Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

As developers, designers, architects, anyone really who designs and builds things that people rely on to get on with their lives, often think about accessibility is very theoretical terms. In the case of the built environment, it’s about complying with building codes. On the web it’s about meeting WCAG level A or double A or so one. But it’s really about people. And as tough as we might think complying with these criteria is, think about how tough not complying makes other people’s lives.

This is a moving an powerful story from a woman who found herself confined to a wheel chair after an aircraft accident last year.

I first became aware of this harsh truth when I made a trip to a Perth department store with Michael and my father to buy a birthday present for a friend. I left feeling utterly dejected, in no doubt about my new reality.

The store’s aisles in the book section, for example,were so narrow there was no way I could manoeuvre the wheelchair around them. In the food department, the counters were so high I could not see over them to the sales staff, and I found myself at eye level with young children holding onto their mothers’ skirts.

Here I was, an independent 34-year-old woman whose entire adult life thus far had involved many hours in shops buying clothes, make-up, browsing for books and CDs, and now I felt completely shut out of consumer society.

I think keeping in mind stories like these when we address our tasks as developers and designers makes us much better at what we do.