Tech Community
Personally I'm very new to the tech to community. Like many before me I had always heard such great things about how welcoming the community is. Fortunately up to this point I have been very fortunate to meet some wonderful people and have not experienced many negatives at all since entering.
But after this too day conference my mind was blown 🤯🤯.
The Challenge
As I listened to a number speakers the message was overwhelming clear. A lot of speakers spoke about not having representation of their race, gender, and disabilities. How it seems we have unintentionally created apps without considering some of these everyday users. The challenges they face using some of the apps that we use everyday.
Some Examples:
1) Elderly people trying to navigate a phone to check the weather.
2) A person with a missing limb trying to navigate a screen with no mouse.
3) A person with bad vision using a screen reader to get important information.
The Progress
As I learned there are some government standards for website and apps to include some of the challenges these people face. How many times do we as developers miss some of these edge cases. When developing apps. One speaker went as far as challenging us to build open source project to help with some of these challenges. Since some of these services can get expensive and not everyone can afford it.
A Step in the right direction
How can we in tech help with some of these problems. Since after all we are problem solvers.
1) Make it personal.
I speaker made a joke but its was 🎯. One day we are all going to get old and be faced with some of these challenges.
2) Do you research. One thing I learned was that there are organizations out there that will answer question. Some are even willing to help test your app for you give you feedback.
3) Educate yourself on what available for you to use to teach others. Learn how to use some of the features on your phone, tablet or computer ...etc. Use the screen reader, voice commands, study and learn how to navigate around the computer without a mouse. Then teach others.
Now I mean this as no slight at the community but I hope we can have conversations about these topics and begin to create things that continue to help make the world a better place.
Keep creating keep reaching and keep changing lives.
Happy Coding 👨🏿💻👨🏻💻👩🏾💻👩💻🧑🏾💻
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