100 points to know about...
Digital accessibility

Design is not about expressing yourself.

Design is not about following your dream.

Design is not about becoming creative.

Design is about keeping people from doing terrible things to other people. “
— Mike Monteiro

We have seen that not complying with the web accessibility requirements may have legal consequences for your project. Besides a possible future lawsuit or complaint, let´s try to look beyond paperwork and think of the end user.

If we design for people, thinking of our product in the context of its users and their environment, we consider ethical design rather than just a legal minimum.
Many organizations approach the guidelines and minimum compliance level as a goal and not as the foundation.
When designers, developers, and project managers approach accessibility as a checklist to meet these standards, the focus is only on the technical aspects of accessibility. As a result, the human interaction aspect is often lost, and accessibility is not achieved. With this approach, we might send a subconscious but clear message to people with disabilities that “we look at you as a compliance / legal exercise, not a valuable and important minority group who should receive more consideration than the legal minimum.”

So, when developing our digital project, we should have accessibility in mind from the very beginning and our main purpose should be to provide an access to the product to everybody despite of their ability, context or situation.
This includes users with permanent or temporary visual, motor, auditory, speech, or cognitive disabilities.

Approaching accessibility with a user in mind, in its turn will lead us to the further legal compliance and business benefits.

If we want to make a difference and to be accessible, we only have to put the priorities in the correct order and placing people on the first place.
Shifting the user from the first position might make us fall a short from the target of accessibility.