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Re: What to tell developers about accessibility?

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From: John E Brandt
Date: Apr 17, 2012 12:24PM

Karen,

I had a similar opportunity several years ago with a local group of Maine
based web designers and some developers - mostly Drupal folks. I decided
that awareness and sensitivity was the initial goal so I brought along my
buddy Steve who is a screen reader user. He was a big hit and everyone was
fascinated to see a real screen reader and screen reader user in action.
Three, four years later people were still talking about the presentation and
had already integrated accessibility testing into their practice. It was a
nice outcome.

To some extent you need to know more about your audience. If these are CMS
developers using the major FOSS apps (e.g., Drupal, Joomla, WordPress), you
should get a good response as there is already a good deal of accessibility
sensitivity in that community. If they are folks working in the .NET
environment, a lot of the accessibility issues will be related to .NET core
stuff that they may not have a lot of control over. In both cases, it will
be template accessible development that will be important. The hardest group
to deal with will be developers who are working in some of the more
proprietary applications world.

If you are meeting with mobile app developers - that's a whole different
kettle of fish and it will depend on their development environment (iOS,
Android, Windows, etc.).

But in all cases a good start would be to create understanding/awareness as
it will help in getting "buy-in."

John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
<EMAIL REMOVED>
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA