Applying open source principles to accessibility design and development

Nearly 20% of the American population suffers from a disability, but too often websites, devices, and technology do not account for this population.

Why? Simply put, creating accessible technology that all users can succeed with is hard.  It requires an understanding of the accessibility requirements and clear communication between designers and developers to ensure that the technology works for all users.

We’ve seen open source development radically change the technology landscape in the past 20 years. What if the same minds who are collaborating to push forward container, cloud, and AI tech came together to find a solution for making technology accessible for all users?

At Discover Financial Services, we decided to apply the power of open source development to the accessibility problem, resulting in a project called Accessibility Theme Builder.

This open source project builds accessibility in to design systems in an effortless manner for designers and developers. It allows a designer to customize a design system and then outputs machine-readable asset types, such as CSS files, that developers can use for their applications or component libraries. These files are generated in such a way to ensure safe styles for people with dyslexia, color blindness, and motion sensitivity.

At All Things Open, we’ll introduce this project, which is now incubating at FINOS, and invite you to join us on our open source journey to making accessibility easier to implement for designers and developers.

Find us at the Inclusion & Diversity in Open Source event on October 15, catch our demo about the project, or come chat with us at the booth.

12:45 pm ET in Ballroom B

Accessibility Reimagined

Lise Noble, Distinguished Engineer, UX/UI, Discover Financial Services

The Featured Blog Posts series highlights posts from partners and members of the All Things Open community leading up to ATO 2023.