Navigating a Professional Maze: Why LinkedIn’s Accessibility Falls Short
As the founder of Accessible Technology Solutions, I’ve spent the better part of my career championing the idea that accessibility and usability are two sides of the same coin. A product that isn’t accessible isn’t truly usable, and a usable product should be accessible to everyone. This is a core belief that we live by, and one that companies like Apple and Google, while not perfect, have largely embraced in their product design.
So, it’s with a heavy heart and no small amount of frustration that I turn my attention to LinkedIn. For a company owned by Microsoft—a firm that has done so much good for accessibility with its Office 365 suite—the state of the LinkedIn desktop and mobile experience is, frankly, shocking. It’s a professional platform that’s supposed to connect us to our careers and our networks, but for screen reader users like myself, it feels more like a frustrating, often impenetrable, digital maze.
I’ve been using a screen reader for 25 years. I’ve navigated the digital world with Narrator, JAWS, and NVDA on Windows, and with VoiceOver on my iPhone. I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of user interfaces. But even with decades of experience, the LinkedIn experience is disorienting. It’s as if the fundamental principles of good UI design were abandoned in the pursuit of a visually-driven, “clean” aesthetic that completely neglects the user who can’t see the screen.
The Major Challenges: A Breakdown of the LinkedIn Accessibility Gap
The problems are not minor glitches; they are fundamental flaws in the user experience that make the platform difficult, and at times impossible, to use for a person who is blind or low vision. Here are some of the major issues:
- Vague and Meaningless Labels: Buttons and links are often labeled with generic or non-descriptive text. A screen reader will announce a button as “button” or “link,” but without any context, you have no idea what it does. Is it to connect with someone? To send a message? To view a job? This lack of descriptive labeling forces a user to guess or, worse, to miss crucial functionality altogether. For instance, on the desktop experience, a row of icons might be presented without any ARIA labels, leaving screen reader users unaware of their purpose.
- Disjointed Page Structure: The way a page is laid out visually provides clues to a sighted user about the relationships between different pieces of content. For a screen reader user, this structure is conveyed through headings, lists, and other semantic markup. On LinkedIn, this structure is often inconsistent or non-existent. You can’t rely on navigating by headings to get a sense of the page layout, and the flow of information can jump around unpredictably. This makes it incredibly difficult to find what you’re looking for, whether it’s a new post, a comment, or a profile section. We’ve encountered situations where important information is embedded within a non-semantic div, making it effectively invisible to screen readers.
- The Mobile App Experience (iOS and Android): The LinkedIn iPhone and Android apps are particularly frustrating examples. While both Apple and Google have done incredible jobs with VoiceOver and TalkBack respectively, the LinkedIn apps themselves don’t play well with them. Gestures that should work seamlessly, like swiping to the next heading, often fail or skip around the page. The focus of the screen reader can bounce wildly, taking you back to the top of the feed when you’re trying to read a post at the bottom. On Android, we’ve observed issues where custom components are not properly exposed to accessibility services, rendering them inaccessible. The “explore by touch” method—touching different parts of the screen to hear what’s there—is often the only reliable way to navigate, and it’s a slow and cumbersome process.
- A Lack of Consistent Feedback Loops: Once upon a time, back in 2021, LinkedIn seemed to be making an effort. They were running feedback loops and reaching out to the blind and low vision community to gather input on their products. I was a part of this effort and felt a sense of optimism. But in the company’s wisdom, that seems to have stopped. I have not received an email or an invitation to provide feedback with assistive technology in a very long time. This is a disturbing development. It’s one thing to have accessibility issues, but it’s another to seemingly stop engaging with the community most affected by them.
A Call for Change
Microsoft is a company that has publicly committed to making its products more accessible. The work they’ve done on Office 365, with features like Immersive Reader, outstanding screen reader compatibility, and robust accessibility checkers, is something to be celebrated. This is why the state of LinkedIn is so baffling and so disappointing. It feels like a completely different company with a different set of values.
As the founder of my own firm, and as a long-time user and advocate for Microsoft products, I am disturbed by this disparity. When a company claims to be making us all more productive, and then keeps a core product like LinkedIn so inaccessible, it speaks to a bad culture. Accessibility is not a “nice-to-have”; it’s a fundamental part of the user experience. Both usability and accessibility must go hand-in-hand for a product to truly work for everyone.
Microsoft needs to talk the talk and walk the walk across all its product lines. The blind community and people with disabilities deserve respect, and they deserve a platform that works. Actions speak louder than words, and right now, the actions on the LinkedIn platform are saying that accessibility is being ignored. It’s time for Microsoft to re-engage with its users and make LinkedIn a truly professional and inclusive network for all.