# Let's Talk About Accessibility

DevFeed: [Let's Talk About Accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/let-s-talk-about-accessibility-38433.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://eevis.codes/blog/2021-05-21/lets-talk-about-accessibility/>)

Author: Eevis Panula

Published: 2023-01-03T08:57:25.303000Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Eevis Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/eevis-blog.md>)

Topics: [Accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/accessibility.md>), [React Native](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/react-native.md>), [Web](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/web.md>), [Users](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/users.md>)

Tags: [accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/accessibility.md>), [automated](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/automated.md>), [developers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/developers.md>), [react-native](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/react-native.md>), [users](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/users.md>), [web](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/web.md>)

## AI overview

This opinion article explains why accessibility awareness should involve developers, designers, product owners, budget decision-makers, and content creators. It highlights accessibility barriers on websites and apps, discusses the limits of automated testing, and references Global Accessibility Awareness Day and the GAAD Pledge.

## Source excerpt

Yesterday (20th of May 2021) marked the 10th Global Accessibility Awareness Day, celebrated on the third Thursday of each May. It started from a single blog post from Joe Devon and has grown into a global event since then. One example of what Global Accessibility Awareness Day, or GAAD, has achieved is GAAD Pledge. The first company to take the pledge was Facebook, committing to make the React Native framework fully accessible. Why is GAAD Important? I believe raising awareness about accessibility is essential. I mean, if we, who are creating the web, aren't aware of these things, how in the heck can we assume the sites and apps will be built in a way that everyone, whether they have a disability or not, can use them? But it is not just that. The importance of raising awareness is not that only developers would know; it's about the other roles too. If designers ignore accessibility, some things (say, color choices) are hard to fix on the developers' end. If the product owner cares more about IE6 users than accessibility, well, those bugs get prioritized. If the people who decide on the budget see other things as more important, developers can't fix that. WebAIM has conducted its yearly analysis on the top million sites on the internet. In February 2021, 97.4% of these sites had detectable accessibility errors. And as they've used an automated tool for the analysis, it doesn't even catch all the failures. (Automated testing tools catch only about 15-40% of the accessibility failures.) So this means that sites like Google, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and others on the top million sites list have many accessibility barriers. About 1 billion people worldwide need websites to be designed and developed with accessibility in mind in order to be able to use those sites. If we don't do that, we are excluding a hell of a number of people. You know, actual people, and not just numbers. But it's Not Only About the Websites Okay, I've been writing from a perspective of a (web) d