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Re: Proper Markup on Web Pages

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From: Teresa Haven
Date: May 11, 2016 11:38AM

Hi, Brandon. From my observations, a lot of developers don't actually write code any more -- or at least, they don't write HTML. They use something like .NET, or a toolkit like Bootstrap or Angular or any of a hundred others that generate the code for them, and they don't know what is getting generated, but they do it because they think they are saving time and/or that "accessibility is hard". I've done extensive work with our in-house developers over the past year+ to get them to think hard about (and actually observe) how much time they are "saving", and many of them are now modifying their practices, but it has required a lot of personal relationship-building plus having an in-house edict that says they have to improve the accessibility of what they are building. I believe many developers a) don't have the knowledge that they are doing anything wrong, and b) don't have the direct support to show them why learning to do things differently would be an advantage to them. I think one of the big questions for groups like us is, "How can we get people to understand both why this is important, and how they can do it without them thinking it is overwhelmingly difficult?"

Teresa

Teresa Haven, Ph.D.
Accessibility Analyst, Northern Arizona University