Bookmark: "How many people with disabilities use our site?"

2022-04-21

Bookmarked:

How many people with disabilities use our site? hidde.blog

Hidde de Vries’ short and to-the-point article between analytics and accessibility contains three important highlights:

It is impossible to reliably measure “disability” through web analytics
Even if it were, those numbers would rather be a measure for the quality of a site (e.g. being avoided by users with certain disabilities) than its potential reach
Health-related variables should never be a metric for privacy reasons

But the most important one is at the end:

Accessibility features on our site won’t benefit everyone all the time, that would be an exaggeration, but they often benefit many more people than just specific groups of people with disabilities.

So stop obsessing over inaccurate numbers and simply think “inclusive” at all times. Problem solved, no user tracking necessary.

I'm Sebastian, Sociologist and Interaction Designer. This journal is mostly about bringing together social science and design for inclusive, privacy-focused, and sustainable "human-first" digital strategies. I also tend to a "digital garden" with carefully curated resources.

My occasionally sent email newsletter has all of the above, and there is of course also an RSS feed or my Mastodon/Fediverse profile.

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