Does it make a difference for your design process? Because there are plenty of nuances, but all too often it feels like a primarily aesthetic choice.

Disability & Gender

We don’t think of the women who make up a bigger portion of the disabled population. Statistically speaking, women are more likely to be disabled. This is in part due to a higher life expectancy and the naturally higher rate of disability that comes with aging, but also to the gender healthcare gap. Regardless of the reasons why, it is a fact.

Being female (or perceived as female) and disabled comes with a special set of barriers. The already mentioned gender healthcare gap is one of many:

* Sexual violence: Girls and women with disabilities are more likely to experience sexual violence. An example of this is the recent trend of Trisomy 21 filters to promote sexually explicit content. TLDR: Adult actresses (not gendering here on purpose) post videos with this filter and a caption suggesting that they have Down syndrome to generate engagement from comments. This problematic trend illustrates one thing clearly: That women with disabilities are often perceived as ‘helpless’ and hence ‘easier targets’.

* I’d be happy to go in depth in another article, but I currently only know of a couple of studies addressing this. If you have sources from your countries, please share them with me.

* Study from Germany by BMAS

* Study from Austria by BMFWF

* Childcare and social stigma: While there is no way to live up to society’s expectations of “a good mother”, disabled women face the additional scrutiny of being asked whether they are even fit to be a parent. I highly recommend the blog by Jessica Slice and her book Unfit Parent for more insights on this topic.

* Mobility patterns: While disability plays a role in movement patterns, it is only one of multiple factors. Women mostly have multi-stop mobility patterns instead of A-to-B trips. Women with disabilities are no exception to this, except that they are additionally dependent on station and carriage accessibility. This means that you may have to wait for the next or the next but one train or bus, may have to take a detour to transfer at an accessible station, and for wheelchair and power wheelchair users, it often also means going one more stop back or forth to find a working elevator.

* The Better Mobility trend report investigated exactly that.

And breaking news: Disabled people don’t have to be cis gender! Any gender identity you can think of also applies to disabled demographics.

Disability & Invisible Stigma

We don’t think of the traveler with anxiety disorder who’d like to reschedule a flight but can’t find where to do it online.

Having an invisible disability myself, I am astonished by how it seems to be both a fan favorite among web design professionals breaking into accessibility, while at the same time, blatantly disregarded in practice.

Invisible disabilities are not new, but new as a concept to broader demographics. Therefore, the outsider's view of it is still quite stereotyped. Quick exercise: Think about which invisible disabilities you know.

Ready? How many types of neurodivergence did you think of? Did you include varieties of vision and hearing loss? What about stroke, epilepsy, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and cancer? What about depression, anxiety, or panic disorders? And that’s just an assorted selection of what falls under “invisible disability”.

From my interactions with web professionals, I get the vibe that invisible disability is often equated to neurodivergence. Not fully incorrect, but it misses the point. Not everything that is invisible is exclusively happening inside your brain.

An invisible disability is a physical, mental or neurological condition that is not visible from the outside, yet can limit or challenge a person’s movements, senses, or activities. Unfortunately, the very fact that these symptoms are invisible can lead to misunderstandings, false perceptions, and judgments.

InvisibleDisabilities.org

The idea behind the label ‘invisible’ is to get people to understand that disabilities are not always observable, but are nonetheless real. Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The idea is to challenge presumptions that disabilities are clear-cut. If we only apply this to types of neurodivergence, we’re not progressing far.

Hidden Disability Sunflower

Some also see the Hidden Disability Sunflower as a solution to this, but I would consider it more of a temporary fix rather than a solution: The sunflower is a tool for disabled people to use when they see fit, not for non-disabled people to recognize disability in the wild.

Through the sunflower lanyard scheme, the sunflower became an indicator that the wearer has a non-visible disability. The campaign is most popular with airports, other big transportation hubs, and, recently, also festivals. And there it makes perfect sense to let staff know a traveler or attendee may need extra time or assistance. However. Let’s do a little thought experiment: You are traveling, maybe even alone. What is the tourists’ number one enemy? The pickpocket. Especially for people with low vision, this is a significant concern because their smartphone is their number one navigation tool. Now, for white cane users, this is a permanent concern, and for some individuals, also a deterring factor that makes them not want to use a white cane, despite recognizing the benefits it would bring.

While it’s great to have a universally recognized indicator when you’re inside a contained, security-checked area, it can quickly become a stigmatizing indicator in less secure settings.

To say the sunflower is the solution to access issues because it provides people around you a heads-up that you are disabled is not empathetic to the lived situation and mental load of being disabled. While the sunflower takes away the mental load of having to anticipate, explain, justify, and maybe even prove that you have a disability, it does not change your access requirements.

Besides that, we are not entitled to know who has and hasn’t a disability and what kind. If we needed this information in order to accommodate people, it would only contribute to distinction and division, not inclusion.

Disability & Language Settings

We don’t think of the multilingual blind person whose screen reader has a strong Hispanic accent because their device is set to Spanish.

A bit of technical background for this: There are device-based and browser-based screen readers. If you are using a screen reader full time, you are likely listening to this on your device-based screen reader. Browser-based ones are more commonly used for the read-aloud function of articles. For example, the Substack app has a read-aloud function, and A11y News is read out by the voice called Taylor.

Device-based screenreaders read everything (that is present in the accessibility tree). You set them up on your device; some come pre-installed, like VoiceOver on macOS, and some you have to install yourself, such as NVDA and JAWS. You configure them to your liking: I’m talking speed, accent, male or female voice. For English, you often have a variety to pick from, but for less global languages, you get maybe one or two options.

And while you technically could pick a British pronunciation for Talk Back while your Android system is set to French, it sounds weird.

In some cases, it also doesn’t work: For example, my phone is set to Japanese, so when I want to check image alt text, it is read out with a comically over-the-top Japanese accent. When I tried switching only SR pronunciation to English, it could read the content, but not the system information - which app I’m selecting, link, button - which was still in Japanese. And for, to me still unknown, reasons, it replaced every Japanese word with Yuan ¥.

The other way around, the Japanese voice was still able to pronounce Latin-based alphabets. So, depending on your device language, it may not even be an option to switch to a different pronunciation without changing the entire system language.

Disability & Lifestyle Identity

We don’t think of the quadriplegic wellness fan who would like to try a new pilates studio but can’t find any information about building accessibility. Okay, at least in Europe we don’t. Maybe it’s different in your region, but I find it already hard enough to determine if a studio has showers, let alone an elevator in the building, a ramp at the entrance, tactile floorlines leading to the toilet, or if the studio space itself is step-free.

Brace yourself for an existential crisis: No person exists just to exist; we all have something we want to do.

So much of designing for access covers only the necessities. This is precisely because we don’t design with accessibility in mind. We have the concept, we build the MVP, and at some point, we realize, “Oh s**t, we need to be compliant!” That’s where we start retrofitting accessibility.

This is not inclusive design. Again, all design should be inclusive from the start, but inclusive design in particular teaches to design for the widest audience possible. However, this does not happen if we only apply it partially.

Atilla is standing outdoors in a quiet, green park. Tall trees and bushes surround him, with sunlight softly filtering through the leaves and casting light patches on the grass. A large tree trunk is visible behind him.

He wears a brown short-sleeved T-shirt, light pants, and a silver wristwatch on his left wrist. His medium-length dark hair is combed back, and he wears subtle glasses with transparent frames.

Atilla stands upright, facing the camera, signing in International Sign (IS). His signing is calm, fluent, and expressive, using clear hand movements, facial expressions, and body language. He occasionally makes eye contact with the camera, showing a serious, friendly, and engaged expression. The background stays still and natural throughout the video.

Atilla Gum

Atilla Gum is an Austrian sign language educator and Deaf entrepreneur. I may be biased, as his student, but he is great at it!

He believes that sign language education should be accessible to all, so he not only teaches at Witaf — the oldest association in Vienna dedicated to promoting the full and inclusive participation of deaf and hard-of-hearing people — and MetaLab, but he also publishes full recordings of his A1 courses on YouTube.

If you can, consider donating to fund Atilla’s first year at Gallaudet!

Gallaudet University is the world’s only liberal arts university for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

The university’s executive leadership team is predominantly deaf. Including President Cordano as well as the chief of staff, the chief academic, the bilingual, the communications, and the undergraduate admissions, and the financial, the legal, and the operating officers. The dean of student affairs and the Clerc Center chief academic officer are also deaf. The majority of executive-level appointees are women. This ensures that the university’s leadership closely resembles the student body.

But this hasn’t always been the case. You may know Gallaudet from the recently released film Deaf President Now! The documentary follows the 1988 student protests at Gallaudet University.

When the film was first released, Reframing Disability wrote a great piece contextualizing it:

“We couldn’t accept a leader who didn’t understand our world.”

To give you some background about the DPN movement: Gallaudet University, established in 1864, was led by hearing presidents for 124 years—leaders who often had minimal understanding of Deaf culture or sign language. In 1988, when the university’s Board of Trustees selected a hearing candidate over two qualified Deaf finalists, the campus community knew it was time for change.

The Deaf community at Gallaudet gathered together, united by a powerful belief: “We couldn’t accept a leader who didn’t understand our world.” That sentiment became the heartbeat of the movement. Students, faculty, staff, and alumni organized a historic eight-day protest, shutting down the campus and capturing national attention. Their determination paid off—Dr. I. King Jordan was appointed as Gallaudet’s first Deaf president in 1988. Since then, the university has continued to be led by Deaf presidents, marking a turning point not only in Gallaudet’s history but in the global Deaf rights movement.

from Reframing Disability

Why Atilla chose Gallaudet

Atilla has been an entrepreneur for over 8 years. He had considered Gallaudet in the past, but initially dismissed the idea because he didn’t see himself in the social studies offered at the time. While he completed formal education to facilitate sign language courses, no economics course available in Vienna piqued his interest so far.

Atilla regularly teaches Austrian Sign Language at the United Nations (UN) in Vienna and occasionally gives workshops and talks on Deaf culture and inclusion. One of the UN's Disability Inclusion Network members connected him with a Gallaudet student who was completing an internship at the UN in Vienna.

This chance connection changed everything.

When they first met back in September 2024, she asked what he was studying. He replied that he was an entrepreneur, but faced many barriers in running his business. She encouraged him to consider studying at Gallaudet, as it now offers a Business Administration program too.

They looked it up together, registered, submitted his application, and by the end of May, he was accepted!

Atilla is especially excited about the Gallaudet Innovation & Entrepreneurship Institute (GIEI), which regularly organizes events for Deaf entrepreneurs, creating space for networking, knowledge sharing, and mutual support. With over 100 members, this flourishing community left a deep impression on him.

“I melted,” he said. “I absolutely want to be part of this!”

Gallaudet Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute (GEIE)

GIEI is the only university-based entrepreneur program in the world for individuals who are deaf.

The GIEI network was what won Atilla’s heart. In Austria, Deaf entrepreneurship remains rare, and Atilla wants to change that. When I asked within my own network how the situation is in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) market, responses were minute.

Deaf entrepreneurs face many barriers, so much so that Atilla wrote about it (in German) for Gebärdenverse on Instagram:

“I’ve been self-employed since 2017 and run my own business. I offer courses in Austrian Sign Language and raise awareness about Deafness and sign language. I want to be able to do much more. Barriers block my opportunities.”

“These barriers are exhausting and drain so much of my energy. But I want to use that energy for other projects.”

“Too often, I’ve had to fight conflicts in collaborations because inclusion was denied. Even support services turned me away, just because I’m Deaf. They said I couldn’t be self-employed.”

“One major problem: the lack of willingness to truly act inclusively.Too often, it's just a show for the public.”

“At one consultation, they didn’t organize an interpreter. They tried to communicate with pen and paper, but kept speaking anyway. They said it was ‘too much effort’ to communicate differently.”

“It’s often hard to find interpreters. I adjust my schedule to their availability, but sometimes, there’s no one. Then I have to postpone. That means: no job, no income.”

“Deaf entrepreneurs need fair conditions.”

Follow Atilla on Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, or visit his website for work inquiries. If you can, consider donating to fund Atilla’s first year at Gallaudet:

Universal Design

* Center of Universal Design

* Universal Design for Learning (UDL): The Why, What, and How of Learning. Especially relevant if you are developing courses or instruction materials for teaching, onboarding, or professional development.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

Duh, this is the first thing you need when talking web accessibility! The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines - or WCAG in short - are divided into 4 Principles (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust, together, they assemble the Power Rangers’ team called POUR-Principles) and 86 Success Criteria (definitely not listing them all here, go to W3C.org for that).

* WCAG, but in a language I can understand

* WCAG in plain English

* WCAG 2.2 Subway Map by Theme

* WCAG Figma Plugin

* WCAG 2.2 Figma card deck

* Honorable Mentions: The WCAG 3.0 Working Draft and Translations of Current W3C standards and drafts

* And my favorite one: WCAG Pokécards

Legislation

Yes, I know this one is not as fun as comparing the WCAG to Pokémon. But it helps to know the baseline laws that rule the digital accessibility world. You never have to know them by heart, as long as you know where to look them up.

* The European Accessibility Act is the it-girl of 2025. She’s dividing the internet: You either love her or hate her; no one’s indifferent!

* Accessibility Standards at the European Level

* Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the mother of all accessibility legislation. Not to forget the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the grandmother of ICT accessibility!

* UK Equality Act

* Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act

Note: Most modern web accessibility laws and directives are based on the WCAG and Universal Design principles, but don’t use them directly as passing criteria.

Web Accessibility Testing Tools

The tools of the trade! And to be honest, it can also be more fun to learn through trial and error, instead of theory alone.

* WAVE Tool by WebAIM: An automatic testing tool that provides WCAG references for each error, alert, and feature it finds. As with every automatic testing tool, none of them is perfect, but getting acquainted with this one in particular is helpful because the WebAIM Million Report uses it. Learning the limitations of automated testing will help you interpret the findings better.

* Speaking of WebAIM: The one and only Contrast Checker, and arguably even better: the Link Contrast Checker to compare 3 colors against each other at once!

* Accessibility Insights for Web: A step-by-step testing tool. Very detailed, so much so that it may look a bit overwhelming at first. But especially beginners can learn a lot!

* WCAG EM Report Tool: A comprehensive auditing tool that guides you through the auditing process. It requires a bit more preexisting knowledge, but it makes up for it by providing you with a very nice report at the end.

* NVDA, a free screen reader, and for many, the first screen reader they learn accessibility testing with!

* Wondering what screen readers people use? Consult the latest WebAIM screen reader survey

Alt-Text

* Does this image need alt text? Follow the alt-text decision tree by W3C

* Need some inspiration for what to write? The Nielsen Norman Group has a good article to get you started: NNG Write Alt Text

Certifications

WebAIM

We love WebAIM in this virtual house because they give out knowledge for free. The WebAIM Introduction to Web Accessibility Course is free. The only thing you have to pay for is if you want to get a certification.

AccessibleEU

AccessibleEU does a lot of things, just like the incredible hustler it is; one of them is the AccessibleEU Online Training on Accessible Technology Design. It also comes with a Community of Practice, and both are free, no membership, no European passport required, nothing.

IAAP Certifications

The International Association of Accessibility Professionals offers a number of certifications, which are, well, internationally recognized. Notably, the following:

Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC)

Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies sounds intimidating, but it is actually only the baseline of accessibility certifications. The CPACC Body of Knowledge is available in English and German.

Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS)

Web Accessibility Specialist, more self-explanatory, but also way more technical. The Body of Knowledge is available for WAS in English, WAS in German, and WAS in Spanish.

Accessible Document Specialist (ADS)

Accessible Document Specialist does exactly that: document accessibility. The ADS Body of Knowledge is only available in English.

Advanced Reading Articles

* Disability Dongles

* 10 Life Lessons on Accessibility

* WAI-ARIA Overview, but remember kids, the first rule of ARIA: Don't use ARIA, if you can avoid it!

* Any time I stumble across interesting articles, I also post them in our subscriber chat.

* Books, if you prefer analog learning.

Text to Speech and Braille

For screen readers, that means no fancy fonts, not too many emojis in your text, and no unnecessary styling through HTML elements.

As a generic white girl, I love using emojis. But as a professional, I know not to overdo it. (I also know that I have to sprinkle them in here and there so people don’t think I’m mad at them.) If you have used Slack before, think about how your sentence would sound if you had to read out the emoji shorthand. And voila, there’s your benchmark! :partying_face: :tada: :confetti_ball: :tada:

The same goes for strikethrough, emphasis, and bold.

All of these can be troublemakers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use them at all. Be aware of how they may or may not translate in practice. Emphasis and strikethrough are often ignored in text-to-speech output, but braille displays can include them: Braille characters are written in 6-point braille, which looks like the 6 dots on a dice. Braille displays that come in 8-point braille, however, can use the bottom pins to indicate special text formatting. But as I wrote before AT can be hella expensive, so don’t expect the majority to be using it. Design content for the 6-point braille and the 8-point braille power user will be fine too!

While screen reader setups vary from person to person, that’s not an excuse to say “it won’t be accessible for all anyway”. Accessibility will always be a work in progress. You can still cater towards 95% of use cases and leave the remaining 5% to screen reader developers to figure out.

Someone Call the Corporate Identity Police!

Branding needs to be perceivable to be recognizable.

Yes, rebrands cost a lot, but has that ever stopped anyone from rebranding? In most cases, nobody is actually asking for a complete rebrand. Most cases of color contrast issues can be amended by using ever so slightly lighter or darker shades, not entirely different colors.

If your brand colors are yellow on white, then yes. Yes, we are asking you to change your whole branding. There is no combination of yellow and white that passes the minimum color contrast. But in most cases, we are only asking to make your CI police cry a little bit, so we can put a 15% darker grey in the fine print.

The minimum should not be our goal. There’s not much of a visual difference between a color contrast of 2.89:1 and 3.05:1, but only one of them can be ticked off as WCAG compliant.

These minimum requirements are here for a reason. They are the minimum common denominator, but neither in dating nor in design should you ever settle for the bare minimum.

Inclusive Design or Pick & Choose?

If it were up to me, I would very much love to cross out the words “inclusive design” from any designer’s professionally acceptable vocabulary because all design should be inclusive by default.

Excluding demographics should be a conscious decision, if you want to design gatekeeping into your brand, not a side-effect that you don’t care about fixing. Sure, if you want to be the next Loubutin, Hermes, or Bhutan tourism industry, go for it! But being inaccessible by design while claiming to be open to all? Oh please, stop b**********g your customer base.

Cards on the table: My industry depends on people buying AT products. And most are expensive as hell! But the disability tax is a post for another week. This week, we are focusing on the Unlock the Every Day campaign:

Unlock the Every Day

Do you know that 2.5 billion people need at least one form of assistive technology and that most people will require assistive technology at some point in their lifetime? Whether because of a disability, injuries, or simply old age, by 2050, this figure is likely to rise to 3.5 billion.

However, to fund assistive technology for everyone who will need it in their lifetime will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

World Day for Assistive Technology — on June 4th, 2025 — is the perfect opportunity for everyone, individuals, organizations, businesses, and policymakers from around the world, to come together and champion the importance of assistive technology.

Campaign Resources

The goal? To increase access and raise awareness, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Find all of the World AT Day 2025 campaign resources here.

On HopeTech.Vision we are continually publishing a series on What Assistive Technology Is & Why It Matters based on what we learned during the Sixth Sense development process. It is our small contribution to the campaign: Unpacking what AT is, how people use it, and why design and distribution must be more inclusive.

Free Resources

Because Assistive Tech can be very expensive, I want to highlight free resources:

* NVDA: a free screen reader software for Windows. Consider supporting them with a donation if you are in a position to do so.

* Makers Making Change leverages the capacity of community-based makers, disability professionals, and volunteers to develop and deliver affordable open-source assistive technologies.

* Also for makers: the Thingyverse

* Please share whatever else you know in the comments!

Whether you're new to assistive tech or have used it all your life, there's a shared goal: Ensuring that more people can access the tools they need, when they need them.

This is not by accident, but by design: Spaces, services, and products are rarely designed to be accessible by default, but rather to meet norms and satisfy the construction inspector.

Historically, individuals with disabilities have been institutionalized and locked away from the public eye. This has often been framed as variations of “for their own benefit” or as a “relief for their caretakers”, in varying nuances of “in the best interest of the public”. Throughout history as well as today. Think of the so-called Ugly Laws that prohibited being in public with a visible disability.

Disability Pride is important because history has called disability “an unsightly or disgusting object”.

Many people have internalized this shame. I did a whole piece on self-stigma, and that barely even scratches the surface of it! But the main gist of it is:

Discrimination is highly arbitrary and doesn’t care about specific markers. Think about what’s recommended for CV writing: no picture, no birthdate, no address, no hints at age, family, and ideally no hint at your gender because all of the above could lead to a subconsciously biased decision against you, without ever seeing you in person.

Efforts against Structural Discrimination

This is also why the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became monumental to the disability rights movement. It was one of the first pieces of legislation targeting discrimination against disabled people on a structural level, all the way back in 1990.

Worldwide, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) aims to achieve equal rights for persons with and without disabilities. For the EU, the UNCRPD entered into force on 22 January 2011. This means that by this date, all EU member states have signed and ratified the convention, and must from then on protect the rights of persons with disabilities. I say “aims to achieve” because every time I see a new report about it, it reads like, “we are still doing terribly.”

This Disability Pride Month marked the 35th anniversary of the ADA.

The ADA specified minimum requirements for access to buildings as well, which is a big deal: You can’t be in the room where it happens if you physically can’t get into said room.

You will see more people with (visible or invisible) disabilities show up if the space and the public transportation to get there are accessible, and the invite came as a properly tagged PDF or structured email instead of a screenshot.

And still, we are far from an accessible world. Both in and outside the USA. If you think about it, it’s outrageous. What is taking us so long?

Human diversity isn’t one-dimensional.

Disability is the one minority group that anyone can become a part of at any point in time. Irrespective of your ethnic background, gender identity, or occupation. But in most cases, we don’t recognize this diversity when we discuss accessible design.

The keyword is intersectionality. When discussing aspects of human identity, we tend to zoom in on one aspect, yet realistically, no one’s identity can be reduced to a singular defining marker.

Who do we think of?

We think of a blind screen reader user, and a wheelchair user, and that’s it. We don’t think of the women who make up a bigger portion of the disabled population. We don’t think of the traveler with an anxiety disorder who’d like to reschedule a flight online but can’t find information about it. We don’t think of the bilingual blind person whose screen reader has a strong Hispanic accent because their device is set to Spanish. We don’t think of the quadriplegic who would like to try a new pilates studio but can’t find any information about building accessibility.

Human diversity doesn’t end within one category. Designing for disabilities should not be seen as a separate task, but equal to designing for a different operating system. The screen reader interaction is exactly that: another kind of interaction.

Make it part of the profession.

Designing for accessibility should not be viewed as a separate domain, but rather as a part of the whole profession. You wouldn’t hire a UI designer who can do anything except for login fields. Or a developer who doesn’t use print statements. Or a software tester who refuses to acknowledge the existence of Microsoft Edge. In the same way, generalists should be expected to know about web accessibility.

Not everything, but - you know - the basics. The annual WebAIM Millions Report doesn’t change because we don’t get better. Because most accessibility issues aren’t super duper niche or technical, they are sloppy and embarrassing.

* “Exclusive, not excluding” – the opening mantra that set the tone for a panel led by RCA’s Rama Gheerawo, featuring thought‑leaders Hanan Tantush, Carry Somers, Anne Welsh, and Carolyne Mair.

* How adaptive wear, size‑inclusion, sustainable production, and the psychology of fashion intersect to create garments that are both functional and desirable.

* Real‑world insights from assistive‑tech experience: why style matters just as much as utility, and how designers can move beyond “just work” to make products feel right for the wearer.

* A personal “wow” moment: a model with alopecia walking the runway - a powerful reminder that fashion can celebrate every form of difference.

* The logistical challenges of true accessibility (venue ramps, sign‑language interpreters, ticket allocations) and why investing in these details feels like the only way events should be done.

We wrap up with a look ahead to next year’s show, the emerging talent from the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins, and practical takeaways for designers, brands, and listeners who want fashion to be a space where everyone can exist, not just perform..

Whether you’re a designer, a tech‑enthusiast, or simply curious about the future of style, this episode offers a thoughtful, hopeful vision of fashion that embraces diversity, accessibility, and genuine self‑expression. Tune in and discover why the runway is becoming a platform for real change.

Read the accompanying blog, or stay in the loop with behind the scenes on BlueSky and Instagram.

Resources & Links Mentioned

* Full blog post & show notes: How Blind People Navigate the World (On and Offline) written blog on A11y News

* WebAIM Screen‑Reader User Survey (2024)

* WebAIM Million Report

Got a specific accessibility challenge? Drop a comment here or bring it to the upcoming live sessions at Wagtail Space or DevFest Vienna.

Subscribe to A11y News for increased literacy.

Happy yapping!

Online Navigation

For online navigation, we mainly have zoom, screen magnifiers, and screen readers (or SR for short). Screen readers can be a bit intimidating at first. You boot them up and suddenly everything starts talking! While text-to-speech (or TTS for short) is the intended functionality of text-to-speech screen readers (shocking, I know), it is overwhelming at first. Monotone, technical-sounding voices are simply not a joy to listen to, especially when you have to concentrate on understanding what exactly these voices are describing to you. On another note: Braille displays peacefully coexist with TTS screen readers and are a staple for web access!

It’s time to talk about the oh-so-dreaded screen reader testing!

So screen readers read what’s on the screen? Wrong! They read what you wrote into your code! While a software tester who uses a mouse and screen might not notice that your menu exit button is actually a styled div, the SR will.

This is where the accessibility tree comes into play. The accessibility tree is how SR and other assistive tech users navigate through a website, climbing along heading levels and structures to find the desired information. The accessibility tree is sprouted by the browser based on the DOM (shorthand for Document Object Model) tree and accessed by platform-specific Accessibility APIs.

The DOM tree contains objects representing all the markup’s elements, attributes, and text nodes. This is precisely why following the h1, h2, h3 … heading structure is important. When you skip heading levels, you cut off the branches that assistive tech needs for a sound climbing route.

But not all screen readers are the same.

The same code, on the same device, and in the same browser, can produce 2 different outputs when read with different screen readers. That doesn’t mean that one is better than the other; they both get the job done.

What Screen Reader Setup is best for Testing?

Classic UX answer: it depends. Luckily, WebAIM looks into that for us! In early 2024, JAWS and NVDA came out on top with 40.5% and 37.7% respectively. The 3rd place on the podium took VoiceOver with 9.7%. As for browsers, the big 3 are Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox.

Offline Navigation

The White Cane

She’s an icon, she’s a legend, and she is not only at the moment but a consistently reliable tool for obstacle detection. Reliable because it detects obstacles, floor texture, drop-off points, or stairs going up and down.

Guide Dogs

Training takes around 18 months to 2 years in a “puppy boarding school” and includes socialization, basic obedience, and specific keyword training for everyday actions. Not every puppy gets to graduate! The most important criterion is the dog’s ability to focus only on their handler and ignore distractions.

According to the International Guide Dog Federation, only around 23.000 dogs are on active duty. Most dogs work up to the age of 10, but this varies depending on the guide pair. The 10th birthday isn’t necessarily the definitive retirement day, but around that time, handlers will start to notice a decline in concentration or less excitement to work from their dog.

Braille

Braille is a code made up of raised dots that can be read with your fingertips. Braille is not a language; it’s a script code. Think of how the Vietnamese language uses the Latin script, yet that doesn’t mean that people who speak Latin-based languages can read Vietnamese.

It is an important tool for literacy. While Text-to-Speech screen readers are awesome, relying exclusively on audio output can lead to limited literacy and a decrease in vocabulary over time.

Refreshable Braille Displays

In the tech world, there are refreshable Braille displays or Braille screen readers. They do exactly the same thing as Text-to-Speech screen readers, but with text output. How many letters they display at once depends on the size.

Refreshable braille displays function by pushing individual pins up into the right position to form a braille letter. Each braille character cell holds 6 pins in a 2 by 3 arrangement. At the bottom of each pin is an actuator that gives the pin the command to jump up or stay put.

Braille Keyboards and displays have braille tables integrated. In addition to 6-dot braille, there’s also 8-dot braille. The additional 2 pins allow for special characters beyond the standard Latin alphabet.

Braille is pretty neat, right?