Broken Buttons

A thought experiment

Note: This page contains a button without any visual text on it to make a point to visual users that accessibility issues should be treated as bugs in software development.

Imagine you saw the following button:

You might think that the button is broken, that somehow the content is being displayed incorrectly. You'd think it's a bug.

So you tell the web developers who made that button, and they say that whatever issue you have with the website, it's not a priority. Everything works fine for them.

But it gets worse, because you would then find out that other people got the following content:

But by the time you found out, if you ever found out, the promotion was over and you lost out.

That would suck, wouldn't it?

What if that would happen every day, and it was about much more important things? Imagine you encountered a similar issue every time you tried to use public transport, access healthcare, or apply for a job?

My plea to you:

Treat accessibility issues as functional bugs, because that is what they are, and prioritise them accordingly. Pretend like a lifetime supply of free coffee depended on it.