We need to talk honestly about accessibility
I have been very interested in the subject of accessibility. Besides being a very important theme, I’ve discovered that we are VERY far from being an accessible and inclusive country for people with disabilities. And no, I’m not talking about putting X at the end of words to include people who identify with different genders, I’m talking about a specific part of this theme, the inclusion of people with disabilities in the digital world.
With the pandemic, people with disabilities who had never previously relied on technology were forced to perform many of their tasks online. But are apps, websites, and platforms prepared to receive these people? Although we have a law from 2015 that states that all websites must be accessible in Brazil, more than 99% of them have accessibility problems, and ironically, this includes some government websites. As for apps, less than 14% of the most popular ones have such features.
One of my dear students has low vision. In our classes, we often discuss accessibility, and I am always surprised that the Brazilian population's apps and websites are not accessible. Many of them publicly state that they invest in accessibility, but unfortunately, they are not really accessible.
My question is: where is the mistake? Is it in the lack of interest? I have concluded that this is one of the factors. Large companies often assume that users with disabilities are not part of their target audience, so there is no need to make this an immediate priority. But did you know that according to our last census in 2010, 24% of the Brazilian population has at least one kind of disability? And this number has certainly increased over these last 11 years. How is it possible to ignore a quarter of the Brazilian population? This makes me conclude that lack of interest in prioritizing accessibility is one of the factors.
But we also need to talk about another issue: designers who don’t try to get out of their bubbles to understand their real users. That principle “you are not your user”, although basic, is still ignored by many of them. It makes no sense to put users with disabilities into little boxes and think that you already know everything about them. A simple example is thinking that all users with visual disabilities are the same. The simple fact that one of these people has more financial resources than another can make their digital experience completely different.
It is not my intention to demonize designers and think that none of them care, quite the contrary. And so, I want to talk about something VERY serious. Do designers learn how to make their products more accessible? And before you come with the argument that the person needs to go after the information, let’s remember that UX design is a huge area. There is a lot to study, a lot to learn. Every day a new course appears on the market so that you can easily migrate into the area, easily get a job with a dream salary. Some of these courses can be absurdly expensive. But how many of them teach designers to seek affordable solutions for their digital products? How many of them provoke the professionals in this area to go beyond color contrast, zoom and image description?
In discussions during my classes, I realize that the issue is much more related to a lack of knowledge than a lack of interest on the part of these professionals. How can we go beyond what has already been done about accessibility? Why don’t the courses teach how to do this? Why isn’t there more information about it? And the question that won’t shut up is, how can we change this scenario by doing our part in the user experience field? I think this is a subject that should be widely discussed, so feel free to contribute to it in the comments.
