If you have been in software long enough, you’re no stranger to miles-long Acceptance Criteria (AC), but if you are lucky enough, you have been able to include accessibility as a part of it. Incorporating accessibility in acceptance criteria is Step 1 of a broader, mature Product practice, but be wary of declaring victory, as stopping here tends to regulate accessibility to a checkbox.
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: a large driver for companies building accessibility practices is not because it’s the right thing to do. Legislation has been gaining traction, empowering users to find companies liable for digital experiences that do not embrace the bare minimum of WCAG compliance. And sadly, as a result, the bare minimum is what gets achieved. Accessibility gets lumped into an AC, maybe it’s officially a part of the Definition of Done (DOD), and congrats, your Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) shows that you meet the criteria for being “compliant” when an audit is completed.
Here’s the issue: making accessibility a generic requirement is doing your users a disservice. It’s placing their access in the, “we do this because we have to” bucket rather than the “we do this because we genuinely value great experiences for all avenues of access.” I don’t want to decry the bare minimum because frankly, it’s progress in a world that has ignored accessibility for so long. I do, however, want to challenge how accessibility is approached; I want to encourage everyone to think beyond the AC, the DOD, and the “to-do” mindset to tap into actual user experience.
Put yourself in the shoes of a person who utilizes a screen reader. Your product is compliant in theory as long as that person can access the information you provide with their tool of choice. However, let’s consider the actual quality of the experience. They already have to take valuable, precious time to listen to the information presented. Hopefully, they can quickly skip ahead, but how that information is presented is crucial. Imagine a robotic voice flatly trudging through your flight results, “10:30 AM Delta $789.19 … 12:21 PM United $652.87… 1:36 PM Jet Blue $408.76…”
It's not exactly the inspiring, upbeat start to a great trip.
With the influence of AI, this drudgery of delivery will most certainly improve (that’s a topic for a future article!), but in the meantime, how can we better craft the screen reader experience? If we approach it from a truly human-centered mindset, we can consider the delivery of that information. Instead of a robotic, dry delivery, what if we crafted screen reader content to be more akin to your best friend describing the experience? For comparison, “A 10:30 AM Delta flight for $789.19” already reads friendlier and is an easy shift with a potential massive improvement in the user’s experience. For activities, “Hot Air Balloon Tour, 3 hours, $281 per person,” sounds lackluster, but “A 3-hour hot air balloon tour for $281 a person,” is still direct while being more conversational. Even a car rental, “Economy $58.00 per day”, can be more humanized with a simple dressing up of, “An Economy rental, similar to a Toyota Corolla for $58 a day.” Small changes, major improvements!
And before you think small wins don’t have major impacts, I’d like to offer you this little-known fact. The idea for iSeatz was born years ago when our founder, Kenneth Purcell, was working in a restaurant taking reservations over the phone. He had hurt his arm, and as a result, writing the reservations was incredibly difficult. While his arm thankfully healed quickly, the temporary disability inspired our first product–dining reservations!–which seeded our evolution over the years into the loyalty platform we are today.
It’s one of the many reasons we are pushing accessibility beyond the checkbox: it’s not just “a user,” it’s our friends, our family, and even us who want great experiences, regardless of whether we’re moving through the digital world with a mouse, a keyboard, or a screen reader. So next time you put accessibility into an AC and a DOD, and are tempted to only check that box, push for at least one more step and fight to go from “good enough” to “great.” The small changes add up!
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