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Re: Accessibility: Should we complain about it, or fix it?

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From: Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Nov 10, 2014 11:55AM

There are so many stakeholders in the accessibility world that it's
difficult to get them all to agree to anything!

1. The accessibility community who use assistive technologies. Depending
upon their disability, experience, particular A.T., and training, each has
his or her own idea of what makes a document accessible.

2. Content creators who use all sorts of software to create their websites,
publications, and digital media. They have varying levels of skill in using
that software, and more specifically, usually have even less knowledge about
how to use it to make accessible content.

3. Their bosses or employers who make the decision to provide the content
creators with the right software tools to make accessible content and the
related training. Software needs to be up-to-date (an expense to the
employer) and their staff needs training (another expense).

4. The manufacturers of content-creating software, such as Microsoft and
Adobe. They have to build the tools for making accessible content into their
programs and all of them are lacking some key features, making it impossible
to make some content fully accessible without spending a gazillion hours
hand formatting it.

5. The manufacturers of assistive technologies, browsers, and "reading"
devices. They have to be dedicated to continually improve their tools,
adding more features for their customers, and also revising how their AT
will respond to new standards and technologies/media.

6. The standards-makers, namely W3C and WAI. They have to continually revise
their work for new media and technologies. They also need to reach out to
all of the above stakeholders because these standards are voluntary-you
recruit volunteers rather than waiting for them to come to you. There also
are too many accessibility standards/guidelines that overlap and confuse
those trying to make accessible content-WCAG, DAISY, ARIA, PDF/UA are all
valid standards, but it's unrealistic to have all of the stakeholders above
know these standards and their nuances, and build compliance into their
content. It's too much for a normal workerbee to get a handle on!

For many of these stakeholders, accessibility it a costly burden in one way
or another.

What can we do to make accessibility easier to do, faster to implement, and
less costly to the stakeholders?

-Bevi Chagnon

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