Why accessibility is important to me
One of the questions I am frequently asked is why I am interested in accessibility. I'd like to say that it was because I understood and empathised with the needs of the disabled community, but at that point I didn't. I had never knowingly known anyone who had issues using technology so I didn't even know it was a thing, never mind understanding the full impact it could have - that would come later as I got more involved in the subject.
The thing that kicked it off for me was a few years back when there was a fashion for light grey typeface and thin fonts.
This happened just after I'd been diagnosed with (again, something I'd never heard of before) poor contrast vision. This followed a random conversation with my neighbour who was an optician when I mentioned that I'd stopped going out and driving at dusk because my sight just tanked. It was fine during the day, and ok at night, but at dusk the whole world turns to shades of grey. He mentioned contrast vision, so the next time I went for an eye test I asked for the contrast vision test.
If you've never had one, this involves a large white board with a grid of small dots which start as jet black in the top left corner and gradually fade until you get to white on white in the bottom right corner. Most people can see the dots about 80% of the way down the board. For me, they disappeared just before the half way point.
For getting around at dusk the solution was a simple one - a pair of ever-so-sexy glasses with lenses tinged the most revolting shade of yellow. But what a difference they made! It was like someone turned the light on for me!
But the glasses don't work with display monitors unfortunately. Well, they probably do, but I can't use them for my job as I need to be able to see true colours. So when the fashion for the light grey, thin fonts came along I really started to struggle. I could usually read the text but it took a lot of concentration, furrowed brows and many headaches, so I just gave up - I stopped using those websites.
It took me a while to realise that the issue was my contrast vision, so I started researching it and very quickly found out that it's a thing! It's not just me! So I went back to some of the offending websites, used developer tools to try darkening and thickening the text and, lo and behold!, someone had switched the light on again!
So that was where it started. I wasn't quite at the point where I was starting to get into digital accessibility but the seed had been sown.
If you have a story to share about how you find using the web challenging, please let me know. The more true stories we can share the more we can increase awareness.