Hilary Stohs-Krause and Jared discuss the importance of applying accessibility principles to coding environments, emphasizing how it benefits both developers and end-users. Hilary, a senior software engineer, shares insights from her talk at Madison Ruby, highlighting how small changes, like using descriptive variable names, avoiding acronyms, and incorporating linters, make code more readable and maintainable. These practices not only support programmers with disabilities, such as ADHD or vision impairments, but also improve the overall coding experience for all developers. Hilary argues that creating accessible code benefits everyone by reducing cognitive load, improving communication, and fostering more inclusive workplaces, even though such practices are often deprioritized in fast-paced, capitalist environments.

Links:

Stack Overflow Survey of Developers

Madison Ruby Conference

Red Canary

Ruby on Rails

RuboCop

HAML-Lint

ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act

Dyslexia in Programmers

ADHD in Programmers

Plain Language Writing Guidelines

Go Programming Language

FactoryBot

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Jared’s Links:

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Episode Transcript

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