Accessibility and Usability like a 5-year-old.

Understanding Wagtail's Accessibility Features Documentation.

I’m currently contributing to the Wagtail Project under Outreachy's open-source program. To understand the project, there’s lots of information to digest. I went down the rabbit hole and got confused. This is because I read some material that interchanged accessibility and usability. So here I am, trying to understand like a 5-year-old.

Defining the terms:

Accessibility means everyone can use something regardless of their abilities. An example to a 5-year-old me, is a playground with a gate that’s wide enough for entry to everyone. This includes my friend Mide who uses a wheelchair. Accessibility, thus, ensures a product created is for all kinds of people and functions as intended.

Now, to explain usability to my 5-year-old self. My dad gets a massive Lego set for my birthday. The Lego set is simple to play with because I can attach and detach the parts as I like. In this case, usability is simply, how easy it is to use something.

Accessibility and usability are both important but not the same.

A product can be accessible but not usable. Let’s go back to the playground. It has a gate wide enough to allow everyone in but it’s so heavy to open. That difficulty makes it unusable to many people like my 5-year-old self and Mide. Even grownups may not have an easy time opening the gate.

Also, a product or service can be usable but not accessible. For example, my Lego set comes with an easy to understand manual, so it’s easy to play with for anyone. But my set comes with small parts which are a choking hazard to 5-year-old me. Products without considered safety measures to everyone are inaccessible.

When a product is made accessible and usable, the product benefits everyone.

Let’s imagine the classroom I was in as a 5-year-old pupil. It had a door with a knob that was a far reach for some pupils. Some pupils were tall enough and could open it. Here, the classroom is accessible to everyone, but it’s not usable to everyone because only a few can open it. Let’s imagine a teacher puts a door opener. This instalment makes it easy for everyone to be able to open the door. We can conclude that the classroom is now accessible and usable to everyone.

For better understanding, we can say usability is about the design of a product. Also, we can say accessibility is about the features of the designed product.

I think 5-year-old me can get this.