Whenever I am asked by people, “Why should I care about accessibility?”, the one quote that strikes me hard is the one by Stella Young — “Disability is the one minority group that anyone can join at any time.’”

The one thing that doesn’t change in a person’s life is the possibility of being disabled, either temporarily or permanently. It need not be major as in losing vision, hearing or movement. It can be something temporary, as in having a leg injury that makes it harder to stand in queues, or hand fracture that makes it hard to use a smartphone or take care of basic needs. The only point where we realize the several barriers around accessibility and inclusion is when we face disabilities ourselves.

When we think of it, it is not disability that is creating a barrier in a person’s way to achieve and enact on their work and passion. Rather, it’s we as a society building barriers with or without our realization.

Well, you might feel defensive, jumping straight to ask, “Well, what barriers did I and the society create?”, think of these situations:

• Claiming a video is accessible just because it has transcriptions, when the video is meant to be consumed by hard of speech and hearing community.
• Stereotyping persons with disabilities and doubting their capabilities, especially in professional environments.
• Sending inaccessible documents hindering accessibility with screen readers.
• Developing inaccessible websites with poor user experience.
• Not taking into account of content delivery or texting needs, for catering to people with intellectual disabilities or neurodivergence.

Inclusion and accessibility as a mindset

Let’s take this day to acknowledge our biases, the barriers that exist in society, the challenges that every person with disability faces while being mindful of intersectionality to strive for a world where inclusion and accessibility is a mindset than a nice-to-have or a “feature”.

Let’s pledge to work forward for a more inclusive and accessible society. It could be as simple as:

• Being mindful of needs of person with disabilities without patronizing them or making them feel unwelcome.
• Check for modes of contact and specific preferences for communication.
• Developing accessible websites and testing with real users.
• Ensuring accessibility for multimedia content (providing image captions, video transcriptions, alternative materials such as Braille and sign representations)
• Vouching for professional growth and development of PwDs by helping them identify their strengths.

Join us

We work on technological side of inclusion and accessibility by:

• Mentoring underrepresented people including PwDs in the Indian free software ecosystem.
• Developing free software assistive technologies and projects focused on inclusion and accessibility.
• Collaborating with other technological communities and organizations for improving accessibility.

We seek help in terms of:

• Research of accessibility and inclusion for mentorship and technological development.
• Development and growth of inclusion and accessibility projects that live on our GitHub.
• Sustaining our community via collaboration and funding.

If you are interested in what we are doing and want to help us in these areas, please reach out to us at fossia@riseup.net.