What is digital accessibility, and why does it matter for web3?

Before we go too far into the journey today, the first thing I want to do is get some definitions out of the way. Some things I'm going to review may not be terminology in your vocabulary today, but hopefully we will change that! Whether you are comfortable in the web2 space or not you still might find yourself asking, what the heck do these things mean? Well I'm here to help clarify that!

Definitions for this conversation

• web2 - the evolution of the internet from basic html web pages to peer 2 peer content and data sharing in a centralized environment.
• web3 - the evolution of the internet that gives individuals the ability to monitor their own data, introduces cryptocurrency and the metaverse, and decentralizes that data (meaning the data is not reliant on one source of truth).
• digital accessibility - the practice of removing barriers to environments in the digital landscape that prevent interaction or access to information.
• assistive technology - devices that are used to interact with technology as we know it today, such as screen readers, head wands, mouth sticks, talk to text, and many more.

Also, feel free to check out my web3 glossary of terms PDF if you really want to get into some 101 level knowledge on this space.

Digital accessibility is NOT only for folks with disabilities

There is a misconception around the word accessibility and the thinking that when creating an accessible experience it only applies to people who have a permanent disability and use special technology to interact with the digital spaces we've created. Even then, the misconception goes further, where the image is that those folks only use a certain type of assistive technology. That couldn't be further from the truth. Everyone, and I mean everyone, can benefit from implementing accessibility into their digital products and services.

There is something that time and time again I will always reiterate, and I first heard it from Christine Ha, is that we are all temporarily abled.

We are aging, and as we do so we become more and more reliant on technology to be adaptive to our specific wants and needs. This could be as small as needing more contrast or a larger font size, to the ability to use technology without sight or hearing.

Applying accessibility to web3

Let's take a moment to think about how we apply digital accessibility practices to web2. We can use this to our advantage in two ways. The first is straightforward, we still leverage a lot of web2 technology to build and support our web3 environments. I'll talk about that a little bit more later, but keep in mind that with this being an emerging space, we are using a mash of web2 and web3 tools to create.

The other way we look at leveraging what we know about web2, is that growth and transition into web3 will still use all the foundations of what it means to be accessible in web2. So the groundwork is already laid out for us, and we just need to adapt and expand what we have for web3.

There is already an established set of guidelines for what it entails to be accessible in the web2 space. Those guidelines are a living breathing document that grow and change as the technology changes, or as the ability to provide a clear method of execution to solve for certain accessibility implications changes or becomes more prominent. Those web2 guidelines are referred to as Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). If you haven't heard of WCAG, that's okay, but it's a really great place to start understanding what it means to create accessible web2 experiences.

Now, if you look at those guidelines and get immediately overwhelmed, that is an okay first reaction! The documentation can seem a bit technical, and that is because we need to be able to define actionable acceptance levels to test against. We can break the document down in a high level to talk about things like color contrast, image alt text, consistent organization of content, and so much more. However, sometimes it's easier to talk to an expert about the different methods and approaches to digital accessibility, and I'll always be available as a resource to do so. Send me an email if you have questions about this, or DM me on Twitter.

So let's take that foundational understanding of digital accessibility and look at where we stand in web3 so far.

Accessible AR/VR experiences

I won't go into every bit of detail about how to make an accessible experience in AR/VR, because it honestly isn't my area of expertise ... yet. I aim to do better and be better at this myself, but one thing to know is that most of us who are building these experiences, or ideating these spaces, are not thinking with an inclusive cap on.

From spatial awareness, to size, ability to change position, and so much more - all of these topics weigh on folks ability to be included in this new shift in technology. A great resource I like to lean on in this space is Equal Entry's continuous writing on the subject. Equal Entry's AR/VR/XR blog covers in much more detail all the things we can be thinking about and adding into our experiences as we create these wonderful new places.

The key thing to walk away with here is, if you are building in this space, you should ask yourself for every new feature, every enhancement, every idea "would this hurt the accessibility of the experience?" or "how can I make this feature more accessible?" The answer isn't always an "all-inclusive" approach. And what I mean by that is, sometimes you will have to create more than one way to do something for it to be accessible.

This can sound like a lot of extra work, but what is more work is seeing your experiences all the way to the end, only to realize you need to re work everything from start to finish. If you implement these questions and this logic into your process from the beginning, you can factor that in to the time, budget, and qualifications of those executing. It will enhance the experience for everyone, and save you from spending time to fix things that don't work for folks after the fact.

Instead of thinking of accessibility as an add-on, or a nice to have enhancement, it should be part of an inclusive approach to building from the first idea to the final line of code.

An accessible web3 toolkit

When we think of web3, we might first think of the metaverse, the sandbox, or anything that lives in a digital virtual world. But web3 is so much more than that. We have blockchain technology that affords us the opportunity to improve data security, scalability, interoperability, and privacy beyond web2. One might think of the NFT projects selling like crazy right now, but this is the chaos before the calm. This is the time where we are exploring and pushing limits in a very niche area, that will allow us to uncover the vast amount of opportunity that web3 can offer.

While we are building and creating these web3 spaces, we are still heavily reliant on web2 to do so. We are still leveraging many web2 communication channels to talk about web3. We are still building our programs, DAOs, NFTs, applications, games, etc. websites that live in web2 spaces. We are still utilizing and leveraging social media like Twitter and Instagram to spread the word. Our communities thrive in apps like Discord and Telegram.

So we can take our handy WCAG web2 guidelines referenced above, and immediately apply those approaches to how we decide the ways we communicate with our teams and community. You may be thinking, how do I take something that already exists and make it accessible, I didn't build Discord or Twitter. And that is an excellent thought. While we can ask the teams that build programs we use today to implement more accessible experiences it is hard to advocate for change as only one person. So implementing quick-win workarounds can really help make your project and team seem more inclusive while still leveraging tools that maximize your success.

Remember that there is a big push for inclusion in web2, and most of these tools already have settings or features that do enhance accessibility, you just may not know what they are. I encourage you to take a look at whatever tools you are using, and seeing what there is to offer.