EBook content!
This section is part of the Introduction to Accessibility ebook content.
For other sections of the ebook content, check:
The best definition of disability I have personally encountered: disability is when you and your environment are mismatched (source: Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design by Kat Holmes).
Having a disability does not necessarily mean someone is “on disability benefits”. Not only does “disability benefits” vary depending on country, state, specific program, and that program’s own definitions of eligible conditions or statuses, but disability as a concept is commonly stigmatized and people thought of as “lazy”. In other words, someone with a disability often also fights to be taken seriously. Stereotypes of disabled people often include dismissal by other people: i.e., that the person is like a child and cannot make decisions by themselves, or the person is somehow lazy, or not trying hard enough, not committed enough. This is in line with other marginalizations, like racism and sexism. When we talk about the biases and antagonism faced by people with disabilities – or who are perceived to have disabilities – we call that ableism.
However, disability marginalizations are something that anyone can experience at any age, with any ancestry, no matter what your gender is. In the USA, seeing a doctor for official diagnoses can also run into this assumption of incompetence, AND can be a costly undertaking for people. Not all disabilities are even immediately visible; disabling conditions like diabetes or Crohn’s disease, not to mention conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder, are not immediately apparent and visible unless the person is either in the midst of medication maintenance, or in the midst of a crisis.
However, you CAN ask if someone DOES know if they need any accommodations. In the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, for example, there are requirements to be mindful of timed events – not only because extra time is often necessary for people navigating a website by keyboard or via a screen reader, but because it’s easy to be interrupted by a call, meeting, or other “temporary” situation (taking care of a child, package delivery at the door, institutional fire drill, other things that would interrupt focus). For user studies, you can ask if someone uses a screen reader.
For various privacy-related reasons, you should not ask them for their health diagnosis or assume what an individual needs. Two people with the same condition may request differing supports, even if certain supports are commonly known. Building in accessibility supports and features is always best (go to Curb Cut Effect for more detail).
Many things can become disabilities – whether temporary, intermittent like migraines or pain flares. The conditions can be more chronic/permanent or considered part of a process like aging. Temporary disabilities might include things like surgery recovery or even a simple minor sprain from hiking in the woods, or cuts from crafting. Temporary disabilities might also include multitasking; for example, being called away for an important call or meeting, and now needing to refocus on what part of the form or policy setting you were trying to complete and activate.
Some disabling conditions are only a problem if not accommodated; for example, many people do not consider requiring glasses as a disability. But someone who has broken their glasses or otherwise needs a replacement might feel differently, and still might need to resize text, change viewport area / resize their browser, change their font size, etc to accommodate their needs in the meantime. Likewise, someone who gets migraines does not often get migraines every day. But when they DO experience a migraine, they might want to change their application from light mode to dark mode to ease the stress on their eyes. People with diabetes often can manage their condition, but if the person cannot afford insulin, it can be a major crisis and swiftly become a medical emergency.
Likewise, a condition like arthritis might not be considered “a disability” because the condition is both common and associated often with age. This is also the case with some loss of mobility or eyesight; a very young person does not always have a good grasp of items like a cup, just as an older person may experience tremors or have issues with fine motor control. Due to the stigma of disability, people can internalize this stigma (called “internalized ableism”) and believe many misunderstandings and stereotypes about disability.
These factors impact even measuring statistics about disability, as different agencies may have different criteria for what constitutes a disability – with stigma, marginalization, and ability to get care or workarounds all playing a role. The concept of masking, a term used by the neurodivergent communities such as those with autism, serve very well here. People with disabilities, depending on the disabilities, learn to mask how much pain they are in, medicate to just being able to function, or might encounter economic barriers – for example, someone has to learn American Sign Language or Braille in the first place. Power wheelchairs in the US can cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. Hearing aids can vary and often lock in users with proprietary hardware. If those companies go out of business, replacing a hearing aid in part or in whole requires going to a new company – and the time, expense, and resulting issues in interactions in the meanwhile all involved.
Accessibility is also not common. This is true both for the built environment – accessibility of navigating sidewalks or even if a sidewalk is present and clear, for example, or if a business location is accessible – as well as for the digital environment. During 2020-2022, this lack of digital accessibility was made even more stark when people were trying to get appointments for the Covid-19 vaccine, organize information or applications regarding federal or state agencies, or to check their health information. Many forms online were not designed for keyboard navigation, screen reader users, and other common accessibility needs, simply because accessibility was among the aspects first to cut or dismiss when fixing bugs, remediating code, or pushing features to live use. Ingrained biases in tech are a thing: we’ve known this for years if not decades, to the point there are scholarly articles and books talking about not only ingrained biases like racism and sexism, but also ableism, like the books Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech (Sara Wachter-Boettcher) or Against Technoableism (Ashley Shaw) point out. In practice, years of pushing accessibility to the side despite any relevant laws have made the resulting cracks in the system even more obvious in the last several years.
But that does not mean accessibility is a useless endeavor.