While many organizations celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (on May 17 in 2017, May 18 in 2018), the entire month of May is Accessibility Awareness Month at Amazon. It’s a full month of accessibility-related technical talks, workshops, and hands-on activities. These events are attended by thousands of Amazon employees across the country and around the world.
The month kicked off with a presentation that included videos of nine visually impaired customers as they shopped on Amazon and shared their experiences. By listening to our customers explain what they love about Amazon – and what they don’t love – Amazon employees learn how to serve them better.
Hands-on labs allow Amazon employees in Seattle, Boston, London, and other locations to find out what it’s like to use the Amazon website and Amazon devices with a screen reader, larger fonts, a typing wand, or other assistive technologies.
Demos, classes, and workshops help Amazon employees understand what’s needed to create delightful, accessible experiences. Tech talks throughout the month provide insight into accessible gaming, accessibility tools and design guidelines for devices, closed captioning, and braille interfaces for Fire tablet devices.
These events help make accessibility a top-of-mind issue for Amazon employees. They result in a more accessible experience for our customers.
Seperately, recently we released an update to our Kindle E-Readers, introducing an option to render books “right ragged” at all font sizes (vs. the default of fully justified). This feature is easier for some readers who may find it more difficult to read text with variable inter-word spacing, or who may find it easier to locate the next line when the line lengths vary.
To learn more about accessibility at Amazon, check out our accessibility landing page at https://www.amazon.com/accessibility.
