This week of the course was the most enlightening so far. First, I really enjoyed the Writing for Web Accessibility reading. As a person without a disability and without close friends or relatives with disabilities, I, admittedly, don’t spend a ton of time thinking about disability. When I do, I typically think about how people with disabilities navigate physical space, not virtual space. This reading sheds light on issues people with visual, auditory, learning, and other disabilities may encounter when navigating a website or digital product.

The sections on headings and unique page titles are the most relevant to my career goals. I coordinate the creation of proposals anywhere from 10 to around 80 pages of text and graphics for a living. I have never thought about accessibility for readers of my proposals. I can certainly improve the number of headings and sets of bullet points I have. I can also use unique page titles when I have to create several proposal responses in the same format for different engineering scopes, such as water/wastewater, roadway, drainage, etc. Writing concisely is the name of the game for me as a journalist and editor at heart, but I will absolutely implement these tips to make my proposals — and anything else I create — more accessible.

Secondly, I enjoyed performing the content audit for our client. I have never done anything like that in one sweep before. I conducted the audit for most of the usability criteria for my group, which really got my gears turning on how I can apply usability metrics to my engineering proposals. I want to start treating my proposals as manuals or products, and I’ve already got the perfect focus group! Engineers review my proposals to ensure I’ve represented their expertise accurately. I’m excited to potentially begin collecting more specific usability feedback from my engineers. I look forward to the next couple of weeks in the course so I can fully develop some criteria for them to evaluate.

I think usability and accessibility go hand-in-hand in that accessibility creates better usability for everyone. This reminds me of one of my favorite pieces of design history I learned about while completing my minor in architectural history: the curb cut. A curb cut is a ramped piece of sidewalk that allows wheelchair users to access the street from the sidewalk, cross it, and access the opposite sidewalk via another curb cut.

We didn’t always have curb cuts. Disabled students at the University of California, Berkeley fought for curb cuts on their campus and around the city in the ’60s, eventually achieving change after many years of activism. Today, curb cuts are required for new construction by the Americans with Disabilities Act, passed in 1990. But more people than wheelchair or mobility aid users benefit from curb cuts. Have you ever pushed a stroller or pulled a wagon down a curb cut? I have. Or worse, have you ever had to cross the street with one of those things on a pre-1990 sidewalk? This is the curb-cut effect: when an accessibility feature benefits a greater population than originally intended. Everyone benefits from the curb cut, just as I think everyone can benefit from accessibility features on the web.