Medium | May 26, 2020
For most of us, the day seems to revolve around our phones: check email, read the news, pay bills, and get directions to the store. Mobile apps are essential in day-to-day life.
Unfortunately, many apps fail to be fully accessible to people with disabilities or those who rely on assistive technologies. As one blind app user noted, using an inaccessible app is “a constant feeling of being devalued. It doesn’t matter about the stupid button that I can’t press in that moment. It’s that it keeps happening. … And the message that I keep receiving is that the world just doesn’t value me.”
Anne Spencer Ross is a UW Ph.D. candidate in computer science, working on accessibility. She wrote about the state of app accessibility and shared ways that app users and developers can help make apps work for everyone.