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Re: Proposal for an online, crowdsourced accessibility testing platform

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From: deborah.kaplan@suberic.net
Date: Aug 25, 2010 7:48AM

Chris Hoffman wrote:

> To that end, I have had the following idea rolling around in my head
> for quite a while: Why not create a site that presents pairs of
> alternative HTML snippets and asks users out in the universe whether
> each one is more of less accessible?

I think this is a wonderful idea, Chris, and I would find it very
useful as both the developer and as a user of adaptive
technology.

One thing that might be useful would be the ability for a
relatively large pool of developers (either open or requiring
some kind of registration) could add code snippets. So instead of
it being a site where somebody had to gateway in all of the code
being compared, a developer could just say "I've been considering
the following two pieces of code; could you guys compare?"

Actually, over at Dreamwidth, we have something like this (for
our code base in particular, of course; not in general). We have
the dw_accessibility community
(<http://dw-accessibility.dreamwidth.org/>;), where developers
regularly post questions, often with two separate samples of user
interfaces, and ask the community to pitch in with opinions about
which ones are more accessible and why. It's been a fabulous
resource for the developers, and many of the users with
disabilities have indicated that they've been very pleased with
the site improvements and how they've been focused on serving the
user base's needs. I would love it if we got a larger pool of
participants over there, and I'd welcome anyone -- developers or
end-users, with or without disabilities -- to join the community
and pitch in. Let me know if you need an invite code for a
Dreamwidth account, and I will happily send you one.

(Dreamwidth is a blogging and social networking platform with a
fabulous diversity statement which has had accessibility as a
top-level priority from its inception.)

In any case, I'd love to see something like this spread out to
being a more general resource for ALL developers, not just
developers of that particular code base. Hey, it could even be
run on a Dreamwidth community. :-)

(Please forgive my evangelism. I get very bouncy about working on
a project where the developers care so much about universal
design and accessibility.)

-Deborah