Britne Jenke explains why accessible workplace design matters. Factory workers watch training videos on phones, so transcripts help them navigate. Common excuses like "we don't have disabled employees" or "it costs too much" ignore that accessibility benefits everyone.
There's no such thing as normal when it comes to the interactions we design in our workplaces. They depend heavily on what we can see, hear, say, and touch. And assuming these senses are enabled all of the time really impacts our ability to create experiences for all of us. So I was designing training videos for workers in a factory. They like to watch their training videos on their mobile devices on the factory floor. Adding transcripts made these easier to navigate for our employees. So if you aren't considering accessibility now, you're not only missing out on the world's largest minority group, you're actually making workplaces harder to navigate, even for yourself. So I've heard the reasons we're not doing accessibility at work. We don't have employees that need this stuff. We don't have the resources or the budget for this. Or worse, we follow the ADA and that's all we do. So how are we going to fix our workplaces? Thank you.
