A short detour before the next articles cover each 15/15 app in detail. Because one thing matters enough to me for its own piece.
Where the name comes from
15/15 refers to a WHO figure: roughly 15 percent of the world’s population lives with a disability. Out of about 8.1 billion people, that’s over 1.2 billion — not a thousand, not a hundred thousand. Over a billion people.
And the number isn’t fixed. Eyesight fades with age, hearing gets worse, neurons don’t fire as fast as they did 20 years ago. Add the plain probability of an accident, an illness, a stroke. Anyone living without limitations today has no guarantee that stays true. „Affected“ isn’t a fixed category of other people — it’s worth everyone taking a moment to think about.
How accessibility often gets treated as a checkbox
Accessibility is often handled like a checkbox on a list. Increase contrast, add alt text, done. That formally checks a box — but doesn’t solve the actual problem.
The actual problem: most software gets built for the average user, and anything that deviates from that gets bolted on afterward. The result is apps that are technically accessible but still feel wrong — because they were never designed for the situation, only patched to tolerate it.
How we’re doing it differently at 15/15
Every app is designed from the start for a specific situation — not built generically and then made accessible. While developing, we simulate the actual affected users as test personas before a single line of UI code gets written. Every action in every app goes through a visible, labeled control — no hidden gesture knowledge you have to learn first.
That doesn’t mean everything is perfect. Far from it — the previous article showed how differently far along each app is. But the direction of thinking is right from minute one.
Why this matters for everyone, not just those affected
Accessible software is almost always just better software. Large text, clear structure, little distraction, unambiguous controls — that helps not just people with an impairment. It helps anyone who’s tired, stressed, sitting in bad lighting, or just wants to get something done quickly without decoding a UI first.
Accessibility isn’t a compromise for a small target group. It’s good design with a clear priority: solve the hardest situation first, and the rest falls into place.
Where we stand
All 15/15 apps are built on this principle. Clearly not perfect, very early — but a real first step, not an afterthought repair job.