Empowering all developers to build without barriers

At GitHub, we believe that accessibility is a team sport. We know that achieving the dream of equal access to technology for 1.3 billion people with disabilities requires contribution from every organization including institutions of education, the private sector, the public sector, the not-for-profit sector, and, most importantly, the disability community.

GitHub is proud to receive the 2024 Accessibility at Scale award from Deque Systems. The Accessibility at Scale award recognizes organizations that have implemented accessibility in a way that delivers outsized results. Former winners include Microsoft, Adobe, and PNC. We feel very honored to be included in such a distinguished group of organizations.

Our role in the global accessibility movement is to empower all developers to build technology without barriers. First and foremost among those developers is developers with disabilities. We believe every single person should be able to build and create. As a blind developer myself, I know that one of our best points of leverage for improving accessibility is to include people with disabilities as equal participants within development teams.

Here are a few ways that we’re empowering developers to build without barriers:

• We include accessibility as an Engineering Fundamental at GitHub. As a result, accessibility is a top priority for every engineering team.
• We integrate accessibility into design. For example, we created an Accessibility Design Bootcamp that trained 43% of our designers in the first year and we regularly incorporate accessibility into our internal design conference.
• We incorporate accessibility into new features. For example, the new redesigned navigation feature and code search and code view.
• We welcome disabled developers into the GitHub community. For example, we created an accessible and inclusive experience at GitHub Universe 2023.

In spite of our best efforts, we know that accessibility is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for full and equal participation. Unstated biases can create some of the most pernicious barriers to access. That’s why we created the Coding Accessibility video series and we regularly amplify the voices of disabled developers on The ReadME Project.

While we are grateful for Deque’s recognition of our progress to date, we recognize that there is still much work to be done. We also know that we cannot do it alone. Accessibility is a team sport and we invite your collaboration. Please visit accessibility.github.com to learn more and share feedback on our accessibility community discussion page.

Written by

Ed Summers

@edsummersnc