Who is accessibility for?

Accessibility is for everyone. Its goal is to make products, services, places, and information usable by all people, no matter what abilities they have. But accessibility mainly focuses on helping people with disabilities because they often face the biggest challenges when something isn’t designed with everyone in mind.

Over a billion people or 15% of the world's population experience some form of disability.

What accessibility helps with

Accessibility makes sure people can:

• see, hear, read, and understand content and information, and
• move around and use digital tools, buildings, services, and physical places.

The idea is not just to include people with disabilities, but also to make things better for everyone. When something works well for people with disabilities, it often works better for all users, too, like captions on videos helping people who are in loud places.

The biggest focus is on people with disabilities, but accessibility also benefits people of all ages and backgrounds

Why it matters for everyone

Accessibility doesn’t only relate to disability. It overlaps with things like:

• Inclusion: making sure no one is left out,
• Universal design: designing with all people in mind, and
• Reducing barriers related to age, language, location, or education.

Because of this, accessibility is also connected to the broader idea of fair and equal access for all people, no matter who they are or where they live.

Accessibility is also one part of the user experience. So, good accessibility is good usability.