From the course: Accessibility for Managers and Non-Designers

How non-developers impact accessibility

From the course: Accessibility for Managers and Non-Designers

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How non-developers impact accessibility

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- [Instructor] Ultimately, it will be designers and developers who implement accessible design, and it will be stakeholders who buy into and support building accessible design into products. But non-designer, non-developer administrators on every level are the ones who make the whole process work. How so? If you were to go to stakeholders, to funders, sponsors, a government funded entity, a school, and say we are designing our digital presence to lock out 24% of the population, which would be the case in the US, what do you think the reaction would be? According to the Centers for Disease Control, one in every four US adults, that's 61 million Americans, have a disability that impacts major life activities. And the percentage is actually higher. How so? Traditional methods for measuring accessibility issues do not reflect the complex and diverse challenges involved in connecting content with users in today's rapidly changing world. One of the things you can do as a non-designer is to find ways to humanize the challenge of providing accessible design. Ways to do that include bringing in guest speakers, finding online resources to share, and involving people from impacted communities in not just testing, but helping design products. As a manager, you can find forms for creating an atmosphere where the value of accessible design is in the air where the data is understood, where empathy in human connections have been built, and on that basis you can foster an atmosphere where everyone in the design process is contributing creative initiatives to infuse accessibility into every dimension of product design and development. And accessibility inclusive culture is critical, but it's not enough. Accessible design has to be translated into policies. At every stage of the design and development of a product there should be reporting and accountability. As a manager, you know how to implement accessibility. Here, that means formal protocols where reporting on the state of accessibility is built into designing, testing, and reviewing product designs.

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