22-year-old engineer pushes Apple's accessibility efforts


Mashable:

Sarah Herrlinger, senior manager for global accessibility policy and initiatives at Apple, says a notable part of the company's steps toward accessibility is its dedication to making inclusivity features standard, not specialized. This allows those features to be dually accessible -- both for getting the tech to more users, as well as keeping down costs.

"[These features] show up on your device, regardless of if you are someone who needs them," Herrlinger tells Mashable. "By being built-in, they are also free. Historically, for the blind and visually impaired community, there are additional things you have to buy or things that you have to do to be able to use technology."

This is a great article. Herrlinger's presence at Apple is credited towards improvements for VoiceOver and making Apple's programming language Swift more accessible.

When accessibility technology is embedded into systems, it can open doors to everything using that interface. iOS, for example, has good accessibility because of its simplicity and also built using modern design techniques that are compatible with accessibility. Compare that to retrofitting existing systems by overlaying technology to make something accessible. While the interface is available, there may still be barriers by being overly complex.

Once that core interface is everywhere, everything can become accessible. The next step is to improve content for the interface. Generally if something is more accessible, it requires things like a simple, clear, and easy to understand design. Essentially by setting out to make something accessible, you're improving the user experience for everyone.