I’m going to be hon­est here. I’ve nev­er con­sid­ered what needs to be put into a web­site to make it acces­si­ble. Oth­er aspects of my life def­i­nite­ly. I use closed cap­tion­ing on the tv myself. I have some deaf fam­i­ly mem­bers that I have helped nav­i­gate closed cap­tion­ing. I have immo­bile grand­par­ents where I have had to con­sid­er how their hous­es work for them. I have a lit­tle old arthrit­ic dog that we bring a stroller on his walks just in case he starts limp­ing too bad­ly. I under­stand peo­ple have dif­fer­ent men­tal needs to keep func­tion­ing and I do my best to respect and help in that.

Recent­ly I was at work. We were clos­ing in about 10 min­utes and this old­er gen­tle­man comes in. As I had helped a few oth­ers that day, I go up to him and attempt to help. Very quick­ly I rec­og­nized he was sign­ing at me. This image below is the extent of my knowledge. 

That is all I have and I am a rusty. This gen­tle­man did­n’t have a voice he could use. I quick­ly went and grabbed a piece of paper and pen. He drew this wob­bly lined stick with the word wood. From there I had 100 ques­tions I could­n’t ask. What is it used for? How are you using it? What col­or of wood? My usu­al way of help­ing could­n’t be. I led him around the store show­ing him any­thing that even remote­ly resem­bled his draw­ing. We found it, but it was made of bone not wood. It was the most dif­fi­cult inter­ac­tion I’ve ever had. I felt so help­less. Some­thing I took so for grant­ed, he deals with this every­day. Hon­est­ly it prob­a­bly did­n’t even phase him, but wow did it open my eyes.

How many of the web­sites I vis­it are acces­si­ble to all? I don’t know. What aspects of their designs make them more acces­si­ble and why? Dig­i­tal acces­si­bil­i­ty is such a valu­able thing to know and be aware of.

My very shal­low dive into the sur­face of web acces­si­bil­i­ty is by no means enough. I need to keep learn­ing and explor­ing how to be made this work for every­one. Kind of like me know­ing the alpha­bet in sign lan­guage, and that still not being help­ful. Rec­og­niz­ing what you don’t know and find­ing out how to change that is one of the most impor­tant things in every aspect of your life.