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Re: two worthwhile reads

for

From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Sep 8, 2014 7:31AM

While I definitely agree that it is good to praise people for the progress they do make while encouraging them to improve the accessibility in the future, I think I can also understand the perspective of people who don't want to accept anything less than complete accessibility.

If you believe that people with disabilities have a right to access, then it is easy to understand why you might feel that accessibility should be an expectation and any UI that isn't accessible should be considered poor quality.

From that perspective, small improvements to accessibility really aren't praiseworthy. It would be kind of like praising a project team for getting the look and feel of the buttons right even though they screwed up everything else on the UI. Also, I suspect that letting the other accessibility issues go when you know that the project team spent their focus working on other items that had less impact on individual users feels like a pretty rotten compromise.

However, I have a feeling that the best approach to increase accessibility of user interfaces across the board includes using both carrots and sticks. As much as I wish people could be engaged in such a manner that they all would choose to make things accessible, I think the pragmatic view is that such isn't the case. I feel that accessibility is closely tied to societal views on disability and there will always be people that hold a view of disability that will make accessibility seem to be trivial.

Of course, the pragmatic view also dictates that you use what you have to get done what you need to get done. So, if all you have is carrots, then you have to use them the best way you can. However, if you only have carrots or only have sticks, you probably won't ever be able to get as far as if you had everything you needed.

And brian, I did like what you put together. It definitely was both humourous and thought-provoking.

Thanks!
Tim