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Re: where are you getting your accessibility info?

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From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Dec 7, 2009 9:54AM

Hi, Jennison. Great question!

For me, this list, LinkedIn, and Twitter serve different purposes:
- This list is a great place to get answers that have been reviewed by the community. I especially find the WebAIM archive much easier to find and use when I need to retrieve an old discussion.
- On LinkedIn, similar discussions happen, but the participants are different and I find the discussions harder to track and retrieve. Its main advantage is that it's easier to find individual profiles and use them to find out a little background information on the person answering the question. Often it makes a difference whether the answer comes from someone who works trying to make content accessible or someone who must use assistive technologies to get access to content.
- Twitter is a great supplement to both of these. It's most useful when someone shares a link to a discussion or when an answer can be simple. For example, if the topic is color contrast, I would expect to find a good discussion here about how to measure contrast, whether there are audiences for whom high contrast is a problem, and similar topics. On Twitter, I would expect a message letting me know that a good discussion on issues with contrast is going on in WebAIM or LinkedIn. Or I would expect to be able to post a question for good color contrast tools and get links in response. So far, though, it's hard to retrieve information from old conversations on Twitter. Hashtags help, but we don't always use them. And it's impossible to know what hashtag will be most helpful to any given person who is looking for information in our posts.

I also find good discussions in forums dedicated to accessibility in specific contexts. For example, at http://groups.drupal.org/accessibility there are a number of good threads on making not only the content Drupal produces but also Drupal itself more accessible.

You can find me on Twitter: @clifftyll

In no particular order, and in addition to the accounts John mentioned, others I follow who put up good information on accessibility include:
@skipkempel
@ezufelt
@laura_carlson
@webaxe
@mgifford
@accessify
@karlgroves
@jennison - even though this guy is pretty iffy ;-)

I also follow a few others who are active in accessibility, but they rarely post about accessibility on Twitter.

Cliff


Cliff Tyllick
Usability specialist and Web development coordinator
Agency Communications Division
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
512-239-4516
<EMAIL REMOVED>

>>> Jennison Mark Asuncion < <EMAIL REMOVED> > 12/5/2009 9:05 AM >>>
Hello,

With social media becoming ever more popular, I'm personally curious where
folks are turning to most often when seeking accessibility-related information:
e-mail discussion lists, social media, or a combination of the two?

I've been a faithful e-mail discussion list user since I started using the
internet in the mid-90s. However, over the last few years, especially with
the advent of Twitter, I'm finding some of the richer accessibility info is being
communicated through social media. One of my concerns is that there may be a
gap that is growing in terms of accessibility info sharing based on which
channel folks use. Of course, who has the time to monitor and contribute
to everything

This is something I've been reflecting upon for a bit, and thought I'd
take a temperature check.

I'm asking a similar question on Twitter and LinkedIn as well. If folks
are interested, I can compile the answers I receive and share a
high-level summary in a few weeks.

Jennison

Jennison Asuncion
Co-Director, Adaptech Research Network http://www.adaptech.org
LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jennison