Sam Proulx

" Understanding how assistive technology evolves is crucial because it foretells the future of interface design. "

" Confidence is crucial — nobody wants to lose money or receive a product they can’t use, so unclear or unlabeled controls cause people with disabilities to give up faster. "

" People with disabilities often pay more to buy from stores they trust are accessible and where they feel confident. "

" Designers and developers can turn on a screen reader to do a technical test, but they can’t understand the real user experience without actual users. "

" Consistency is so important that sometimes even consistency in failure works if it means I only have to learn the workaround once. "

" The most important thing you can do is listen and watch and put assumptions aside about what is easy or hard. "

" The more payment providers you offer, the higher the chance everyone can pick what works best for them. "

" If you want to understand the actual experience, you need a native assistive technology user involved. "

" With cloud apps, users don’t get to choose when to upgrade, which challenges maintaining accessibility continuity. "

" Live captions on mobile can caption not only audio on the device but sounds and speech in the real world around you. "

" The electric toothbrush started as an accessibility solution but became better for everyone. "

" Artificial intelligence promises new independence for people with disabilities but raises questions of bias and privacy. "

" Retrofitting accessibility at a later date is difficult, costly, and demoralizing. "

" Desktop requires understanding multiple browsers and assistive tech variants, increasing complexity. "

" Gaming accessibility is still considered an inspirational hack rather than a built-in feature. "

" Starting your accessibility efforts on mobile makes the process simpler and easier to reuse when expanding to other platforms. "

" Separate accessible designs are never equal, so we must design inclusively from the start to unlock all the benefits of accessibility. "

" Whenever someone makes a game accessible today, it’s considered an inspiring hack not a built-in feature. "

" Self-identifying with a disability can humanize accessibility issues beyond checklists and code requirements. "

" Thinking about accessibility is really thinking about creating technology that works for all people all the time. "

" Focus changes are critical to inform screen reader users when dialogs open or content changes. "

" Low vision users often invert colors and use magnification levels as high as 400 percent to reduce eye strain. "

" You may need to operate the prototype on behalf of users whose assistive tech can’t click or interact with clickable prototypes. "

" Screen magnification users are a great place to start because your prototypes and tools will mostly just work with minimal adaptation. "

" I can’t remember a day when there wasn’t a talking computer in my house. "

" Every piece of assistive technology is highly customized for the individual, so labs often fail to replicate users’ ideal setups. "

" Google Docs is not a web page; it’s a web app that requires handling many keyboard shortcuts and focus management. "

" Magnification can cover the entire screen two to ten times, and users pan around to see different areas. "