Thoughts on a11y (Accessibility)

This American Life shares the speaking disablility of Jerome Ellis in a very touching section of their podcast.

Listen to it here: Made to Be Broken | Act One

If you are a developer you are working with user interfaces. Regardless if you are aware of a11y or not, you probably don’t put any extra effort into it because “the share of users is so small it’s not worth the effort”. I can basically hear my project manager say that to me.

This means a11y will aways be an afterthought and never worth the return on investment. This means it pays to ignore the disabled, locking them out of, or at the least making it hard for them to use, your product. In fact, the return of investment is alwyas greater when catering to the privileged with buying power than to the disadvantaged.

Please, future self, remember this and do the right thing.