Software Accessibility? No Comment…
It wasn’t meant to be an experiment, but it became one, and sadly, it makes sense.
Those who follow me, already know — one of my favorite main topics is accessibility, more importantly, web accessibility or software accessibility. Nothing new so far. At random, I will post articles about the topic, try to educate, spread the word, evangelise the need for accessible software, the value it brings to the entire world and the responsibility we have as software engineers and designers to adhere to the guidelines that ensure the end-result in users’ hands is, in fact, comfortably usable by virtually anyone living with or without disabilities.
One of my other main topics is tech, or technology, and that often tends to be around Apple, Intel, Google, Android, Microsoft, you know, the big ones that I do have some actual professional experience with so that I avoid talking out of my ass, and bring some valid, albeit potentially subjective, views to my readers’ screens.
As I said, this wasn’t meant to be an experiment, but it turned out to be one anyway. I wrote two articles with fairly similar titles. I’ll admit that both headlines are to an extent designed to “poke the bear”. Being a tech nerd myself, I am fully aware that whenever you compare Apple to Google or vice versa, you’ll get reactions. It’s inevitable. Fans on both sides will want to share their opinion on the matter, be that positive or negative. It’s a topic few can say no to.
The tech article was the first I published right after Google I/O 2022. I was fairly comfortable expressing my thoughts on the matter as a good number of famous YouTubers out there reacted the same way as I did, so I knew I was onto something. My reaction was organic, so was theirs, and we all created content around that. Long story short, the article is meant to highlight how Google very conveniently just borrows ideas now from Apple, though many years after Apple made them mainstream. This, of course, didn’t sit well at all with many Google fans and Apple haters. Having said that, the article got a lot of attention from Apple fans too, so comments were about 50–50, which I actually quite enjoyed. As I said before, read the comments, that’s where the interesting conversations are happening. This article within three weeks got 29 comments and 685 claps.
Now comes the other article, which is again about Google and Apple, except this time it’s the other way around. This one is actually praising Google for introducing an accessibility feature in Android’s Play Store that allows users to search for apps based on accessibility tags. If you ask me, it’s a massive feature in the right direction, one that should wake every single snoozing Android developer up. Again, I wrote about the topic because I care about it. I only wrote about things I care about. Guess what, though? Readers feel differently about this particular article. Within two weeks, it received a grand total of zero comments and 138 claps.
OK, you might say, look, Attila, your second article about accessibility just wasn’t good enough. Oh, well, that’s where you’d be wrong because the stats clearly show that plenty of people clicked and read. Moreover, the read and clap ratio is pretty high, in fact, higher than on the tech article, which is what finally convinced me to write this one.
It couldn’t be more obvious. People know so little about software accessibility, they have no opinion on it, which is terrifying.
The reason this is terrifying is that ignorance is the worst kind of reaction accessibility can get. I saw this in the Will vs. Chris conversations as well. It was all about the slap, and barely anyone had an opinion on alopecia, disability, living with an illness that affects one’s everyday life. Slap a comedian in public? You’re a criminal. Bash Google for stealing ideas from Apple? You’re an idiot, an Apple zealot. Praise Google for an accessibility feature that Apple is behind on? Crickets… Nobody cares. Nobody has anything to say or comment. No-one gets excited, nobody gets angry. Everyone clicks away, moves on to something juicier. Because shunning 1 billion people from a universally usable software apparently is not newsworthy, it’s not something that should trigger reactions of any kind, and it’s certainly not criminal.
Well, I beg to differ. I think that it’s high-time we all have an opinion on software accessibility, even if it’s a negative one. Why would anyone want a negative reaction to that, you ask? So that we know what bothers you about it, why you keep ignoring fellow humans and their needs. Clearly, us, accessibility advocates are still doing a terrible job if we can’t get reactions out of people at the sound of accessibility. We obviously cannot educate efficiently on the matter either unless we know what you don’t know, and we can only find that out if you speak up.
You know what? I’ll even take the “blind people are not our target user” excuse, at least it gives me the platform to inform you how that’s actually not the case, how much harm you’re causing to fellow humans and your business, by not catering to disabilities.
For the sake of humankind, can we start having a passionate conversation about software accessibility? No comment is not an option. Not anymore.
Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, Lego fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer!
