How to make software accessible

Part of being a great developer is making your software accessible. Not only is this important for people who use software in different ways and have different levels of ability, but it also increases the audience for your software and has some legal implications.

Making software accessible means making sure that everyone can use and enjoy your programs and apps. Just like how buildings need to have step-free access and lifts to allow a wide range of people to access them, you also need to ensure that people who use assistive technologies such as screen readers can use your software as easily as someone who does not.

What you should think about when making software accessible

1. Consider different abilities: Just like some people might need ramps or handrails in the physical world, in the digital world, some users may need special tools like screen readers or voice commands to interact with your software. You need to make sure that everyone who accesses your software has a similar experience, regardless of how they are accessing it!
2. Clear and simple design: You have probably noticed that apps tend to use very similar layouts to each other, and similar icons to mean the same thing such as the cog icon to mean settings. This helps people to understand how to use and navigate apps more easily. You should think about the size of the text and colour combinations too.
3. Testing with real users: It’s important to make sure that your software works for a wide range of people, so test your software with people who have different abilities to see if it’s easy for them to navigate and use.
4. Captions and transcripts: Many applications have built-in videos or rely on sound cues, so make sure you have an option for people who can’t hear them! Adding captions and transcripts to content in your software helps everyone, especially those who are deaf or hard of hearing!

So, making software accessible is like making sure your digital creations are welcoming and useful to everyone, no matter their abilities. This is also a legal requirement for some software, such as web applications which need to follow the WCAG rules.

Next step

Having learnt something of three areas of ethics for developers (data security, IP and accessibility), take the short quiz in the next step to check your understanding of these important areas.