibility, but where the demo pages are a very good example of multimodality. They use a combination of illustrations, instructions, and code to communicate efficiently with users with a wide variety of abilities.

I hope the awards will contribute to promoting accessibility as a “must-have” for devportals. If each team does their best, we can make a real difference for people with disabilities.

DevPortal Awards, opens in a new window

Susanna Laurin, Funka Foundation Chair