Accessibility begins at the beginning

A graphic with logos of popular social media platforms.Social media platform designers beware. If you “forgot” accessibility for everyone, you will soon be reminded. Then it’s too late and costs more to fix. Costs include lost customers. Twitter found out the hard way when launching “audio tweets” according to a blog article on UX Design. Saying it is an “early version” does not improve the matter for would-be audiences.

It seems Twitter doesn’t have a dedicated accessibility team and that’s where it should start. You can’t tack it on at the end. It’s not the cherry on top, it has to be mixed in with the other ingredients and baked in.

A boy sits in a dark room with three computer screens. He is wearing a headset.The blog article also discusses Naughty Dog, a game developer that has considered just about everyone. That is, people who are deaf or hard of hearing, people who are blind or have low vision, and people with mobility or motor control issues. Their website has a list of accessibility presets.

There’s also a link to a page on how accessibility features assist search engines. Video transcription, image captioning and image descriptions (alt-text) are just the start.

The title of the article is, Digital accessibility matters: Social media is amplifying the need for a clear, empathic approach to accessibility.

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