Exclusion by Design

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Disability is part of every community, every country, and every identity. And yet, people with disabilities are still underrepresented in digital spaces, policy decisions, and factually every aspect of public life.

This is not by accident, but by design: Spaces, services, and products are rarely designed to be accessible by default, but rather to meet norms and satisfy the construction inspector.

Historically, individuals with disabilities have been institutionalized and locked away from the public eye. This has often been framed as variations of “for their own benefit” or as a “relief for their caretakers”, in varying nuances of “in the best interest of the public”. Throughout history as well as today. Think of the so-called Ugly Laws that prohibited being in public with a visible disability.

Disability Pride is important because history has called disability “an unsightly or disgusting object”.

Many people have internalized this shame. I did a whole piece on self-stigma, and that barely even scratches the surface of it! But the main gist of it is:

Discrimination is highly arbitrary and doesn’t care about specific markers. Think about what’s recommended for CV writing: no picture, no birthdate, no address, no hints at age, family, and ideally no hint at your gender because all of the above could lead to a subconsciously biased decision against you, without ever seeing you in person.

Efforts against Structural Discrimination

This is also why the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became monumental to the disability rights movement. It was one of the first pieces of legislation targeting discrimination against disabled people on a structural level, all the way back in 1990.

Worldwide, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) aims to achieve equal rights for persons with and without disabilities. For the EU, the UNCRPD entered into force on 22 January 2011. This means that by this date, all EU member states have signed and ratified the convention, and must from then on protect the rights of persons with disabilities. I say “aims to achieve” because every time I see a new report about it, it reads like, “we are still doing terribly.”

This Disability Pride Month marked the 35th anniversary of the ADA.

The ADA specified minimum requirements for access to buildings as well, which is a big deal: You can’t be in the room where it happens if you physically can’t get into said room.

You will see more people with (visible or invisible) disabilities show up if the space and the public transportation to get there are accessible, and the invite came as a properly tagged PDF or structured email instead of a screenshot.

And still, we are far from an accessible world. Both in and outside the USA. If you think about it, it’s outrageous. What is taking us so long?

Human diversity isn’t one-dimensional.

Disability is the one minority group that anyone can become a part of at any point in time. Irrespective of your ethnic background, gender identity, or occupation. But in most cases, we don’t recognize this diversity when we discuss accessible design.

The keyword is intersectionality . When discussing aspects of human identity, we tend to zoom in on one aspect, yet realistically, no one’s identity can be reduced to a singular defining marker.

Who do we think of?

We think of a blind screen reader user, and a wheelchair user, and that’s it. We don’t think of the women who make up a bigger portion of the disabled population. We don’t think of the traveler with an anxiety disorder who’d like to reschedule a flight online but can’t find information about it. We don’t think of the bilingual blind person whose screen reader has a strong Hispanic accent because their device is set to Spanish. We don’t think of the quadriplegic who would like to try a new pilates studio but can’t find any information about building accessibility.

Human diversity doesn’t end within one category. Designing for disabilities should not be seen as a separate task, but equal to designing for a different operating system. The screen reader interaction is exactly that: another kind of interaction.

Make it part of the profession.

Designing for accessibility should not be viewed as a separate domain, but rather as a part of the whole profession. You wouldn’t hire a UI designer who can do anything except for login fields. Or a developer who doesn’t use print statements. Or a software tester who refuses to acknowledge the existence of Microsoft Edge. In the same way, generalists should be expected to know about web accessibility.

Not everything, but - you know - the basics. The annual WebAIM Millions Report doesn’t change because we don’t get better. Because most accessibility issues aren’t super duper niche or technical, they are sloppy and embarrassing.

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