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Re: How do you make a someone understand the necessity of accessibility?

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From: Whitney Quesenbery
Date: Jun 12, 2013 3:55PM

I find that the approach I use depends, in part, on the people I'm talking
to.
- What's my relationship to the organization - what group or at what level
am I supporting people in the organization?
- Is there organizational resistance, or is this a change management
problem?
- Is there any story or example that I can use as a way to open the door?
- How in-accessible is their web site now? (That is, how hard will change
be?)
- How exposed are they to legal advocacy? How familiar are they with
regulatory compliance?
- Is there a natural audience of their users I can use for inspiration?
- Are we starting something new or maintaining something old, or both?
- How large is the organization?
- How large is the product or web team?
- How much authority does the central web team have, anyway?
- What's the organization's learning culture?




On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 1:15 PM, Don Mauck < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> I agree with all of this. I find that the WOW factor of me doing a live
> demo, as I fly around on a page can make a big difference, that has a lot
> of complexity, they really get it, it opens their eyes and they realize
> that it does matter for all the right reasons. Then you get to convince
> the PM that it matters as well, another issue of its own.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tim Harshbarger [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2013 9:55 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] How do you make a someone understand the necessity
> of accessibility?
>
> Give me a lever and a place to stand and I'll move the world.
>
> You all offer great ideas for persuading others to take accessibility
> seriously. I did notice a couple common themes.
>
> First, it sounds like you all found the right lever or motivation to
> persuade the other person. Second, your standing, your relationship to the
> people you wanted to convince helped make the lever more
> effective--sometimes it is easier to convince people if they see you as a
> colleague and other times it can be easier if they see you as an
> accessibility professional.
>
> My thought is that, if you want to convince people to take accessibility
> seriously, start by understanding them as well as work to develop the most
> effective relationship possible for the situation. And if you fail to move
> them, take a breather and then try to figure out why your persuasion did
> not work.
>
> Persuading people to take accessibility seriously is a major decision.
> You are most likely asking them to make a commitment to changing how they
> work and think. That takes a lot of effort, so it might take a lot of
> persuasion.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto:
> <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2013 10:29 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] How do you make a someone understand the necessity
> of accessibility?
>
> in my environment I've had best success by showing concrete examples. In
> fact, I think my most successful presentation to my colleagues came when I
> showed them photographs of a couple of physical accessibility disasters in
> our workplace to open a presentation (one of which has since been fixed,
> so at least my presentation had that effect!). Physical accessibility
> disasters are easy for people to see once you point out the problem, and
> that gets them in the mode of seeing what's wrong.
>
> Then I show them video of people navigating by voice or screen reader,
> because those are really attention grabbing. I don't show them as much of
> people *failing* to navigate a web interface, so much as I show them how
> quickly a screen reader user can jump around if a page has well designated
> headings, for example.
>
> The combination of those two catches peoples attention and gets them on
> the fix-it mode, in my experience.
>
> Deborah Kaplan
> Accessibility Team Co-Lead
> Dreamwidth Studios LLC
> > > messages to <EMAIL REMOVED> > > messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
> > > >



--
Whitney Quesenbery
www.wqusability.com | @whitneyq

Storytelling for User Experience
www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/storytelling

Global UX: Design and research in a connected world
@globalUX | www.amazon.com/gp/product/012378591X/