Inaccessible design is the problem, not the user who raises the issue.

By Erich Manser — Another thing I’d encourage engineers who are concerned with digital accessibility to understand is that when barriers exist, the issue lies with the design, and not with the person experiencing the barrier.

This may seem obvious, but too often when someone reports an inability to access something, the first reaction is to point to the person’s disability, whether blindness, deafness, or something else, as the source of the difficulty.

However, ability is a spectrum, and we all recognize that part of the human condition involves people being at various points along that spectrum. This means that digital content or other products that are designed in ways that ignore this reality are really failures of design.

For example, in recent years we’ve likely all noticed an increase in the use of QR codes, which are those seemingly meaningless squares of black and white block images, often contained in advertising or promotional materials across print, television and digital media.

As a person with some remaining vision, however, I have also noticed there are times when digital QR codes are presented silently on the screen, appearing briefly to prompt some action to be taken, before disappearing again. There is often no indication given of their presence, other than visual. In these cases, there is no way for a non-visual person to perceive the QR codes, nor to act upon them.

Clearly, people who decide to use digital technologies in this way realize that blind people exist. When confronted with the fact that some with disabilities are unable to participate equally in the benefits of such technologies, responsibility is often turned back on the disabled person, with such claims as “I didn’t think blind people watch TV” or “they should have someone tell them when a QR code is there.”

Frankly, this should not be acceptable to any of us. We must do better, and with the promise of today’s technologies, there is simply no reason why we can’t.

From Horton, S., & Sloan, D. (2024). What Every Engineer Should Know About Digital Accessibility. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida.