Accessibility Part Of The Tripod

I’ve often mentioned that accessibility is as important as security and performance. But I realized I never blogged about it! So, here it is.

It is as important, but is rarely perceived that way.

You don’t make clients pay extra for security - why would you make them pay extra for accessibility?

Security, or performance, are critical features of a website or application.

When you build what you build, you automatically account for security and performance. You wouldn’t sell a platform that could be hacked by anyone who has access to a computer. You wouldn’t do that, and then say “by the way, if you want this to be secure, you need to pay us more. If you did that, you’d be laughed out of Dodge.

You don’t build something that will take minutes to load. Not on purpose anyway. In fact, entire teams have been dedicated to shaving a few milliseconds of load time. Because it matters.

But accessibility, that’s another matter. I’ve lost count of the number of times accessibility was presented as “more work”, and therefore a “premium feature”. And if it’s a premium feature, you’re going to charge for it.

“Clients don’t ask for accessibility”, you say. Maybe, but they need it, whether they know it or not. It’s the right thing to do. It makes commercial sense. It’s also, in most cases, the legal thing to do. Legal, commercial, and human aspects of accessibility have been discussed so much, I won’t rehash that argument here. Besides, if you “do” accessibility just because of a commercial or legal incentive, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons, but that’s a whole other blog post.

Ignoring accessibility is a silly short term strategy that will hurt in the long run. It will hurt you when one of your major clients feels the pinch of a lawsuit and demands your platform be accessible, like YESTERDAY.

Deprioritizing accessibility like it’s going out of fashion

But companies are deprioritizing accessibility. Or not giving it as much importance as security or performance. Companies have entire teams working on securing their product. And we’re lucky if a company even has one person doing accessibility in an organization with hundreds, if not thousands, of employees.

Accessibility is part of a quality product

The reality is, an accessible website or app is a reflection of a quality product. Just like security and peformance.

You include security and performance in your MVP (Minimum Viable Product). And you ignore accessibility. Because it’s faster. Because your team doesn’t understand. Because… Whatever reason you think is good. But that reason is not, actually, good. You don’t have an MVP when you ignore accessibility - you have an MP - A Minimum Product.

Stop building a wobbly, imbalanced, two-legged stool!

Imbalance

There’s an imbalance. The stable three legged stool is wobbly, because you aren’t putting time, effort, energy, and resources into accessibility. You leave it as an after thought. And it will cost you to fix it when you realize you should have done something about it.

Just do it!

Shift your thinking. Start looking at accessibility as a ticket item that is as important as security. As important as performance.