WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Inclusive Design 24, by The Paciello Group for GAAD

for

From: Jonathan Metz
Date: May 15, 2014 4:33PM

Hi,

Over the past few months, I¹ve noticed a lot of ideas and conversations
happening in the accessibility community, such as including offline
formats when making the web accessible or candid dialogs on "applying more
professional rigor" to our profession. Two years ago, Cyndi Rowland wrote
of concerns regarding certification
(http://webaim.org/blog/accessibility-certification/), but now there seems
to be more acceptance to trying to see where that goes.

Last week John Foliot expressed a sentiment that ours "has been to date a
vibrant but often grass-roots community." People who work in this field
are typically passionate about what we do, and I think the field benefits
from the work of everyone in it. As attitudes, ideas, and philosophies
evolve with technology, I believe that communication in our community
should reflect those changes.

Historically speaking, it remains common practice for many professionals
to be passive aggressive or overly critical of perceived lack of
accessibility features. Today might have served an example, but it¹s
honestly nothing new. A month ago, I made a comment on Linked-In about how
only pointing out areas that lack addressing the needs of certain
disabilities exacerbates the mentality that nothing should ever happen
unless it serves every individuals' need.

Currently nothing works for every single person with a disability. Helping
others will undoubtedly affect the access of others, so it¹s important to
balance requested features against specific audiences and ultimately
against who gets ignored in the process. A perfect example of this is the
fact that there are very few projects successfully implementing all three
(A, AA, and AAA) WCAG guideline.

If there is something (or an audience) that is not mission-critical to
success, it may get overlooked. The awesome thing is, most of us are
really good at trying to figure out a better solution anyway. As people
who share similar goals we should figure out a better way to work
together.

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is a tremendous benefit to new
people who do not have much experience in accessibility, but I would argue
that it can be crucial for veterans of the field as well. The value of
GAAD today could be to address a need of moving from the common practice
of provoking others into action solely by criticism.

In other words, let¹s stop being GAADflies!






On 5/15/14, 6:00 PM, "Don Mauck" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

>I guess I don't understand why my comments upset folks. I'm in the
>business of being truthful, is that so bad!!!!
>