Why a11yhood.org?

The creation of custom technology that addresses bespoke disability needs is a grassroots phenomenon that has been taken up by people with disabilities and their communities. Many of these products are used every day, ranging from the NVDA screen reader to solutions that deeply and positively impact an individual and are designed for one person, such as Phil’s knee warmer for post-surgery warmth. However, often these are useful to many more people than initially designed for, as with Phil’s knee warmer, which is one of the most popular adaptive patterns on Ravelry, a site for sharing knitting related information and patterns. In addition to all of these benefits, open-source solutions are often free or lower cost.

These items can be hard to find, however, and in addition the open-source developer experience is inaccessible for many people with disabilities. This reduces opportunities for employment, limits the input of people with disabilities into these products, and inhibits the customization that is important for people with disabilities. Our goal is to establish a community of learning and support for people with disabilities and others interested in discovering, learning about and contributing to open-source accessibility solutions, by curating and centralizing open-source accessibility software and technologies in a single place. By doing this, we hope to increase discussion about assistive technology experiences in open-source technology issues and code. In this blog post, the first in a series about a11yhood.org, we dive into some of what we found when we began searching for information about accessibility items and how they are collected.

Repositories of Accessibility Items

We conducted a simple search for accessibility-related content across several popular platforms, including Ravelry, GitHub, and Thingiverse, and found over 1,440 repositories and items related to accessibility:

GitHub: 582 repositories out of 420M GitHub primarily includes software repositories, though a range of other types of items can be found here. It is possible to search for repositories by topic to find those related to disability or accessibility.
Ravelry: 719 items out of 1.3M Ravelry is the only general open source repository we are aware of that has a specific tag for accessible items, making them relatively easy to find. There are currently 600 items labeled with the accessibility tag, though our search for accessibility-related terms uncovered 719 items.
Thingiverse: 141 items out of 2.5M At the time of this writing, Thingiverse had about 2.5M things. In addition, it has accessibility groups and collections, which can help with finding accessibility related items.

Several repositories exist that compile accessibility data, but they often do not combine physical and software assistive technologies (AT) and are not open source. Examples include:

AbleData: A comprehensive database of assistive technology products, although it has not been updated since 2022.
Open Assistive: A platform that collected and cataloged resources until 2022.
Product Listings: Various listings such as AskJAN, GPII Unified Listing, and Accessible Agriculture provide information on assistive products but do not integrate physical and software AT. These are not necessarily focused on open source items.

Open Source AT focused Initiatives

Finally there are a few open source focused spaces.

Grassroots Open Assistive Technology (GOAT) focuses on making assistive tech open source, including advocacy and support for the right and knowledge to repair assistive tech; archival work on assistive tech solutions, 3d printing and DIY solutions, and training disabled people and others through hacking and other events. Makers making change has a similar focus on DIY and 3D printed assistive technologies, including training and hacking events and documentation. Both of these organizations are doing crucial, inclusive work. CAOS is a nascent global NGO whose mission is to sustainably support open-source communities in: the creation of accessible open-source projects and the creation of open-source accessibility tools and technologies.

What else is needed

There is an opportunity to bring together physical and software solutions under one roof, with an emphasis on supporting opportunities for training in software and product development that can in turn translate into improved future job opportunities. On existing platforms, disabled creators are often at the fringe; their accessibility is often retrofit. Disabled end users are met with layers of inaccessibility when trying to discover access solutions hidden among other products and artifacts that are not meant to address accessibility. Further, the projects on these sites are typically siloed by equipment or design medium, which makes comparing multi-modal approaches difficult (e.g., 3D-printing a stabilizer for a digital stylus, versus using a software library to reduce jitter from tremors). Further, the act of making or modifying such technologies may be inaccessible. For example, disability-led making of accessibility solutions taking place in brick-and-mortar centralized maker spaces (\textit{e.g.} university maker spaces, workshops) is difficult because maker spaces are by default not accessible. Without a community of shared goals and values, very important activities, such as skill sharing and peer support, are more difficult.

Our goal is to provide disabled developers, engineers, and end users the ability to browse access solutions across different forms of open-source, physical, and digital accessibility technologies and that supports disabled contributors in accessibly learning about, using, and contributing to these solutions.

Contributing projects to will be handled through a simple and accessible process. Registered, verified creators with accounts will be able to contribute projects to the website, linking to existing open-source repositories when relevant. Adding projects will entail filling out a simple form specifying the access need the project addresses, the skills or equipment needed to build or use the project, and the original host site of the project. In addition to contributing projects, registered community members will be able to rate projects and host digital events and contribute tutorials around specific maker skills such as operating a 3D printer or writing and running a browser extension.

Further, the software source code and database of technologies underlying a11yhood.org are open-source and accessible. Some open-source projects such as NVDA are recognized for their disability leadership, however there is still room for growth regarding the inclusion of disabled developers in open source communities. Our community is intended serve developers with disabilities, whose lived experiences will improve the relevance and usefulness of this repository.

Finally, we aim to learn about user needs and how people find, invest in, and re-purpose AT. Key questions we will study include:

How do people with disabilities find AT?
What do they need to know about AT to invest in it?
How do intersectional identities factor into AT choices?
How do people re-purpose, modify, and share tech for access?

Contributing to a11yhood.org

We invite you to join our community and contribute to our efforts. Visit our GitHub community discussions and join our mailing list (to come soon) for updates. By working together, we can create a more inclusive and accessible world for everyone.