So What's the Point of All This?

I started working as a Student Web Designer about a year ago. I have been incredibly fortunate to have a supervisor who heavily prioritizes providing professional development for those of us in student roles. They are also incredibly passionate about accessibility and tasked me with studying materials about accessible web design as a side project at work. The way that people interact with technology has always been an interest to me from an anthropological perspective, which was a key factor in attracting me to User Interface and Experience Design. Because of that, learning about accessible design was something I was more than happy to do. I believe strongly in human-centered design and the idea that my work can be used to help others.

What was interesting about my time spent reading through things like the W3C and WCAG guidelines was noticing how intuitive many of these guidelines were to universally effective and user-first design practices. That sparked the idea in my head: as a fairly abled person, I never realized how many aspects of design I take for granted as just "good design," while many people rely on them to function. For me, poor design choices are just a mild annoyance and inconvenience. For many, poor design choices are genuine hurdles that limit their ability to function in society.

I already knew that I was going to make my Senior Thesis a UI/UX project. Since I had a decent amount of experience coding HTML, CSS, and Javascript, I figured that building a website from scratch would be a project I could enjoy. Combined with my desire to experiment and step just outside of the box of convention, I was inspired by the idea of making an anti-design piece that highlighted the importance of accessible design as universal design–not just designing for the average user or with the extremity users in mind, but instead designing for all.

Part of my research involved doing a short informational interview with my supervisor, Rae, since they are an incredibly qualified individual to speak on both web design and accessibility. One important thing to note that I learned from the interview was that there is no specific code of ethics that software developers in the United States have to follow in the way that other engineers do. Given that tech companies have generally free reign nowadays, even by our laissez-faire government's standards, it is up to the individual developers and software engineers to choose human-centered and ethical practices. It's not a secret to most that these big tech companies do not allow for that choice to be made.

This is a problem because of the consequences that result from their preference towards dark design practices. While there are legal ramifications for failing to meet accessibility standards, they are often just fines that multi-billion dollar companies can shrug off. However, these failures have a greater implication for people that are affected by them. For disabled people, the world is already relatively smaller, but losing access to digital resources further shrinks the world for them. This is because of how deeply intertwined our lives are becoming with technology, especially because of how much the conveniences of it can often serve to improve accessibility for disabled people. Being able to have many needs easily met without having to leave the house is an incredible boon, but it is meaningless if the means of meeting those needs doesn’t function correctly. Because of that, advocacy for web accessibility isn’t just for the sake of itself, but for basic human rights. That is ultimately what really made me believe that this was a project worth doing.

A key aspect of what makes me passionate about graphic design is how much it helps combat my inherent cynicism and misanthropy. I always look forward to engaging with others about design, seeing their work and sharing mine with them. There is a magic to feeling connected with others that I would wish on everybody in this world, and I hope that I can make that more possible by making human-centered user experiences with the technology that is so key to how we all interact with the world today and for the foreseeable future.