What did you read or watch that surprised, delighted or disappointed you? Why?
In the instructional material this week, we learned a bit about designing web content for accessibility. Coming from a software development background, I was surprised to learn about all of the criteria frontend developers should bear in mind when designing web content. In undergraduate courses, I worked mostly on the frontend of projects. I designed and built several different web pages, but I was never formally taught to keep accessibility in mind during the design process. I was learning the basics of web design, but I’m still fairly surprised that we were never offered a course or even extra reading about designing web content for accessibility issues.
Realizing my own ignorance towards accessible web content made me realize how important technical writers and intentional design are. Designing and creating a webpage involves a lot of work, so I find it absolutely integral that there are people like technical writers contributing to the design process. It’s important that there are people who are hired to address these kinds of issues. After I read the material on accessibility, I started seeing issues on most web pages I’m on. When I see an image, I tend to go into the HTML and see if there’s alternative text for users with low vision, and I usually find that most websites either don’t have alternative text, or the alternative text is not helpful. I would be really interested to see how this issue is tackled in the future. I hope more people become aware of the gaps in our technology and hire more technical writers to design content that works for everyone.
What was most meaningful for your own career goals? Why?
While I was thinking about how companies could realistically tackle accessibility issues with their content, I kept thinking about the role AI could play in the solution. AI is a bit of a touchy subject because a lot of us are told that it will eventually replace us in the workplace. However, I can’t help but see how useful AI could be in tackling a lot of issues with web content–the issue in the front of my mind mainly being accessibility. AI can be trained to take in content and provide the user with information. It can easily be used to translate or read a document, but what if it could be used to describe a picture without alternative text to a user with low visibility? What if it could scan a webpage and reformat the information to be digestible to a user with specific needs?
It would be amazing if accessibility was thoroughly discussed in web development, but I don’t really see it happening yet. As a future technical writer, I would be really interested to see how we can work alongside AI to help users navigate the entire internet or even just a web page. Although many people might say that software developers should be the ones designing an AI tool, I think technical writers would be a huge asset in the creation and design processes. We need content experts at the forefront of the process in order to make a tool directly for specific users. Whether it’s by developing an AI tool to “translate” a webpage according to one’s disability or overhauling a website’s content to be generally accessible, technical writers are a valuable asset in the process, and I hope I can apply this knowledge to my own career one day.