2022
I just received an email, from Google’s Vimeo video player platform titled “Accessibility is essential”, elaborating on their new, updated, high standard, accessibility features! Then following this link Accessibility Updates To The Vimeo Player by Sara Ma , I learned there are some great upgrades here, but what really impressed me is how spot on I found their view on accessibility is! For instance, higher color contrast, clear focus states, screen readers and captions and subtitles are something that I have enabled on all of my family’s devices. These features are not only for the severely visually impaired or hearing impaired, true inclusivity means making content accessible to all! For example having increase contrast enabled on our phones and tablets makes it easier for all 3 of us, for different reasons. My daughter doesn’t wear glasses, but being cognitively impaired, it helps her focus. My husband simply finds it a more pleasant way to read. I wear a trifocal, pretty strong pair of glasses, so I really find it helpful. I also enable the bold text, button shapes and on/off labels. Several of those fall into the clear focus state category. Finally, we always have on closed captioning. My husband and I probably need this in truth, for some minor hearing loss, but also my daughter loves to ask A LOT of questions, lol, so we don’t miss the dialogue with CC as well! We love to watch a movie and simultaneously Google the actors age, height, and more. We have mock arguments over what movies we saw them in before. (My husband is very bad at this. How he thinks some guy we saw in a movie when we were 15, can now be the same age in a show on the Disney Channel 40 years later, I will never know, lol). I also love foreign language movies and TV so subtitles open the world up to me.
So when I read “Accessibility is not limited to varying abilities; everyone can benefit when something is accessible.”, I thought “Way to go Vimeo, you’re speaking my language, my passion!”
