Accessibility
!a11y@programming.dev is a community for discussing digital accessibility, sharing techniques and best practices, and talking about accessibility experiences; both good and bad.
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What is Digital Accessibility?
Digital accessibility is the practice of removing barriers that prevent interaction with, or access to, digital systems by people with disabilities. This involves designing and developing websites, mobile applications, software, hardware, and other digital platforms in a way that they can be used by individuals with a range of abilities, including those with visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities.
Digital accessibility not only benefits those with disabilities but also enhances the overall user experience, making digital content more usable and understandable for all. In many jurisdictions, it's a legal requirement under disability discrimination laws.
How does one improve digital accessibility in their products?
Key components of digital accessibility include accessible website design, multimedia with features like captions or transcripts, properly formatted digital documents, and accessible software and apps. It also extends to hardware design.
Other Accessibility Related communities:
Useful Resources
- Mozilla Developer Network Accessibility Reference
- UK Government's Guidance and tools for digital accessibility
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Elegant and well-executed, but, and this is probably just my lack of imagination as someone who is not colour blind, I'm having trouble coming up with uses cases, and most of the examples on the site aren't really convincing to me.
Usually when we try to communicate something with colour, it's not the colour itself that matters, but the colour being distinguishable and/or the associations we have with it, which someone who is colour blind may not even have. Like, if you have a big, red emergency stop button, it being red isn't really what matters; it's red because it stands out and because we associate it with danger. Adding a dot isn't going to help with that, so to make it accessible to colour blind people, it needs additional features to make it stand out and instantly convey its purpose.
That said, I did bookmark the site, in case something comes up where it's the colour itself that's important.
In video games, colorblind mode often adds patterns to colors if they are used in, say, a color coded puzzle. These patterns are enough to distinguish between the colors (usually all that's needed tbh) but having a known set of icons could grant accessibility for more unique puzzles, like ones that involve wordplay, mixing paint/lights/drinks/etc.