Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day of 2018!

A little late to the party in getting this out, but today marks the seventh Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). As a software developer working in the web space, and mostly in the front end, I feel it is part of my duty to make sure the software I build is made accessible and, for a more politically charged term, “socially inclusive”.

I attended A11y Bytes Melbourne and there’s (mostly?) no need to convince the people already at an accessibility event that making accessible products is important. Whilst I’m lucky I currently work in an environment where a11y is at the forefront of most people’s minds, it’s often thought of as something you do “after the fact”, if not at all.

Damian Keeghan highlighted a cheeky strategy for this. If you’re having trouble convincing stakeholders to build accessibility in, try using the term “socially inclusive”.

• Let’s make our product accessible.

“No, that’s an additional cost we don’t need.”

• Let’s ensure our product is “socially inclusive”

“Heck yes! That is in line with our company’s core values”

As part of my effort to raise awareness, I presented my talk “Performant, accessible animations with CSS & a dash of JavaScript” at MelbJS last week, and will be again at least one more conference later this year.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.