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Re: Accessibility for Project Managers - your thoughts?

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From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Sep 21, 2013 2:35AM

I'll be glad to work with others on such a thing, but I will mention that I think that one of the problems I find with checklists is that they tend only to be useful to people who understand the items on the checklist.


For example, people often state that following WCAG 2.0 can still lead to an application being inaccessible. I agree with this to some degree, but not totally.

I have previously done some work with relationship to usability...and when we create style guides, we would often say that one can follow the style guide and still end up with an unusable site.

However, whether you are following a style guide or WCAG 2.0, a failure to make something either usable or accessible based on those things tends to be less an issue of the style guide or standards and more a problem of the implementers level of knowledge or skill on the topic.

So, I think it is valuable in any kind of presentation to provide people with a take away, one of the drawbacks of a checklists is that you need to ensure they walk away with enough knowledge to make proper use of that checklist.

Thinking about it, I suppose you share similar thoughts--and perhaps I'm overly sensitive to the issue because I've dealt with some people who either think checklists are evil or people who really want a checklist to be a cure all--and I expect a checklist isn't really any different than a hammer--a great tool when in the hands of a skilled carpenter and a really bad idea when placed in the hands of a 2 year old. At least, I've not met any toddlers to whom I want to hand a hammer--even if I wanted to use it as an illustration for accessibility purposes.

And for those of you who know me..please, if I ever look like I'm going to hand a hammer to a 2 year old because I have some crazy idea that it might make for a good illustration for a presentation, I beg of you to save me from my own creativity. While I have no fear of my own creativity, it is probably a good idea if others do.

Thanks,
Tim