With July being Disability Pride Month, GNOME’s Sophie Herold published a blog post taking stock of where GNOME stands on this front, progress that’s been made, as well as areas where the project comes short. One particular paragraph from her introduction really hits the nail on the head about accessibility discussions in tech circles:
The reality of tech communities is that they are often ableist and elitist. Probably more so than the average population. If a user or contributor struggles with a tool, blame is shifted to a “skill issue,” if an interface is simplified to make it accessible to more people, it’s “dumbed down”. Assistive technologies are often developed by abled people, without involving and paying disabled people. This also leads to an attitude where contributors expect gratefulness from disabled people for providing them with the most basic needs. All these issues are also not absent from the GNOME community.
↫ Sophie Herold
Even as someone who isn’t disabled and doesn’t use any tools classically shelved under the “accessibility” moniker, I encounter the attitudes she mentions in the quoted paragraph basically every day. While we can have normal, productive discussions and differences of opinion about accessibility – for instance, I strongly believe robust theming support is absolutely crucial to accessibility, while the wider GNOME community does not – the dismissive attitudes towards people with accessibility needs in the software world is shameful.
Even if you don’t have accessibility needs today, you will definitely be needing them at some point in your life. If accessibility isn’t one of the first words you jot down on your mood board or whatever when you start a new software project, you’ve already done millions of people a massive disservice. Get educated, learn what you can about accessibility, listen to people with accessibility needs, and make your software better for everyone.
You’ll thank yourself one day.
I am sorry for being the obnoxious advocatus diaboli here again: When I publish software for free, then I don’t owe anyone anything. I wrote that software for myself and share it, because I am actually a nice person (just proven in too many battles). Take it or leave it, I did nothing to “disservice” you and only paying customers can make demands.
That said, I do acknowledge that some eternal usability concepts just make sense and indeed contribute to writing better software, which in the end can help to serve my own initial goal.