“Tech culture—from platforms to procurement to education—must shift away from focusing on accessibility when a person with a disability presents a need, and shift toward treating accessibility as a consistently required part of every product.”

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What made me read this book?

This read was pretty overdue - accessibility is a central aspect to digital design nowadays. As I’ve been looking at job descriptions, I’ve noticed a lot more mention “accessibility” as a skill for a generalist designer role. I am aware of accessibility but I’ve been doubting my knowledge of the subject. As Albert Einstein once said,

“The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”

This overwhelmingly rings true for everything but especially accessibility in the digital world. After asking around, many recommended this book as a great introduction that provides extensive sources for further learning at the end.

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Exposure to Accessibility

Accessibility has long been visible in my life: from working as a bus driver to having a best friend in a wheelchair to learning about how to make digital experiences accessible at Georgia Tech, it’s not a stranger to me. Since transitioning into the tech world, I've encountered lots of reminders of accessibility via design!

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Some Statistics

Regine Gilbert does an amazing job at establishing why we ALL should care more about accessibility. She shares some staggering statistics:

1. 57 million people with disabilities live within the U.S. (or about 25% of ALL Americans according to the CDC)

2. 20% of Americans over age 12 experience significant enough hearing loss that it interferes with daily communication

3. Web accessibility lawsuits increased by 181% between 2017-2018

Essentially, she is making the case for why accessibility is just good business. When designing with accessibility in mind, businesses can increase audience, do the morally and legally correct thing and also experience some potential financial benefits. She states:

- Globally, people with disabilities have a combined annual, disposable income of $996 billion

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Defining Accessibility and the Social Model

Gilbert starts by distinguishing between the types of disabilities so that we, as designers, can better design for said types. They include: visual, auditory, motor, speech, and cognitive.

Gilbert then outlines the ‘social model of disability’ versus the ‘medical model of disability.’

- Social Model - that disability is caused by the way society is organized, rather than by a person’s impairment or different

- Medical Model - people are disabled by their impairments (looks at what is ‘wrong’ with the person, not what the person NEEDS)

In other words, we should be thinking of accessibility using the social model and from start to finish in product development. We should also be working toward ‘inclusive design’ - making products available to as many users as possible!

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Thoughts on the book

Gilbert’s book was recommended to me as an introduction to accessibility by a number of people; I now see why! Gilbert starts by defining key terms and frameworks, moves into the legal landscape of accessibility, provides technical examples of how to make things better, elaborates on new ways of thinking (EVVCC framework), and then moves into the modern/future landscape of technology and how thinking with accessibility in mind has already resulted in amazing developments.

There are a few key takeaways from this book for me: 1) Recruit people with disabilities to participate in testing and 2) Thinking about accessibility throughout the product life-cycle will deliver a better experience for everyone, not just people with disabilities.

Gilbert ends the book by outlining how ‘Universal Design’ thinking has positively impacted everyone on Earth via technological developments: the invention of the phone, internet and SMS text messaging. These are all examples of innovations that were created for/by people with disabilities but have benefited everyone.

Something that surprised me: the ADA does not explicitly target the web yet; based on the surge of civil cases brought forward from 2017 onward, it is being interpreted as applying to the digital world but still does not do so explicitly. Hopefully, this will change in the near future for the U.S. - many countries abroad have far more inclusive legislation that has positively impacted everyone.

Lastly, Gilbert elaborates on the future of technology and the accessibility of said technology; she states:

“The future of technology in relation to accessibility may include more in relation to haptics, gesture-based designs, and mixed realities.”

In terms of accessibility, this means that people with disabilities could be able to experience things that they would have never been able to do so otherwise:

1. A person in a wheelchair can now skydive or climb a mountain with Virtual Reality (VR)

2. A deaf individual can have richer gaming experiences via haptic gloves

3. Visually impaired individuals (ex. Stargardt’s disease) can experience clearer vision with Virtual Reality (VR)

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10/10