‘Shifting left’ for better accessibility in Firefox

As a product manager for Firefox, one of the areas I'm most passionate about is accessibility. This is not only because I'm a disabled person myself, but also because I've seen firsthand that building in accessibility from the beginning results in better outcomes for everyone. Our new profile management feature is a great example of this approach.

Shifting left means building accessibility in from the start

If you picture the product development process as a horizontal line, with user research" on the extreme left and launch to market" on the extreme right, accessibility tends to fall on the right side of the line. On the right side of the line, we are reactive: the product is already built for the needs of non-disabled users, so we're just checking it for accessibility bugs. On the right side of the line, it's often too late or very expensive to fix accessibility bugs, so they don't get fixed. On the right side of the line, the best we can hope for is accessibility compliance with an industry standard like WCAG. On the right side of the line, we are more likely to build something unusable - even if we checked all the accessibility compliance boxes.

So how do we ensure that accessibility moves to the other end of the line, the left side? One of the most powerful ways to shift left" is to include disabled people in the process as early as possible. On the left side of the line, we become proactive: we build products with disabled folks, not for them. On the left side of the line, we prevent accessibility bugs from ever happening because we spot them in the designs. On the left side of the line, we have a chance to go beyond compliance and achieve accessibility delight. On the left side of the line, working together, we have a better chance to discover curb cut effects: solutions designed with people with disabilities that end up benefitting everyone.

How Firefox profiles shifted left

Firefox is not always on the left side of the line, but we've been working hard over the last couple years to shift left."

I'm a proudly disabled university student who works full time and is passionate about rowing and musical theater. I made four profiles: medical, school, work and personal. Each profile has its own unique avatar, color theme and name so I can easily recognize and switch between them in one click. I especially love that browsing history, bookmarks and tabs no longer intermix. I'm now much less likely to accidentally share my health information with my professors or my strategic work plans with fellow Sondheim nerds.

Throughout this project, we partnered with disabled folks to aim for accessibility compliance and, more importantly, delight. They gave us valuable feedback from our very first user research studies and continue to do so.

One group dreamed up brand new ideas and suggested enhancements during an in-depth review of an early prototype (including an awesome curb-cut effect we hope to share with you later this year). Testers who are experts in assistive tech (AT) pinpointed areas where we still needed to improve.

This truly was a community effort. We learned a lot, and we have more work to do.

Try profiles now and help shape what's next

While we'd love to make it available to everyone immediately, profile management is more complex than it probably appears: It's built on core Firefox code, and it interacts with and affects several other features and essential systems. To ensure Firefox and the profile management feature remain stable and compatible, we need to continue our incremental rollout for now.

In the meantime, we'd love for you to use profile management on Nightly and Beta, where it's on by default for everyone, then share your thoughts in this thread on Mozilla Connect, our forum for community feedback and ideas. You'll help us validate fixes and catch new bugs, as well as get early access to new features and enhancements.

At least 29% of the population is disabled, which means many of you have the insight and lived experience to help Firefox shift left" on accessibility. That collaboration is already shaping a better browser - and a better web.

Get the browser that puts your privacy first - and always has Download Firefox

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