Centering People with Disabilities

As we beat the drum of accessibility, we can’t forget what it’s all about: making the web more usable by someone with a disability. We don’t want to get caught up in making the web more accessible for people with disabilities: we need to make the web more accessible with people with disabilities.

We discussed inclusive hiring and workplaces, which is a huge part of centering disability so you have actual team members who can share their lived perspectives and make contributions. That should be a goal of any company.

You may or may not be in a position to hire or affect hiring. Are there other areas where you can center people with disabilities in your projects?

Nothing about us without us.

People with disabilities should be involved (opens in a new tab) in design and development as often as possible–there is a rich activist history around this idea.

When people with disabilities can provide feedback on product designs and concepts (the earlier the better!), this feedback will be pivotal toward making the design more successful with accessibility.

Advocating for people with disabilities in design and development

Find areas to consult with people with disabilities whenever you can: designs, prototypes, whole pages, anything! You aren’t sure how something would be received by someone with a disability? Ask for their input (and pay for their time)! You can work with groups like Fable (opens in a new tab) to add to your organization’s knowledge and experience in a project context.

Look for perspectives and personas of people with disabilities when you read through accessibility specs, guidelines, and W3C GitHub repos for WCAG (opens in a new tab) and ARIA (opens in a new tab) to understand how something might affect users. Although, these artifacts aren’t as good as having feedback from a real person.

You should always seek to understand how your design or code implementation would impact someone with a disability. It will make them better.

The social media effect

It was pointed out to me years ago that there’s a difference between Accessibility Twitter and Disability Twitter. Twitter is sadly not what it once was. But there’s still an important takeaway here: the stories shared on Disability Twitter are often different than the professional banter and technical knowledge sharing on Accessibility Twitter.

We would be wise to listen up when people with disabilities share their lived experience (and understandable frustrations), and don’t forget our true purpose of making the web barrier-free.