"It's just … I don't like it," I insist, emphatic over a spoken word band video. "It's not accessible work. It's not understandable. It's mixed with the music in a way that words get dropped."
While I am a user experience designer during work hours, I write poetry in my off time and perform on the weekend. In poetry when you say accessibility, it is not "does this follow the contrast standards for the Americans with Disabilities Act? Are we using appropriate Aria labeling for screen readers?" Accessibility is being easily understood or appreciated. It is being easy to reach, grasp by a person that doesn't have expertise in poetry.
This is one part of accessibility that I feel is sometimes lost in tech. We are more often than not, digital natives or tech enamored. Tech workers in the United States (generally) earn above the poverty line, work in cities with good infrastructure, have a lot of provided perks and flexibility. Designing for low tech is as alien to some as designing for…
