Hello! Even with the holidays and a swirl of personal, familial, and world happenings, we are happy to report that we’ve made it to the Settings & Accessibility Milestone! It feels like a long time coming and it’s exciting that we’re finally here.
With all the other milestones it was more or less clear what we needed to get done. Create a login page. Figure out PDF uploads. Build a purchasing flow. Implement searching and filtering. There are numerous examples for each of these steps that have been done hundreds if not thousands of times by different businesses. We can pick and choose what we like and leave behind the things that don’t make sense for us.
But what about accessibility?
There isn’t a clear cut answer for this because it doesn’t just involve one page but instead, the whole experience of the app. That’s part of the reason why we saved this milestone towards the end of our roadmap because we needed to have the setup ready in order to work through accessibility options.
That’s not to say we have completely neglected accessibility until now. Rather, we’ve kept it in the back of our heads and made sure to incorporate aspects that we knew were necessary from the very beginning. One example of this is designing for both a light and dark mode. Even though it’s twice the work and is something usually axed for a MVP, we decided it was important enough for us and our community to implement immediately.
Since Rommel and I are not experts in accessibility, this milestone will require a lot of research. We’ve been reading and thinking about accessibility since we started Fiber Club, but now is the time for us to dive deep into this subject matter.
Our plans include:
- Creating the settings page
- Testing designs for font scaling
- Fixing designs based on testing
- Toggle for light and dark mode
- Toggle for grid and list marketplace view
- Research accessibility best practices
- Consult an accessibility expert
Even with our preliminary research, it seems like there’s no clear cut answer as to how to implement accessibility. One option may work for most, but not all. And it’s like this for almost every design element. There are many different and often conflicting needs because not every person and disability presents in the same way. It seems the best path forward is to include as many different options as possible so the app can be tailored for each individual’s needs.
As we continue to research it will become clear what we will need to include for launch and which items will have to wait.
After this milestone we’ll go into a testing phase and implement finishing touches. Then the first version will be ready to launch! As always, thank you for your continued patience and support.
Originally posted on March 10, 2022.