July is disability pride month, and I love that so many free software projects are making efforts to call attention to accessibility and wellness features, as well as highlighting some of the disabled people in the various communities who help make free software possible.
At first I hesitated to make this post because on most days, I don’t really think of myself as disabled. I certainly was while I was in kidney failure, but I’m doing quite well these days. That said, there are still minor disabilities I have to work around. I suppose it’s better to acknowledge them and embrace them than pretend they’re not there.
The hard truth that I’ve learned through years of various medical ups and downs is that at best, you are only ever temporarily abled. You never know when you will experience a new challenge, a new diagnosis, or a new life-altering event that will have you looking for ways to make the tools and products you use adapt to your needs.
When I broke my ankle in three places and spent months trying to get around before I could walk again, I had a newfound appreciation for wheelchair ramps, curb cuts, elevators, and other similar features.
Of course, many of these features are useful for people who have no issues with mobility. Accessibility features aren’t exclusively for people who are “disabled;” accessibility features are just features, and often they benefit everyone!
Turning that same logic toward computing, that’s essentially the problem I have with lumping a bunch of features together in one spot and labeling them all “accessibility features.” It introduces an unnecessary barrier. People either avoid that section in the system settings (“I’m not disabled, there’s nothing for me here”), or they manage to find a feature that would be useful to them but think “wow, that sounds useful! But that’s an accessibility feature, and I’m not disabled.”
Accessibility features are just features, and should be grouped with other settings or utilities that fit into similar themes.
Getting back to my own lived experience, there are some disabilities that I deal with on a daily basis. Some have implications to my computing life. Some of them have implications more for when I’m away from the keyboard.
For one, I have astigmatism, which affects my vision. I have difficulties with dark interfaces. I used to prefer the trendy dark modes available in most operating systems and apps, with light text on dark backgrounds, but I am simply unable to use them now. The text begins to jitter and jump around, everything gets fuzzy, and then the headaches start. I can’t use it.
Light mode isn’t something that I prefer. It’s an accessibility feature. I require it to use my computer.
(As an aside, that’s why I wish the light mode in GNOME applied to notifications and the panel as well. I can use extensions to achieve the same end result, but it would be awesome if it were a fully-supported feature. Thankfully, work is actively under way to make this a reality!)
I also suffer from Meniere’s disease, and reduced motion was helpful when I was frequently dealing with episodes of vertigo as a result of it. Thankfully, I’ve not experienced any of these issues since I stopped dialysis, but for a while it was truly debilitating.
Meniere’s disease also makes me partially deaf in one of my ears. Being able to fade audio between left and right channels, and occasionally enable sound over-amplication, is often helpful. These are accessibility features, even if they aren’t labeled as such.
Following each of my kidney transplants I had to go through a period of medication adjustments, and the most potent medicine gave me terrible tremors. I got to the point where I could not legibly write my own name. That’s why I completely gave up writing notes and other items by hand, and became so incredibly thankful to be able to type everything, and store it all on devices I could carry with me everywhere. (The tremors have since subsided after adjusting doses and eventually moving to an alternate medication).
Alternate input methods are accessibility features. For some people, typing is painful or impossible, but being able to input text via handwriting recognition makes computing possible. Others, like me, find the opposite. And some people require voice input and dictation. These are all accessibility features.
There are hundreds of other features that make computing more accessible, which I don’t personally have a need for, nor any experience using. Perhaps one day I might need to enable more and more of them. For now, I’m just glad they exist for the people who can benefit from them.
I’m grateful for all the people who are working to improve accessibility, for everyone. Happy disability pride month!