Slack Launches New Accessibility Changelog

I came across this post by Chris Xu on LinkedIn yesterday. In it, Xu shares the news Slack now has a so-called “accessibility changelog” open to the public, whereby the Salesforce-owned company documents the accessibility changes to its app over time.

“We’ll update this [accessibility changelog] once a month with accessibility-focused big feature releases and small bug fixes alike across all our clients,” Xu wrote on Wednesday. “March’s update just went up, and you can also see the backlog—we’ve been keeping track internally for a while to iron out the operational kinks of doing this. We’re excited to be able to be more transparent (and louder) with our users about all the things we’re continuously tinkering on.”

The changes are organized by platform (desktop, mobile, and web).

The advent of the changelog is a good development and a nice way for Slack to reaffirm its ethos on accessibility. I don’t use Slack anymore—most of the “group chat” instances I’m aware of migrated long ago to Discord—but, again, Slack’s commitment to accessibility is laudable. I wish more companies would have a similar tool to Slack’s newfound changelog; it would give users concrete evidence of what’s changed (and what hasn’t) in terms of accessibility. The only other analogue in the industry I’m aware of is Apple’s accessibility support options, which includes an email address (accessibility@apple.com) and a phone number (877–204–3930). My understanding is there are actual, human Apple employees who really do tend to maintaining both outlets, so emailing and/or calling isn’t at all like being sucked into a black hole.

I interviewed Xu in 2023 about how doing accessibility at Slack is “non-negotiable.”