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Re: Elevator speeches about accessibility

for

From: Angela French
Date: Jun 11, 2012 9:34AM

I usually mention the law and liability risk. Unfortunately that gets people attention more that "doing what's right" sometimes.

>-----Original Message-----
>From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto:webaim-forum-
> <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Karen Mardahl
>Sent: Monday, June 11, 2012 4:22 AM
>To: WebAIM Discussion List
>Subject: [WebAIM] Elevator speeches about accessibility
>
>Today at work, a colleague and proud dad showed me the website that his 19-
>year-old son had coded for a small business.
>It seemed attractive enough at a visual level, so I promptly replied, oh, nice!
>Then I tried to navigate it.
>The top navigation was not keyboard accessible. The drop-down menu items
>needed a click. On one of them, I managed to drag the mouse outside the
>path so that I lost the path; you had to drag the mouse down and to the right
>to access that menu's sub items.
>
>
>I said you cannot get at these submenu items with a keyboard. That is not
>good. He's a young kid. He should learn about accessibility.
>The proud dad replied that I was the only one who cared about accessibility
>- no one else did. He does sling out many statements in a joking fashion, but I
>wasn't going to be dismissed that easily. I said that knowing accessibility
>would be good for his career. "There's money in it", I said, "and he can lead
>the field". I had hoped those comments would inspire the dad and soften the
>criticism I was giving. Oddly enough, the dad did dislike those types of
>menus, but I don't know why. It didn't seem to be due to accessibility. At
>least not in his mind.
>
>"There's money in it" is a vague generalization, of course. It was the best I
>could reply if my reply was to be snappy and attractive to my audience.
>
>That made me think of writing in here and asking - do you have a stock reply
>for various, shall we call them anti-accessibility conversations - or "meh"
>accessibility conversations?
>
>Snappy, constructive, and educational are the best qualities for such a reply, I
>think. They might also be elevator speeches. I think "making the world a
>better place" is too vague and will be forgotten seconds after as well as
>earning you the label of "loopy" or something similar.
>
>So... how do you reply? (Especially if shock or insults are involved.)
>
>regards, Karen Mardahl
>http://flavors.me/kmdk
>>>messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>