Developers and technoableism

I've been thinking a lot about accessibility. The physical world is so inaccessible: lack of dropped curves, pedestrian hostile towns and cities, and heavy doors to multistory buildings with no lifts. Its built by abled, for abled people, forgetting we will become disabled at some point. The disabled among us? We're often exhausted by this inaccessible world, we lack the energy to leave the house. For myself, my disability isn't as physical, but I still find the outside world incredibly draining: unreliable transport, loud and brightly lit environments, crowded spaces and lack of of seating. Naturally, a lot of us are drawn into the digital world.

However, while I find the digital world a liberating space, one where I can experience the world in a more accessible manner, it's still riddled with accessibility issues: insufficient contrast, lack of alt descriptions on images, websites that are hostile to screen readers... The list goes on. None of these issues affect me, but I worry about the state of the internet for disabled folk. Its tragic how a minority of developers know or even care about accessibility standards in their work. Now obviously, for a lot of us, our bosses probably wont even let us improve accessibility due to rabid profit chasing. But I see lack of accessibility even in personal side projects or work: and I hate to say, I've contributed to this myself. This very blog probably needs restructuring to be fully compliant.

"But who cares? It doesn't affect me!"

What upsets me about this- is how simple a lot of it is. Is it extra work? Yeah. But is it worth it? Absolutely. Sometimes I feel like we're so absorbed in convenience we forget that some struggles are very much worthwhile.

The FOSS library...

My project uses a markdown editor. This editor has "image block" support, which has image resizing? I was confused about this... Markdown has no support for image sizes. How is this accomplished? The answer: it isn't. The image sizing only works in the editor. How? Because it uses the alternative descriptor support in markdown for the image size ratio. Ugh.

Now I won't blame the dev too much here. They may not have been aware of alt's significance. I did some digging in the issues tab... I came across an issue asking about alt support! Perfect, looks like it had a few replies too! To my disappointment, the lead dev was aware of this issue, and the importance of alt, but tagged the issue "not planned" and closed it. The other users moved to another editor.

I asked: "If I implemented alt functionality, would you merge it?", knowing that I'd be doing it anyway for my project. The dev responded: "Sure. But only if you can disable it.". Oof. This really highlighted to me the indifference, lack of care and casual ableism that's pervasive in tech. This is an essential feature for some disabled users, but they'd rather just keep using the alt tag for image size ratios... In the process, excluding blind folk. Its so depressing.

In the end? I took matters into my own hands. I copied the default image block component, and removed the bullshit image size/ratio thing, and in its place I implemented proper alt compatibility. Finally, this editor can generate accessible content for my app! I will also be uploading this component as a package for others to use too.

My portfolio

To remedy the lacking accessibility in my work, I've been learning about digital accessibility: WCAG guidelines, appropriate contrast levels, correct HTML semantics, keyboard navigation, alt image tags, the works. I put all this into practice with my portfolio. I can proudly say I've followed all the WCAG guidelines:

• The minimum font size is 16px

• All colors have contrast meeting WCAG AA standards.

• Every page is keyboard navigable

• All images have alt descriptors

• I take advantage of good HTML semantics: using <header> , <article> , <main> and <section> tags, along with correct use of headings.

This means that blind folks and those with physical disabilities can navigate, interact with and read my website. I do I need these things? No. But I'm sick of this world being so inaccessible to disabled people and I don't want to contribute to that! I don't want my corner(s) of the internet to be a place that reflects the hostility we encounter in the real world.

With everything I've learnt doing my portfolio, I carried these lessons over to my FOSS project. It has a way to go yet, but images now support alt tags and the whole app is keyboard navigable! I don't want anyone to be left behind.

Technoableism

This all got me thinking about the power dynamics at play in tech. A majority of us developers are abled, likely white and cishet. These privileges seep into our code and products, with all the inaccessibility that comes with it. As a result, a lot of us probably see accessibility as some sort of unimportant afterthought: not worth the time or the effort to learn, thus replicating the inaccessibility that's so pervasive in the real world. The architects of the internet are largely abled folk, and therefore? Most of the internet is built for abled folk. Digital accessibility is a battle to be fought for, not a given. In the same way that we shouldn't tolerate inaccessible spaces in real life, we absolutely shouldn't be tolerating them online either.

It has me thinking about how disabled people often have to use accessibility software that works around our sites, apps and products rather than working with them. As is typical to the disabled experience: we're expected to make up the lacking effort and consideration that society has for us. Yet more forks to outweigh the precious few spoons we have. And for what? So a dev can avoid spending an afternoon learning about WCAG and at least trying to implement some guidelines? We really need to be more hot on developing with accessibility in mind, rather than it being an afterthought.

Ugh. Rant over I guess. But this whole experience has really fucking radicalized me. My FOSS project is going to meet all WCAG AA guidelines, and it will be as accessible as I can possibly make it. So will the rest of my websites when i have enough spoons to update them all!!!

over and out xo

edit: What are some good resources?

• Google's PageSpeed insights are a pretty good basic outline of your site's accessibility.
• The WCAG standards are outlined here. Though, I much prefer the UK government's instructions on WCAG.
• Sam Soffes's MacOS app: Contrast for looking at your contrast ratios
• The "WTF is WCAG?" video by Access by Design