Summary
Many organizations struggle with justifying and prioritizing accessibility. One of the primary reasons is because they’re thinking about accessibility all wrong. Instead of a checklist, a list of legal requirements, or a set of shackles holding designers and developers back, it’s time to start thinking of accessibility as what it is: an opportunity to innovate! In this presentation, Fable will draw from our expertise helping organizations like yours start the accessibility journey, to change the way you think about disability, assistive technology, and accessibility. We will demonstrate that accessible products are more flexible, customizable, and useful for all users. We’ll also show you how accessibility is directly tied to the creation of many of the most exciting and innovative technologies of the last 50 years, and how it’s changed the entire world for everyone. This presentation will inspire you with the information and ideas you need to accelerate your accessibility journey.
Key Insights
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Accessibility features like dark mode, captions, and voice recognition started as assistive technologies and now benefit all users.
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Disability is a fluid identity experienced situationally, temporarily, and permanently by many users at different life stages.
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Accessible design is not about simplifying or removing features but about offering flexible, customizable options.
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Complex products, including video games like The Last of Us Part II, can be made fully accessible with thoughtful design and community input.
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Involving diverse voices with lived experience from the beginning of design through testing improves product accessibility and innovation.
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Distributing accessibility responsibilities across roles (designers, developers, content creators) avoids bottlenecks and fosters organizational inclusion.
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Fable’s platform connects organizations with assistive technology users for moderated and unmoderated research and offers tailored accessibility training.
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Cognitive disabilities are underrepresented in accessibility research due to variability and privacy concerns, requiring ongoing solutions.
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Checklist approaches to accessibility can limit creativity; instead, use them as guidelines to spark innovative inclusive design.
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Designing for accessibility today means creating usable products that also serve our aging and future selves’ needs.
Notable Quotes
"Everyone is already using accessibility features, whether they realize it or not."
"Disability is the one identity that we will all take on throughout the course of our lives."
"Accessibility requires flexible designs, not limited designs."
"It’s not about shackling us; it’s about broadening and expanding the way that we do things."
"I have never found a product where I’ve just had to throw up my hands and say, nope, can’t make this one accessible."
"Diverse teams build diverse products."
"If you can distribute the accessibility work, it becomes light work and easy work for everyone."
"Checklist thinking can shackle us down in the way that we think about accessibility."
"Text to speech started out as being built in screen readers and now is everywhere from bank machines to GPS systems."
"When you think about users with disabilities, you’re really creating technology that works for all people, all of the time."
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