Why you should make your business more accessible - the curb cut effect

I've been having a think about the sort of content I want to create at the moment and 'positive' and 'up lifting' was what was requested when I asked my followers on instagram. The news from the design industry and the world in general has been very negative recently.

While I was researching what I could talk about I came across this really interesting effect called 'The Curb Cut Effect'. It's all about how solving a problem for a smaller group of people who have a specific accessibility need actually helps everyone. In this episode I chat through the effect and how it got it's name and also give other examples, and ideas of how you could use this improve your own brand and it's accessibility.

Key Takeaways

1. Designing for the edges lifts the middle. Every time someone has built for a group that was being left out, the whole world has quietly benefited. Your business is no different; the change you make for one person rarely stops with them.

2. Small, imperfect steps still count. You won't get accessibility right first time, and you don't have to. Alt text, better colour contrast, left-aligned copy; these are afternoon jobs, not year-long projects. Start where you are.

3. If it's hard work to read, it's hard work to buy. A brain that has to strain will give up, and it won't even know why. Make it easy to read, easy to follow, easy to purchase - and you stop losing people you never knew you'd lost.

4. Do it because it's right, and let it pay you back anyway. Accessibility is the rare decision where doing the decent thing and doing the smart thing point in exactly the same direction. You don't have to choose.

Episode Highlights

• 00:00: Where this episode came from: an Instagram story asking what people wanted, and the repeated request for something positive in a design industry that's feeling bleak
• 01:13: The kerb cut effect explained: 1970s activists with sledgehammers and cement, building ramps at night so wheelchair users could cross the road independently
• 02:47: Closed captions, voice assistants and automatic doors: how a fix designed for one group quietly ends up serving everybody
• 04:21: Why accessibility gets shelved by small business owners, and the commercial and legal case for stopping putting it off
• 05:34: The centred text problem: why the brain can't find the next line, gives up without realising it, and what that means for your emails and website
• 08:13: The question to take away: what have you been holding off fixing because you assumed it would only help a handful of people?

I would love to hear what you think of this episode, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @‌lizmmosley or @‌buildingyourbrandpodcast and I hope you enjoy the episode! This episode was written, recorded and produced by me

If you like to watch your podcasts you can watch all of my solo episodes including this one on YouTube.

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