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Re: two worthwhile reads

for

From: deborah.kaplan@suberic.net
Date: Sep 8, 2014 8:28AM

Rachel, when I was at Tufts University, we were so sure that we were going
to put together a website that boiled down WCAG to a set of clear, modern,
applicable standards and examples which pprovided both your 1 and your 2.
I'm proud of the end result we produced:

http://sites.tufts.edu/uxstandards/

But by no means is it a definitive list with all of the examples people
needed. In the process of creating the website, all of us -- from web
accessibility experts to web design experts and content people --
discovered that creating such a practical definitive list and adequate
examples is impossible.

The fact is accessibility is complex, web development is always moving, and
there is always pressure on the web developers in many organizations to
both use the newest and shiniest technology, and also the frameworks
provided by the organization. You will notice that the site I linked above
is not, in itself, the world's most accessible website. This comes down
to those institutional pressures; the web framework we had to use, and the
time limits we had for building the site. These were the kinds of
negotiations we discovered our institutional developers really wanted us to
solve for them: "if I am using this look and feel provided by my manager,
and I am using this web framework provided by my department, tell me how to
make everything perfectly accessible without me understanding
accessibility, having accessibility testers, or spending substantially more
time."

It's impossible. A large organization such as a university simply has to
have an accessibility expert on the payroll to help the developers, and
all it will take to convince them is ... more embarrassing stories on the
front page of the Chronicle of Higher Education, more lawsuits from the
NFB, more awareness that accessibility gaps cause reputational and legal
risk.

Based on your sig, your university has figured this out and hired you.
Kudos! Now to get the rest of them. :)

I will also point out that if an institution standardizes on, say, Drupal
or Django or Ruby on Rails or some other platform, language, or framework,
none of the developers expects that they can go to a single website,, read
a checklist, and be able to be a good developer without actually
understanding at least the essentials of that platform, language, or
framework. And yet for some reason with accessibility developers think they
don't need to actually learn the skill set.

Deborah Kaplan

On Mon, 8 Sep 2014, Thompson, Rachel wrote:

> I¹m new to this field, new to this struggle, and I still have so much to
> learn (many thanks to all of YOU for being my teachers, whether you know
> it or not).
>
> I am having accessibility conversations with developers and designers from
> our campus and vendors from off-campus who supply many of the systems we
> use. I have seen debates on the a11y lists that make my head spin. Our
> developers and designers don¹t need to get bogged down in those details,
> as far as I can tell, unless they want to. They need from us clear-cut
> information about what is needed and recommendations on how to make that
> happen. What I have been asked for are (1) a definitive list of what is
> expected from a site/page (I share WCAG 2.0 AA in less technical language
> with links to the real deal), (2) examples from their sites/tools that are
> a problem for users. Done and done. It is always a conversation, always a
> dialogue. It has never been (and I hope will not become) a list of demands
> from me to our web design and development professionals, who roll their
> eyes at my unreasonableness and that silly accessibility stuff. We need to
> be a part of their team, at least while a site gets fixed or planned or
> through whichever stage it is in.
>
> I got the Ta-da joke after a few moments and it made me chuckle. I¹m glad
> this discussion is happening and I hope we can laugh at ourselves more
> frequently. It would be a good way to engage other groups we work with and
> show that some of us recognize that 100% accessible is an unattainable
> goal and unfunded mandate. I¹m gonna quote Denis here and continue to
> embrace "a pragmatic, empathetic and welcoming approach to accessibility².
>
> Happy Monday, y¹all.
>
> Rachel
>
> Dr. Rachel S. Thompson
> Director, Emerging Technology and Accessibility
> Center for Instructional Technology
> University of Alabama
> http://accessibility.ua.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 09/07/14, 2:56 PM, "Denis Boudreau" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> I agree with you, Karl. I know, this is not a good way to make new
> friends. ;)
>
> While this is not the only reason and probably not the most important one
> either, our unreasonable expectations for perfection most likely explain
> why accessibility is viewed by a lot of people has being so hard.
>
> If you follow the thread that was generated from my tweet (mostly from
> members of our echo chamber, unsurprisingly), you will see that a lot of
> really good, valid and legitimate feedback was shared. hat being said,
> what struck me yesterday as I was going through that feedback was that it
> seems like it is very easy for us to put the blame on the armies of
> developers, designers and otherwise clueless stakeholders out there who
> don¹t get it right off the bat.
>
> What we more rarely hear about (and was vastly overlooked in that Twitter
> discussion) is recognizing our own inability to make accessibility
> engaging, interesting or even exciting to people outside our field.
> Developers and designers are used to tackling hard problems, they do it
> all the time. If they¹re not willing to tackle this one, maybe it¹s
> because we¹re partly responsible with all our religious WCAG compliance
> nonsense. And maybe managers don¹t bite into it much because accessibility
> usually tastes like fear, uncertainty and doubt (make sure not to be sued).
>
> By demanding nothing less than perfection, by setting these impossible to
> reach golden standards, and by quickly gunning down anyone who makes even
> the smallest of mistakes while trying to do the right thing, we are
> creating a situation where it just becomes impossible to please us. Of
> course, there are a lot of bad developers and designers out there, and
> then there are also the lazy ones (just like in any field), but I wouldn¹t
> be surprised if most people who give up on accessibiility do so because we
> directly or indirectly drive them to do it.
>
> I witness examples of our intolerance in email threads, blog post comments
> and on social media all the time, and so do you. If we lowered our
> expectations, were a little more tolerant and allowed people to make
> mistakes as long as they¹re really trying to do the right thing, maybe
> we¹d have more success and maybe our discipline would be more welcomed in
> the mainstream.
>
> Unfortunately, it seems that for every accessiblity specialist out there
> who embraces a pragmatic, empathetic and welcoming approach to
> accessibility, there are about 10 who swear only but WCAG 2.0 hard-lines.
>
> /Denis
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sep 6, 2014, at 10:13 PM, Karl Groves < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
>> "do web accessibility professionals have a sense of humour?"
>>
>> It appears not.
>>
>> Sad, really.
>>
>> Denis Boudreau recently asked "A question for y¹all this morning: why
>> do you think people feel that web accessibility is so hard?"
>> (https://twitter.com/dboudreau/status/508275085942464512)
>>
>> Here's why I think it is so hard: because accessibility people expect
>> perfection and they're so willing to name and shame people who aren't
>> perfect. Accessibility people are constantly fighting among each
>> other and looking for stuff to complain about.
>>
>> Bryan tried posting something humorous. Yeah, it was off-topic for the
>> mailing list, but who cares? I'd rather see humor on WAI-IG than
>> another idiotic debate about whether everything needs to work on Lynx
>> or not.
>>
>> People need to stop looking around every corner for the next thing
>> that offends them and start looking for real, tangible, impactful ways
>> to advance accessibility into the mainstream.
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 6, 2014 at 4:19 PM, Jennison Mark Asuncion
>> < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Once again, WebAIM has done great work and has published salary and
>>> other useful insights into working in digital accessibility. Results
>>> of their summer survey are here
>>> http://webaim.org/projects/practitionersurvey/
>>>
>>> I also came across this piece and thought I'd share it. The '100%
>>> accessible website' joke--do web accessibility professionals have a
>>> sense of humour?
>>>
>>> http://www.accessiq.org/news/w3c-column/2014/09/the-100-accessible-websit
>>> e-joke-do-web-accessibility-professionals-have-a
>>>
>>> Jennison
>>> >>> >>> >>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Karl Groves
>> www.karlgroves.com
>> @karlgroves
>> http://www.linkedin.com/in/karlgroves
>> Phone: +1 410.541.6829
>>
>> Modern Web Toolsets and Accessibility
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uq6Db47-Ks
>>
>> www.tenon.io
>> >> >> >
> > > >
> > > >
>

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