Going mobile is the key to accessibility design

We’ve seen a lot of PR recently about progress from the tech giants to make social media platforms more accessible. 

But accessibility is still a major issue, despite the fact that people with disabilities make up 15% of the global population and have a disposable income of over $8 trillion. According to a recent accessibility study, people with disabilities find social media platforms difficult to use, including 22% of people with visual impairments, 17% of people with hearing disabilities, 23% of people with cognitive disabilities, and 27% with speech impairments.

There is so much scope for innovation and opportunities for brands to... form partnerships with key innovators and activists in this area.

These stats reveal a massive need and opportunity for brands to become genuinely inclusive through far greater accessibility. The onus is not just on social media platforms but on all brands to ensure mobile technology is as inclusive and accessible as possible. For example, as a consumer brand, Amazon is billed as the most convenient retailer on the planet, but it’s not always so convenient if you happen to have a disability. Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa is perhaps more accessible than most, however, it is not designed to work for Downs Syndrome or other people with speech impediments.

Accessibility to technology must be more than a box-ticking exercise to say “we have subtitles and text-to-voice.” Striving to make life easier for all customers should be a daily goal for all consumer-facing brands – to contribute more positively to society in all markets. We’ve constantly worked with Samsung globally on a wide variety of innovations that support people right across the disability spectrum. From our Tallk app enabling Spanish-speaking ALS patients to communicate as well as control utilities in their homes, such as lights and TV, to GoodVibes haptic app for the deaf-blind and a high-tech swimming cap to enable blind Paralympic swimmers better.

There is an onus on brands, not to simply create tools, products, and services designed for people with disabilities, but to make them affordable and bring them into the mass market. 

Prioritizing accessibility and innovating in this area is not just the morally correct thing to do, it can be exceptionally lucrative - as Microsoft demonstrated with the launch of its Xbox Adaptive Controller designed to meet the needs of gamers with limited mobility, which achieved staggering worldwide commercial success. Recently, TikTok added automated captions to open up the platform to deaf and hard of hearing people and Instagram also launched a new captions feature for its video Stories and Reels.

There is so much scope for innovation and opportunities for brands to not only create new products for all audiences, but to form partnerships with key innovators and activists in this area, such as the inspirational Neil Harbisson, the founder of the Cyborg Foundation, who created the "eyeborg" headset to overcome a visual impairment called achromatopsia, which means he sees the world in shades of grey. The headset turns colors into sounds, allowing him to decipher them by ‘hearing’ them.

No brand can call itself inclusive if it is not thinking about accessibility from the very beginning.

Gaming giant Ubisoft has worked with activist Chris Robinson, at DeafGamerTV, to improve accessibility options for deaf and hard-of-hearing players, and Carlos Vasquez, another activist in the gaming sphere, worked as a consultant with NetherRealm Studios, the company behind Mortal Kombat, resulting in the brand adding audio accessibility features to its games.