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Thread: Response To Keyboard accessibility
Number of posts in this thread: 6 (In chronological order)
From: David Russell
Date: Wed, Jul 05 2023 5:35AM
Subject: Response To Keyboard accessibility
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Hello WebAim,
This week, I have been in correspondence with a Social Media website
representative from Minds.com. The issue at hand is completing the
registration process with keyboard only.
I am pasting his response in part below, to inject the idea that
addressing access concerns to some may be based on the number of
requests for such to be provided.
Response From Minds Staff
Using shift and tab+shift seems to scroll up and down through the
various input fields on the registration page, though curiously it
does look like the checkboxes for our terms are never highlighted, and
I can't find a way to check them. Unfortunately though, and I'm just
going to be blunt and honest with you about this: I don't think this
is an issue with enough urgency for our development team. You are the
first person in 10k+ tickets to ever write to us with a keyboard-only
setup.
Note: I did suggest that their posture on access would eliminate
possible audience for Minds.com.
Once again, thank you.
--
David C. Russell, Author
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
From: Dean.Vasile
Date: Wed, Jul 05 2023 6:10AM
Subject: Re: Response To Keyboard accessibility
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David
I eliminated your name on this email and I copied it and I pasted it to my Facebook page.
Because I feel that the position that this company is taking is unacceptable.
Thank you for taking the first steps.
Dean Vasile
617-799-1162
> On Jul 5, 2023, at 7:35 AM, David Russell < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
> This week, I have been in correspondence with a Social Media website
> representative from Minds.com. The issue at hand is completing the
> registration process with keyboard only.
> I am pasting his response in part below, to inject the idea that
> addressing access concerns to some may be based on the number of
> requests for such to be provided.
> Response From Minds Staff
> Using shift and tab+shift seems to scroll up and down through the
> various input fields on the registration page, though curiously it
> does look like the checkboxes for our terms are never highlighted, and
> I can't find a way to check them. Unfortunately though, and I'm just
> going to be blunt and honest with you about this: I don't think this
> is an issue with enough urgency for our development team. You are the
> first person in 10k+ tickets to ever write to us with a keyboard-only
> setup.
>
>
> Note: I did suggest that their posture on access would eliminate
> possible audience for Minds.com.
From: Kevin Prince
Date: Wed, Jul 05 2023 12:35PM
Subject: Re: Response To Keyboard accessibility
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ClosedMinds.com?
Kevin Prince
Product Accessibility & Usability Consultant
From: David Russell
Date: Wed, Jul 05 2023 1:36PM
Subject: Re: RE Response to Keyboard Accessibility
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Dear WEBAim,
To follow up, the person whom I previously excerpted from Minds.com
(social media site) informed me hours later that "the team" was going
to make keyboard accessibility a priority and gave me a project number
by reply. We shall see.
Nonetheless, I guess the initial response proves the adage that there
is likely to be something done if a goodly number speak up and out.
Meantime, happy at Mastodon, appealing to FB to reconsider my account
suspension. Thanks!
--
David C. Russell, Author
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
From: Jeremy Echols
Date: Thu, Jul 06 2023 4:30AM
Subject: Re: Response To Keyboard accessibility
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I adore responses like that. "People with disabilities don't use our site, so we don't focus on fixing things like this." Gosh, I wonder WHY people with disabilities don't use your site.
From: WebAIM-Forum < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > On Behalf Of Kevin Prince
Sent: Wednesday, July 5, 2023 11:36
To: WebAIM Discussion List < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Response To Keyboard accessibility
ClosedMinds.com?
Kevin Prince
Product Accessibility & Usability Consultant
Foster Moore
A Teranet Company
E = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = <mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Christchurch
fostermoore.com<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.fostermoore.com/__;!!C5qS4YX3!DdgiCTLV8CMQbPD2BBjzebaOs66IXqmS4L_4NVbaxUV0JYZJiAQpQR6_Lboj5X5vmANicia2V-Lwe3CJV1M5Em0Smw8k$>
From: jp Jamous
Date: Thu, Jul 06 2023 5:45PM
Subject: Re: Response To Keyboard accessibility
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Folks,
Let's look at the big picture rather than just focusing on what a customer service rep responded.
1. Is the company USA based? It seems like it from the quick research I did.
2. How large is this company? That matters tremendously, because business leaders want to penetrate the market and that is economically so difficult with so many social media giants.
3. If a customer service rep, who is not aware of accessibility, replied, was this escalated to the company's legal team?
You might wonder what the heck are you talking about JP? Well, that's a business with a CEO and founder that resides in New York. Here is his profile:
https://www.crunchbase.com/person/bill-ottman
In order to get traction on this, we need to realize that the business might be new and does not have enough developers on hand to add this defect to their sprints. That's why #2 is going to explain to us how to proceed.
We also need to find out if there is a legal department for this business, because the customer service response was not professional at all. Sure the rep responded with full transparency, but that can implicate the company big time and if legal gets a wind of it, it would start a wild fire internally.
So it is important to look into all of that, because Facebook was not accessible when it first launched. AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, Adobe and the list goes on and on. Through awareness of people with disabilities, legal risks and other educational matters, we made them realize that yes people with various input and output devices use the computer. Now, look at Facebook. Not only it made its site and mobile app accessible, but it even hired blind engineers.
It is very unfortunate that we have to go through the same drill, but companies do not think of inclusivity when they think business opportunities. If we cannot think like business-oriented leaders, we cannot make them realize how important accessibility is.
I think links to some people with disabilities statistics, WCAG references and cases of companies that fought this and failed in the past, will help get the conversation going. Also, in a startup like this, it would have to be a top to bottom approach and won't work bottom to top. The bottom to top approach is difficult even in well educated companies that have people with disabilities.
Last but not least, business people think money and not accessibility or even technology. They take advantage of technology to make money. Without money, they cannot compete. So if we show them that Accessibility equals more money, then the response would be executed properly. We can then educate them about the right thing to do, people's rights under the law and other topics that mean so much for people with disabilities.