Beyond Band-Aids: Rethinking Accessibility Widgets
Third-party accessibility widgets are often advertised as a quick fix to make your website accessible. The truth is that no third-party widget can replace a fundamental commitment to designing and maintaining accessible web content… But is there another use case for this kind of tool? We recently launched our twist on the “band-aid” accessibility widget: a set of optional tools to increase perceptibility of our main library website, with a special focus on features for neurodiverse users, such as a dyslexic-friendly font. A conversation with a disability advocacy student group inspired us to build this open-source widget that cedes some control over our site design to the user to improve accessibility, readability, and their overall experience. These features are a step toward ensuring that our diverse population of users has equitable access to our website content. In this talk, we’ll discuss how we used universal design principles to design this widget, give a demonstration, and share user feedback.
