- As a content creator,
have you ever added up the hours
that you spend designing content
and finding new ways to engage as many people as possible?
But what if your content was actually excluding people,
preventing them from engaging with you
and you didn't even realize?
This is why designing with accessibility in mind
is super important.
(upbeat music)
And this is exactly what this video series is about.
We'll talk about all things accessibility
and share principles and actionable steps
to get you started on your journey
to designing more accessible social media content.
If you wanna follow this series
and access all the amazing content
brought to you by Canva's Design School,
don't forget to hit the subscribe button.
Alright, let's start with the basics.
The first question is,
what do we actually mean by accessibility?
Simply put, accessibility means creating products
and services that work for people
and that allow everyone to participate.
We often think of accessibility in the physical world.
Think barrier-free buildings, ramps, or curb cuts.
These are all examples of accessible design,
but accessibility is also important in the digital world.
In fact, the great thing about the digital world
is that we can easily work around limitations
that are much more challenging to overcome
in the physical environment.
For example, you may not be able to put an elevator
in a very old building.
This means someone in a wheelchair
may not be able to access that building.
However, with an online shop,
you don't have to deal with that.
All you need to do is ensure that you bake accessibility
into your design process right from the get-go.
To get a sense of why accessibility matters,
let's crunch some numbers.
It is estimated that 15% of the world's population
experience disability around the world.
That's 1 billion people.
Think about it.
If you're in a room with another nine people,
up to two of them will experience some form of disability,
whether it's physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory.
And this is a conservative estimate.
80% of all disabilities are hidden
and a lot of disabilities are simply not diagnosed.
But let's break down this 1 billion even more.
250 million people have some form of blindness
or visual impairment.
That's twice Mexico's population.
Over 460 million people have a disabling deafness
and hearing loss,
and this represents the population of the European Union.
Finally, about 75 million people
need a wheelchair on a daily basis,
and that's all the people of Canada twice.
These numbers are only gonna go up
as we live longer and longer.
So accessibility matters
simply because when it's not not there.
This has an impact on hundreds of millions of people.
Now, talking about disability can be difficult
and you may not know where to start.
So let's start by busting a few myths.
I want you to close your eyes.
Yep, right now, close your eyes
and think of the word disability.
What images are popping up in your head?
Maybe you've just imagined people in wheelchairs
or with white sticks, and that's not wrong.
But permanent physical disability
is only part of a much bigger story.
To help us unpack how we think about disability,
I caught up with Adi.
He's an accessibility consultant at AbilityNet
and also a snowboarding expert.
But that's a story for another video.
Adi, why isn't it correct to think of disability
as a fixed state?
- We usually tend to have a black or white view
of disability as in you either have it or you don't.
Now, the truth is we may all experience
some level of disability throughout the day,
and we all inevitably experience disability
at some point in our lives as we change and grow older.
So it's important to bear in mind
that disability can be a permanent state,
but it can also be temporary or situational.
Say, for example, a temporary disability
could be you break an arm or a leg.
This will make it difficult for you to use tools
and services that are not designed in an accessible way.
We also experience disability in everyday situations.
Say, when the sun is shining so bright
and we can't see our phone screens clearly,
or when we're in a noisy environment
and we can't hear what the person next to us is saying.
As we can see from those examples,
we can all experience disability,
whether it is for a temporary period of time
or depending on the situation we're in.
Also, disability is not only physical.
It can be mental, intellectual, or sensory.
This is incredibly important to bear in mind.
So most likely, you may not even know
that someone has a disability on meeting them.
- Another disability myth that I wanna look at with you
is the idea that disability
is what holds people back at life.
- We often think that disability
is what makes life hard for people who experience it,
but what creates exclusion
and what actually disables people is bad design.
So it's not the disability itself.
The way products, services, and environments are designed
means that some people can use them easily
and some can't use them at all.
If products, services are not designed
to be accessible and inclusive,
they will inevitably prevent a lot of people
from accessing them.
We're talking at least 1 billion people.
So this is what we call a mismatch,
the gap between our needs
and the way the world is designed.
It's these mismatches that cause exclusion
rather than disability itself.
If the world was designed differently,
people would be far less disabled.
Also, what we should understand
is that when you make a product
or a service more accessible,
it usually leads to a better experience,
not only for people with disabilities, but for everybody.
- Absolutely, and this actually leads us to the third myth.
We usually think of disability as being less
or having less of something.
- Disability does not have to be a minus.
If we understand that bad design is what holds people back,
that means in the right environment,
people with disabilities
can express their full potential and thrive.
- That's so true, Adi, thank you for saying that.
And actually, this is a perfect time
to introduce you to Gina,
a social entrepreneur based in Mexico.
Gina runs some extraordinary projects with blind people
that turn this disability myth right on its head.
So let's hear it from Gina herself.
- So thank you very much.
And yes, I do run workshops for blind people.
I do photography for the blind.
And I know it sounds like a very crazy idea.
And how could this be possible?
How blind people could take photos?
But it is possible when you actually focus
on all that they do have.
It's a fact that blind people cannot see,
but they perceive
and they can smell and listen and touch
and taste things.
And that's really what we focus
when we're teaching photography to blind people,
it's to use all the senses to communicate,
to share how they're perceiving the world.
So for instance, if they're gonna take a photo of you,
what we'll ask is if you can talk to them
and the sound of your voice is their guidance
of where to point the camera.
If they can get close to you
and start mapping up with their touch,
how tall you are,
what kind of clothes you're wearing,
how long is your hair,
all that is information they're getting
to be able to take a photograph.
I know at this point you must be thinking,
"Well, and what's the point
if they cannot get to see the photograph?"
But the reality is that for them
being able to take photos, it's a way to connect,
to fulfill the potential.
The camera becomes a bridge between the invisible
and the visible,
and the photo becomes their voice.
And the great thing is that participants
are becoming more independent thanks to this.
They keep growing.
They become part of society.
They just realize that a label
will never define who they are.
The photo workshops are just part of the story.
The reality is that we're also doing these sensory dinners
where once again blind people get to show
what they're capable of doing
when you see what they do have.
In the dinners in the dark,
you don't get to see anything, not even your hand.
It's a moment where you walk in
and you let go
and trust your guides.
In the dark,
the leader becomes a follower,
and the follower, the leader.
The dinners are quite powerful
because they turn a conversation completely upside down.
It's a moment where your biases
are outsmarted completely.
It's not about how you look,
it's not about your titles.
It's about being present.
And in a way, by turning off the external lights,
what we're looking into
is turning on the internal light,
how do we perceive and we connect beyond labels.
And the best guides for this are blind people,
inviting us to see beyond labels.
And when the lights go up
and suddenly you can get to see your team
and who's around you
and the people who've been leading you
and what you ate
and how the space looks,
it's also a moment of awareness
and realizing how I would've judged someone
from how they look.
I would've judged myself even
in how I'm interacting with others.
And that's the beauty of the dinners in the dark.
It's a space to just connect
and level the play field as human beings.
- Thank you, Gina.
What these examples show
is how we need to reframe
how we think about disability
and the role that we can play to design a world
that doesn't create or perpetrate exclusion.
It turns out there's a lot you can do
as a content creator to make sure
that your social media is more accessible and inclusive.
And if you wanna know how,
watch our next two videos in the series.
We're gonna start with text
and continue with color, images, and videos.
To accompany this series,
we've put together a workbook full of extra resources
and exercises.
To access your copy, simply scan the QR Code
or click the link below in the description.
(gentle music)