Able

This is my graduation project done during an internship with

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The Accidental Ally

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To know more about the details and case study of this project, feel free to contact me!

In an ideal world, every product is accessible or is at least getting there. But this is not an ideal world. Accessibility is very often viewed by companies as a burden and not as a necessity. From a business point of view, accessibility is a tough challenge to face and may consume a lot of resources for the sake of a fraction of the user population. So a lot of times, that step is just not taken to make the product accessible. 

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Something more important is changing how people view disabilities. Changing people's attitude towards disabilities is perhaps the fundamental key to achieving greater accessibility. People traditionally view disability as something to 'fix' or rehabilitate. A common misconception is that disabled people can't use things that arent designed for them. This is a skewed point of view. It is the product that makes them disabled, not their physical inability. For example, it's the lack of screen reading support that makes a website unusable for a blind person, thus making them disabled. Understanding this could fundamentally change how products are designed and thus make them more accessible.

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WCAG has been a milestone in making the web Accessible. It is an amazing achievement- establishing a set of guidelines that detail most of the things that website developers and designers need to do to make their websites accessible, and getting them accepted as an international standard, is a great contribution to digital inclusion globally. But despite the intent, there are lot of shortcomings that are hard to ignore and are sometimes detrimental. Because  of the text heavy nature and abundance of information, it is often an intimidating gateway for newbies, which they more often than not avoid.   Another problem is that it is used like a checklist rather than a reference, which completely misses the point. It's the results of following the guidelines that are important, not the act of following them itself.

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Able is a project that enables and encourages people to participate in making the world more accessible. It is a community oriented platform where users can learn and educate others about accessibility and Inclusive design and share their progress. It's simple and intuitive design makes it very easy to use. The level system allows people to track their progress and view how their peers are doing. By linking to the Accessibility champion program, it can also be a part of the corporate environment. Levels and content can be customised according to the needs of the co, and progress in the app correspond to real world benefits.