Building Technology for Everyone, with Lucy Collins

Yeah.

So let's, um, if we can just sort of dial it right back to basics, how would you describe what digital accessibility is, and what is inclusion in a digital context?

Yeah.

I think, uh, uh, very simply, it's about making things work better for everyone.

Accessibility, I think, has always been attributed to making things better for people with disabilities, people who are neurodivergent, which it absolutely does, but actually digital accessibility is really just about making the online world easier for y- to use by everyone.

Uh, it's fundamental to universal design, so for anyone familiar with the, the concept of universal design, access is core to it.

It is kind of the central circle in the diagrams that you always see.

Access should be the fundamental starting point for everything that we design, both digital and, and non-digital.

Yet it is so often the thing that gets retrofitted at the end when somebody goes, "Oh, have we thought about the accessibility of this?"

Hmm.

Which is always the hardest way to do it.

So accessibility is just building good, effective digital experiences that work better for all, and the examples that I always give for this when I talk to m- my clients and, and people who are interested in it is, yes, okay, we might design something for my mum who's got multiple sclerosis.

She's got a physical disability.

She can't really use her hands.

She relies on, uh, voice-to-text software an awful lot.

But it also then works better for me as a mum of two girls who's often doing things with a child hanging off at least one arm, and I will regularly use voice to text on my phone.

I will speak messages, I will speak emails to my team when I don't have, you know, uh, because of that temporary or that situational accessibility need that I have.

It's the classic curb cut effect that is, is really well established, which is that when we put a drop curb in, it is gonna help someone-

Hmm

...

in a wheelchair like my mum, but it's also gonna help me pushing my child in a pram.

It's gonna help someone who is, um, uh, uh, pulling a suitcase along a pavement.

It's gonna help a delivery driver pushing a sack barrow up there.

It's just gonna help people who struggle with a step up onto the curb.

So it's just about making things better for everyone.