Accessibility is Delicious: Food analogies for digital inclusion
Posted on May 26, 2020
On This Page
This is a post about using stories about food to talk about making sure disabled people can use technology. One story is about blueberry muffins. You cannot put the blueberries into the muffin after it is cooked. This shows that you have to think about accessibility from the beginning, not after a website is already built. Another story is about ice cream cones. If you ignore your ice cream cone it gets very messy. In the same way, you cannot ignore accessibility until the end of the project. There are other stories about cakes, pizza, eggs and curry. All these stories came from people who work hard to make sure the digital world works for everyone.
For many years, I (and many others) have said that organizations need to “bake” accessibility into their culture and DNA. Then, a few years ago I noticed a lot of food analogies popping up in accessibility talks and writings and on Twitter.
In 2018 I did a presentation where my co-presenter and I offered real cookies to the audience. Later that same year I arranged for cookies to be baked in New Zealand [...]