Three signs web accessibility will be big in 2018

computer network, multiple screensResearch by students at Stanford University shows a bigger focus on web accessibility for businesses and developers in 2017, with the trend set to continue exponentially into 2018. The students drew their conclusion after looking at the popularity of accessibility keywords around web accessibility on social media, as well as the frequency of accessibility events and the number of accessibility Github repos.  Here’s why accessibility looks to be a big deal in 2018.

1. Web developers have an increased focus on accessibility

GitHub's (software development platform) digital directories or ‘repos’ created for the term a11y (meaning web accessibility) rose from about 260 in 2016 to around 370 in 2017. Developer engagement and participation in accessibility shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

2. Big companies are more focused on accessibility

The accessibility-themed Twitter accounts of Google and Facebook: @googleaccess and @fbaccess posted more than ever before in 2017. In particular @googleaccess more than quadrupled its output from around 50 tweets in 2016, to around 280 Tweets last year.

3. More than 26,000 accessibility events took place around the world in 2017!

The researchers looked at Eventbrite for events matching the terms ‘visually impaired’ and ‘screen reader’ and found the number of these events had risen stratospherically. In total, there were more than 26,000 accessibility events on the site for 2017.

The researchers used the Github API to give these results and noted that this might not give the full picture, but should offer a view on trends.

More about the Stanford research