Amlot notes

Making your product or service accessible to as many people as possible should be a goal.

Yes, it’s completely legitimate to say “My product is for people who ride bicycles, or who like craft beer, or who design software”.

But it’s not legitimate to say “My product is for people with a certain set of physical or mental abilities”. It’s 2021, we’re past that now.

And this isn’t about ramps or accessible toilets, this is about how you communicate with your audience, from the very beginning.

It’s about presenting the information about your product or service in a way that everybody has the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they want to engage with you.

The Austrian government built a COVID-19 website with a data chart in an image. The alt tag (image description) of the chart says “The data in this chart is contained in the rest of the page”. This sends a message to people with limited vision, and the message is “This chart is not for you. We don’t care if you can read it”.

The good news is that products, services, websites and documents that are designed with accessibility in mind are more accessible, easier to understand, simpler to engage with, for everyone, regardless of their abilities.

Isn’t that great?

Now fix your alt tags. Go on, you know you should.