Heck yes, accessibility — let’s make the future awesome
Want a future with amazing technology? Prioritize and demand accessibility.
Want a future with amazing technology? Prioritize and demand accessibility. Yes, accessibility — the work to ensure technology, products, services and spaces are navigable and usable for disabled people.
Some creators treat accessibility as a barrier to innovation because it requires foresight and time and testing. That kind of thinking is an excuse for avoiding good work.
Think about it this way: accessibility provides options, and options lead to innovation. Accessibility isn’t a barrier — it’s what removes them. It frees us from one path and gives us many.
So put your mind ahead by one, five, or ten years from now, and let’s imagine how we can achieve a kickass future through accessibility.
1. New input and output devices
Want to type on a computer but only have one hand? No problem — use a one-handed keyboard. What if you’re blind and want to navigate a website? A screen reader can convert visual to audio. Even today, varied input and output devices are a foundation of accessibility. And those who don’t need them still benefit — just ask Alexa or Siri.
What happens next? Improved text-to-speech and speech-to-text technology is one way forward. It’s already a lifesaver for some, but it’s not for everyone and not the only path. Personally, I don’t want to dictate emails and notes aloud for the world to hear.
So how about this: a keyboard glove. The keys are mapped virtually to the surface of my hand and I type by tapping fingers together, combined with small hand gestures. As time goes on perhaps it wouldn’t be a glove at all, but a wristband or implanted sensors.
This could be beneficial for people fatigued by standard keyboards, or whose hands don’t have the strength or mobility to use them, or who need more tactile feedback than what they get with a smartphone. And it would benefit me — someone who doesn’t mind a keyboard but who longs to type any time, anywhere, no screen required. Combined with a screen reader I could write emails more safely while walking near traffic; comment on tweets while stargazing; draft stories while feeding ducks.
What kind of futuristic input and output devices do you want? Eye-controlled navigation, haptic feedback suits, brain-connected devices? The work has already started and accessibility is at its core.
2. New ways to automate and organize
Next up in our imagined future: awesome automated assistants that actually live up to their hype.
You’ve probably come across terrible bots: customer service programs that don’t quite understand your questions; algorithms that serve you unwanted products; smartphone assistants that make curiously bad suggestions of what to do or read.
Once digital content is better structured, tagged, and formatted to be accessible (like we do for screen reader accessibility), algorithms will have more data to do better processing, make better connections, and altogether serve you better. That takes us all closer to having truly helpful AI assistants like the ones we’ve seen in movies.
Screen readers are, in a way, automated assistants — or at least a central part of them — making them launchpads for better options in the future. The more we prioritize screen reader accessibility and overall usability for blind and dyslexic people, the more we’re setting the groundwork for futuristic personal assistants for us all.
3. New ways to be entertained
When I think of futuristic modes of entertainment, I think of what will be more immersive. I think of augmented, virtual and mixed reality (AR, VR and MR).
Just as with today’s websites — which can either be built to unnecessarily exclude people or include those unable to use more traditional methods — AR, VR, and MR technologies are subject to the same design choices.
Imagine a system that lets you choose whether to be notified of nearby objects (real or virtual) by visual cues, audio cues or tactile cues. That lets us build a world where it’s the user’s choice whether or not to use sight, sound, touch. One sense can be mapped to another.
For nondisabled people, this could make real and virtual worlds more engaging, customizable, and enjoyable. Those games or apps could even be mashed together — assign one app to sight, one to sound, another to touch, and you’re the architect of your own unique experience.
4. New models for service design
New technologies don’t automatically benefit everyone unless we demand it and plan for it. Self-driving cars, for example, have been touted as a path to a better future. But what happens if they’re only available to the wealthiest people, and worsen congestion for everyone else?
If we design public services that accommodate disabled people, we’ll find optimization methods that wouldn’t otherwise be found. We wouldn’t be letting the technology determine our future; we would be leading with the needs of people, and finding the best technology fit for us all.
Let’s imagine a city that plans a door-to-door public transport service, initially for the benefit of people who can’t access their nearest public transport stations (or afford a private ride each time they travel). Perhaps it’s a driverless bus system with dynamically evolving routes, adapting and rerouting based on real-time demand. Such a service would be limited at first, but, with the help of disabled people as beta testers, the service would improve and evolve.
Polished and made available to entire cities, this door-to-door public transport system could lead to the smoothest, most efficient transport for everyone. It might even mean property prices no longer rely on proximity to transit hubs, with equalizing benefits for everyone.
Because that’s what accessibility is about: finding solutions that work for everyone — not just the investors, or those with money for premium services, or those who happen to be nondisabled.
A world where people manage tech, not where tech manages people
Accessibility gives us options, and options allow for innovation. Accessibility breaks us free from constrained visions and lets us more freely interact with the world.
So let’s stop treating accessibility as a barrier to innovation. It removes barriers. It creates possibilities. Meeting bare minimum accessibility requirements won’t give you an innovative product — but by embracing accessibility as a path to innovation, we can open all the doors to a kickass future.
About the author
I’m a bookworm and digital generalist who’s worked as a developer, designer, researcher and producer for websites in Australia and the Nordics. For more on the web and accessibility, you’re welcome to follow me on Twitter: @MischaAndrews.
Full disclosure: I do not have a disability, so I do not have a lived appreciation for the importance of assistive technologies. I wrote this as a web professional who has built and managed both accessible and inaccessible websites and who wants to help shape a more inclusive future.
Credits and thanks
Many thanks to Adam Van Winden for the wonderful illustration, and Ace Ratcliff for their feedback on an earlier draft of the article. Any errors or insensitivities are mine, not theirs — but they helped make this piece on kickass futures more kickass itself.
The text of this article and the main illustration is released with a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-ND) and can be republished with credit and a link to this page. (You can remove or reword the About and Credits sections if that fits best with your site.) Please consider telling me if you republish this — I’d love to know!
