“Unlocking everyone’s potential” – Global Accessibility Day at Bitforge

The workshop room in our Zurich office was filled to the last square meter last Tuesday when we hosted the Global Accessibility Day lecture series. There were certainly around thirty guests in attendance, demonstrating that the topic is attracting increasing awareness.

ETH Zurich is a pioneer when it comes to accessibility and has created a special position for this topic. In her presentation, Manu Heim, project manager for barrier-free communication at the university, showed how and in what form ETH ensures accessibility in all its areas. The “Accessibility at ETH” program is dedicated to the topic in a structural, digital and cultural context.

From periodic building inspections, to all digital products that must first be approved by ETH before they go online, to awareness-raising campaigns within the university – something is happening at ETH. And the program of 14 sub-projects is far from complete. Funding of over three million francs is secured until 2025 and, according to Manu, there is still a lot to do. But we are making good progress. True to the motto “On the road to greater accessibility – step by step”.

“Part of Design” is the guiding principle of Goran Arnold, digital product consultant at Apfelschule. The association is a self-help organization for blind and visually impaired people in the field of mobile devices and digital accessibility and is active in German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland. For Goran, accessibility is the basis of every design – so it is part of every project planning right from the start.

In his presentation, he used the Navilens app as an example to show that accessibility is not just for people with disabilities, but for everyone. The app, which was actually designed for people with a visual impairment, can be used for navigation by anyone – including tourists who are unfamiliar with a location, for example.

At Bitforge, we also pay attention to accessibility right from the start. It is important to us that our products are inclusive and therefore accessible to everyone. A phrase that we are particularly familiar with in the development of digital products is: “Yes, we’ll make it accessible later”. But it’s not that simple – especially if accessibility is not planned from the outset. And after the first version of an app, there is usually no investment in further development.

For us, accessibility is therefore part of the project right from the start. Our collaborative process brings everyone involved to the table: the customer and their team, our developers, UI designers and accessibility experts at this stage. These can be our internal specialists, who cover this expertise in all areas, or we can get external advice from people affected by the Apple School, for example.

Either way, all three speakers agreed: accessibility is not a topic that can be worked on at the end. It is part of the process from the ground up. Only in this way can existing tools be optimally integrated or new features be considered. This makes it possible to “exploit the potential of all” – and not exclude a large group of users from the outset. (Read more about this in our blog article on accessibility for apps)

The event met with enormous interest and was – from our point of view – a complete success. We will be holding it again in a similar setting in September and will of course inform you of the exact date in good time.

In the meantime, we are of course looking forward to hearing your ideas on how we can make the world more accessible and inclusive for everyone. Perhaps you would also like to make your own digital products more accessible? Then let’s see how we can support each other.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the three speakers and all the guests for coming along. And, of course, thanks for the exciting discussions that took place during the drinks reception afterwards.