“Nic will talk about the idea of disability vs impairment and look at some barriers related to disabilities and technology. He will also explore how thinking about inclusion rather than accessibility helps everyone. And more importantly, some things we can all do to reduce or eliminate those barriers.
Disabled people use technology and the web to function and communicate. That’s pretty straight forward. What happens when a site or an app isn’t coded in a way that makes it accessible and usable by people with disabilities? We’ve created barriers, we’ve caused the person’s impairment to become disabling, reducing their ability to communicate. Effectively, we’re shutting people with disabilities down!
Developers and designers are more aware than ever of the need to build accessibility for disabled people into their product. But thinking about “”making things work for people with disabilities”” risks creating an us vs them mentality. And that mentality will, in the end, cause more harm than good to the disability community. “