Common Accessibility Mistakes (aka stuff I learned the hard way) #1 (): Don’t repeat redundant information in your accessibility label!

What not to do?
When I was a n00b at Twitter, I shipped “Tweet: <tweet text>” as the label for every tweet.

How to do better?
The context alone lets us know this is a tweet. After all this was IN the Twitter app! It’s important for labels to be succinct and put the important info up first. If the context is already there, we don’t need to state it again.

. @jordyn2493’s awesome WWDC talk explains this so well! “So, if I'm in a music player the context is clear that we're dealing with songs.
So, having VoiceOver speak, “Play song button” Or “next song”, is unnecessary.” https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/254/

Common Accessibility Mistakes (aka stuff I learned the hard way) #2: “Separate but equal” is not a thing, i.e. do not design a separate experience for users of assistive tech.

There are many reasons for this, and I’ll just name a few here…

1. Separate experiences are the opposite of inclusivity. It makes one group “other.”

2. Separate experiences often require someone preferring your “accessibility” version to do MORE than someone who doesn’t. Click here or restart the app, etc.
…

3. Separate experiences will rarely be equal. If they were, they’d just be one experience.

4. Separate experience are twice the work. This often ends up leading to them diverging as time goes on. (see above)

5. Separate experiences that “autodetect” assistive tech…

…rarely work. While there are some APIs to know if, for example, a screen reader is running, you will likely not know HOW that tech is being used. There are also plenty of settings that you simply do not have insight into at all. So it’s very easy to get things wrong.