It's Time to Make Software Accessible

Here's how, from OS to organization

Stacy M. Branham and Shahtab Wahid

A blind person, let's call her Alice, walks from her home to a café to telework. Alice uses a white cane and her orientation and mobility skills to navigate independently. Her cane helps her know she has reached an intersection, thanks to the incline of the curb cut and the truncated domes that texture the sidewalk at the corner. She uses her cane and free hand to locate the pedestrian push button, and a beep signals that her press has been registered. When the sound of car traffic has subsided and the intersection signal begins beeping, it is safe to cross. With her white cane, her skills, and the accessible sidewalk design, Alice can navigate safely and confidently to her destination. But when she opens her laptop, she encounters avoidable website and software accessibility barriers that prevent her from doing her work independently.

Why is Alice able to navigate the physical space independently but not the digital one? Her accessible experience on the street would not have been possible without planning across multiple levels of abstraction. At the foundation, the materials, textures, and geometries of the intersection are designed to help Alice understand her spatial surroundings. A level up, the interaction design of the pedestrian signal's tactile and audio features enable her to navigate the intersection. Yet another level above that, generalized design guidance from city planners enables engineers to create a network of learnable and predictable intersections. Finally, the priorities and resources provided by local government ensure accessible public infrastructure that serves all citizens, brings wealth to their communities, and complies with state and federal laws.

Software systems are no different; to make them accessible, we must account for accessibility at various levels of abstraction. Operating systems, applications, design systems, and technology organizations all have a role to play in supporting and promoting software accessibility. In other words, if your work affects software development in any way, you should know about and practice accessibility.

Unfortunately, unlike the example of Alice crossing at an intersection, today's software systems rarely meet accessibility standards. Consider this: WebAim's 2024 survey⁷ of the top 1 million websites found that a mere 4.1 percent of home pages conformed to WCAG 2.2 Level A/AA standards. When software tools fail to be accessible, the outcome is not a matter of mere inconvenience; it hinders one's ability to attend and graduate from school, land and hold down a job, buy and maintain a home, have and care for children, participate in community and government—in short, the ability for people with disabilities, like Alice, to live independent, self-determined lives. If the stakes are so high, why is technology failing society so badly, and what can you do about it?

The articles that constitute this special issue on accessibility provide answers to these questions——or, at least, solid starting points. They show that, regardless of whether you work on the back end, front end, design, or are part of an organization's leadership, there are steps you can take to make progress (see the roadmap presented in this issue of acmqueue). Before we get to writing software and making policy, however, there is an even more fundamental concern: the widespread misconception of the nature of disability and assistive and accessible technology. If we are going to change the status quo, we must start there. So, let's take a look at three of the big misconceptions.

Misconception 1: Disabilities are Rare

In truth, disabled people are extremely common, and the numbers don't lie: 1.3 billion people⁸ worldwide live with some form of disability. That's one in six people, or 16 percent of the world's population. Consider that disabilities encompass a wide range of functional limitations that affect one or more major life activities—vision, hearing, mobility, intellectual, psychosocial, and many other disabilities. For some people, disability may seem less common because, for every person with an apparent disability (like a wheelchair user), there may be two more people with non-apparent disabilities¹ (like a person with chronic pain, neurodiversity, intellectual disabilities, or mental illness). Furthermore, because disability is highly stigmatized, those with disabilities often choose not to disclose¹ them. Figure 1 illustrates the many forms of disability. Disabilities are often assumed to be permanent, but temporary and situational conditions make disability a much more universal life experience.

Figure 1. The many forms of disabilities: permanent, temporary, and situational.

These numbers address only permanent disabilities—for example, when a person is blind due to premature birth, a midlife car accident, or age-related macular degeneration. When you think about disability as a dynamic experience, it becomes clear that almost everyone has been disabled at one point or another. Consider the array of temporary disabilities, such as pregnancy-related vision loss or visual aura caused by migraine headaches. Then, consider situational disabilities, as when your eyes are focused on driving and you cannot look at your mobile device.

So, disabilities are not rare, and all of us experience some form of these conditions at some point in our lives.

Misconception 2: Disabled People Don't Use Our Software

People with disabilities can and do use technologies of all types. A lack of imagination about the roles that disabled people can occupy underlies this common misconception. Consider that many sighted developers assume⁴ that blind people cannot be developers. Stack Overflow's 2022 Developer Survey showed, however, that 1.7 percent of respondents⁵ identified as having a vision disability.

Unfortunately, the tools for creating software are often inaccessible. This example highlights a troubling trend and vicious cycle: a belief that people with disabilities are consumers rather than creators, and therefore, that the tools used for creating software do not need to be accessible. A good start to clearing up this misconception is simply to become familiar with how people with disabilities use the web⁶ and other technologies. For example, a totally blind person without any usable vision might use a screen reader to navigate desktop and mobile platforms and applications. A d/Deaf person might rely on live captions for videoconferencing. A person with limited dexterity may rely on keyboard navigation instead of using a mouse.

So, people with disabilities need to use all types of software, and they have a variety of tools and strategies for doing so.

Misconception 3: Assistive and Accessible Technologies are Niche

Disabled and non-disabled people benefit from assistive and accessible technologies. This is the basic tenet of universal design, which advocates for designing technologies that work for people regardless of their gender, race, age, disability, and more. In fact, some of today's most popular accessible technologies were initially developed by and for disabled people as assistive devices. In the case of blind and low-vision people, audiobooks⁹ and optical character recognition (OCR)¹⁰ are two such examples. Even more specialized assistive technologies, such as screen readers, were developed by and for blind people but are now used by people who are neurodivergent (e.g., those with dyslexia or ADHD). Moreover, when software is designed to work with screen readers, they also, by default, work well with switches, which are used by people who have limited dexterity.

So, designing assistive and accessible technologies for disabled people makes technology more accessible and usable for all people.

A Roadmap to Making Software Accessible

In this introduction, we have invited you to expand your view of disability and accessible technology. The remaining five articles in this issue of acmqueue serve as a roadmap to making software systems accessible—from the operating system all the way up to your organization:

The State of Digital Accessibility. Disabled software professionals share which companies are nailing accessibility and what challenges and opportunities lie ahead for the industry.
System-level Accessibility. Learn how Apple embeds accessibility hooks into iOS to support a wide range of accessibility features at the application level.
Accessibility Considerations for Mobile Applications. See how the Bloomberg Connects app for art exhibitions and museums implements accessibility for mobile interaction.
Design Systems are Accessibility Delivery Vehicles. A Bloomberg UX designer explains how to systematize accessibility across applications through a design system.
Driving Organizational Accessibility. Learn what organizational policies drive accessible software development at Microsoft.

This is the first special issue dedicated to accessibility in acmqueue's 20-year history. A search of Queue's archives reveals that almost no articles even mention accessibility (with a couple of notable exceptions).^2,3 While this is the first, it is likely not the last. With rapidly evolving technology, increasingly expansive accessibility laws, and growing participation of people with disabilities within the software industry, there is a great deal of work to be done. Disabilities are part of the human condition, so the need for accessible software will always be present. We hope this introduction sparks the beginning of a journey for you and your organization toward digital access for all.

References

1. Coqual. Disabilities and Inclusion. 2017. https://coqual.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CoqualDisabilitiesInclusion_KeyFindings090720.pdf

2. Harris, R. Dismantling the Barriers to Entry. Queue. 2015. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2773212.2790378

3. Harty, J. Finding Usability Bugs with Automated Tests. Queue. 2011. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1922539.1925091

4. Murray, S. Yes, People Who Are Blind Can Be Software Engineers. UCI Dept. of Informatics. 2023. https://www.informatics.uci.edu/yes-people-who-are-blind-can-be-software-engineers/

5. Stack Overflow. Developer Profile Demographics. 2022. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#developer-profile-demographics

6. W3C. How People with Disabilities Use the Web. 2024. https://www.w3.org/WAI/people-use-web/

7. WebAIM. The WebAIM Million. 2024. https://webaim.org/projects/million/

8. WHO. Disability. 2023. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health

9. Wikipedia. Audiobook. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiobook

10. Wikipedia. OCR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_optical_character_recognition

Stacy Branham is an Associate Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. Her research investigates how technologies operate in social settings where one or more people are disabled. In 2021, she received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and was named one of the "Brilliant 10" rising STEM researchers by Popular Science. She earned her Ph.D. in 2014 and her B.S. in 2007, both from Virginia Tech's Department of Computer Science. Branham has a psychosocial disability.

Shahtab Wahid is a User Experience Designer at Bloomberg. He blends his design and research expertise to solve problems in the areas of desktop and web platform design, design systems, and accessibility for the financial industry. He studied Human-Computer Interaction and earned his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech's Department of Computer Science in 2011.

Originally published in Queue vol. 22, no. 5—
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