The Title II requirements are a timely reminder to make sure your accessible design is up to scratch. But the gold standard for accessible design isn’t that it’s ‘compliant’, it’s that you’re thoughtful and transparent about what users can expect (and trust) from their experience with your products. Vendors who misrepresent the accessibility of their product are missing the point entirely.
There’s a looming deadline approaching for EdTechers selling into the US. The deadline for mandatory adherence to WCAG 2.1, Level AA is just over a quarter away, requiring all colleges and universities to ensure their webpages, online course content, and mobile apps are accessible to people with disabilities.
Your engineering team might be scrambling to review the requirements and tick the boxes ahead of April 26, or, like us, the mindset of maintaining and improving accessibility is just business as usual. I’m hoping it’s the latter, but recently I’ve been reminded that a true and conscious commitment to exceptional accessible design is often just that - the exception to the rule.
I was infuriated to learn of another vendor cutting corners and misleading institutions on the standards of their accessibility; even worse, as it is marketed as an assistive technology, it makes me question whether we risk accessibility—or ‘compliance’—being warped into a sales buzzword and not the foundational design principle it should be.
Vendors using misleading accessibility claims are only hurting those who need the most help and there is no place for this in EdTech.
I said before that accessible design at Genio is just business as usual. In reality, this undermines the thought and heavy investment that goes into our everyday approach.
For us, this is borne from our values-driven approach to design. Ultimately, our mission is to unlock better learning for everyone. This means that we have in-house accessibility experts who play an active and foundational role in the development of our products so that our customers can then trust that the backbone of our products is designed meaningfully for their needs.
This often means taking the more difficult and expensive path because it’s the right one. Ultimately, if you choose to shortcut accessibility, you’re purposefully excluding users.
For example, we commit not to use external overlays, and have instead invested time and energy into designing accessible experiences, right down to the component level. It requires more investment and resources, but it is important to us that the core of our products is accessible - not just the face of them.
That’s why I take this particular vendor’s deception seriously. While I want to be generous and attribute it to inexperience or a lack of context rather than intent, the impact remains the same. The fact that it’s an emerging solution doesn’t excuse poor execution of fundamental accessibility needs, either.
For start ups, I recognise that the cost of hiring in-house experts can outstrip your means. It might be tempting to use shortcuts and outsource to less expert agencies. In this case, I urge you to bake in accessible design from the start so it’s an organic part of your process. Retrofitting accessibility into an existing application can be painful and far more expensive than considering it from day one. Do your due diligence when resourcing and seek advice from the vast community of experts when you need it. Know what good looks like and make the conscious choice of whether accessibility is core to your design principles; though, if you’re building assistive technology, I’d argue that that shouldn’t even be in question.
I hold a deep conviction that every solution—especially in EdTech—must have robust accessibility standards embedded from the outset. I believe true accessibility starts at the point of ideation and concept development. There isn’t a true product-market-fit if it doesn’t meet the needs of your user; as we all learn differently, our tools should anticipate that reality.
For our team, the learner experience is front and center in our design thinking. Indeed, being student-centric as learning technologists is a guiding principle in how we design and build. In practice, this means making sure our tools are beautifully simple and backed by learning science. Every interaction should ladder to a learning goal or outcome.
To achieve this for all users, we often turn to the accessibility mantra: ‘Nothing about us, without us’. In my experience, engaging actual users in feature development is one of the fundamental ways of creating a culture that truly values the user perspective and how they actually access your tools. Seeing the reality of how keyboard functionality, for example, makes a difference to a specific learner humbles a team to ensure goals on an accessibility roadmap are far more than a checklist against a standard.
That being said, there will always be a balance and tension between speed, experimentation, and innovation versus maintaining high standards. Trade-offs can happen as long as we maintain our integrity in what we’re trying to achieve for our end users, the learners. A Beta feature may start off with elements that are not ideal for every user, but there should be a proactive roadmap for how the experience can be better.
It’s important to say that this article is by no means an exercise in demonstrating that Genio is perfect at accessibility. Or even to only condemn the misrepresentation of another solution (though this is inexcusable). Just the opposite, we recognise instead that work on accessibility is never truly done and it takes the industry at large to call out the standards we collectively hold ourselves to. In reality, accessibility is a moving target that reflects the different and emerging user perspectives and use cases for your products.
I’m drawn to EdTech because there is a real, transformational power of creating the right tool: changing how users perceive their abilities, potential, and confidence to achieve more. That’s why this community deserves complete transparency and respect from its vendors when it comes to accessibility (and why I’m so disappointed in this vendor’s deception). Disregarding your responsibilities as builders, using misleading claims, or opting for the build shortcut have real consequences.
So what should transparency look like?
Ultimately, it’s about building with integrity. Ask yourself: what kind of products do we really want to make?
Regardless of whether you fall in the category of ‘assistive’ or ‘inclusive’ technology, surely remaining learner-centric is at the heart of any truly transformative tool. That means accessibility is never a hack or a tick box for compliance: it’s a fundamental need for your users and a conscious commitment to maintain.