RE: Lack of awareness example

Hi Rachel,

I agree with the majority of your recommendations. However, I wanted to offer a personal anecdote relating to your story of the “accessibility expert” and their lack of awareness in the situation you outlined.

I know a person who is a producer of audio description who put in for a talk at a single strand accessibility conference. Audio description does not enjoy the same exposure as a lot of other accessibility topics, so their talk would have undoubtably been enlightening to many of the audience members who may not be familiar with it’s importance.

This person’s talk was inevitably rejected. In fact, it was turned down solely on the basis of their inaccessible website which was done in Flash. The website had nothing to do with her presentation, and specifically nothing to do with her skillset.

As a whole, I’d hate to think that we, as accessibility professionals, are discounting the contributions of others solely on gaps in knowledge, or even a situational faux pas. I’m sure if we all took an honest look inward we would recognize our own gaps in our personal knowledge bases. Afterall, accessibility is such a challenging topic, with seemingly limitless scope and reach.

I do agree that it is challenging to find good resources, or even good people to disseminate that information. I would just warn against hasty judgements in a vacuum.

Chris

Chris O’Brien
Accessibility Officer
416-818-9411
ami.ca<http://www.ami.ca/>
Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/AccessibleMediaInc> | YouTube<https://www.youtube.com/user/AccessibleMedia> | Twitter<https://twitter.com/AccessibleMedia>
[AMI: Accessible Media Inc]

From: Rachel Comerford <rachel.comerford@macmillan.com>
Sent: Monday, September 3, 2018 11:09 AM
To: stephane.deschamps@orange.com
Cc: Eric Eggert <ee@w3.org>; Shawn Henry <shawn@w3.org>; EOWG <w3c-wai-eo@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Lack of awareness example

I have this argument regularly with the devs I work with. For them, the issue boils down to this - they don't innately "know" accessible coding and they're under immense pressure to reduce the time to market release on products. Because of that, they code what they know and wait for someone to notice. There are a few things that we could be offering developers to get us closer to born accessible:

  *   If/then resources for code. In sales we used to call this see/sell. If you have a button that is supposed to behave a certain way, here is the tried and true, browser and AT tested code to use. There's a secondary benefit to this as well - users get a consistent experience no matter who built the product. In education this is particularly valuable as students are often asked to navigate 5 or 6 different learning management systems in their college career alone. This reference starts with a simple question: What is the problem you are trying to solve and would allow users to see a recommended solution as well alternatives with the reason they do not work. I would pay to subscribe to this database in a heartbeat.
  *   Certified resources for autodidacts. I can't tell you how many devs I've worked with that excitedly tell me that they taught themselves JAWS only to begin tabbing through our sites. Yes, there are literally hundreds of educational resources out there for someone who wants to learn how to use AT but I have no way of knowing what is useful vs superficial and what is accurate vs untested. I once attended an in person session with an accessibility "expert" who then proceeded to partially block the entrance to the room with a chair stacked with flyers for their courses. For me, that's the equivalent of going to a dentist with rotting teeth.
  *   Endorsed testing pairs. Every person I talk to has a unique set of Browser/AT testing pairs that they work with. And as we've all experienced, this can lead to wildly variable results. The variations lead to frustration on behalf of the devs, who throw their hands up in the air and say "It worked for me in this one particular instance therefore it worked." We can give them better, more consistent testing environments which would help push both browsers and AT to establishing more consistent experiences for their users. It is bound to be a long term change but one that will make the world a little better both for producers and for customers.
  *   Embed ourselves in education. The next generation of coders is coming. They are learning not just languages but also about mobile compatibility, AR, and VR and in very limited circumstances accessibility. Outreach to these high school and university programs with reliable teaching resources could change both the attitude and the knowledge-base of devs to come.
I'll step off my soapbox (for now!) but I hope that as a team, we could talk about whether these are resources that we can and/or should invest our time and energy in.

Rachel

Rachel Comerford | Senior Director of Content Standards and Accessibility | T 212.576.9433

Macmillan Learning

On Mon, Sep 3, 2018 at 9:55 AM, <stephane.deschamps@orange.com<mailto:stephane.deschamps@orange.com>> wrote:
Also, food for thought with Etan Marcotte's latest article: https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/accessibility-is-not-a-feature/


(although, in my experience, frameworks are not enough: people tend to reinvent each and every component and guess what's forgotten along the way?)

-----Message d'origine-----
De : Eric Eggert [mailto:ee@w3.org<mailto:ee@w3.org>]
Envoyé : mercredi 1 août 2018 09:31
À : Shawn Henry
Cc : EOWG
Objet : Re: Lack of awareness example



On 31 Jul 2018, at 23:07, Shawn Henry wrote:

> Hi EOWG folks,
>
> Occasionally we talk about the level of awareness for accessibility. I
> noted this from a WebAIM thread
> <https://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=8872#post4>:
>
> <quote>
>
> As a customer I am asking for WCAG compliance rating when I look to
> buy new
> systems and 95% of the time I hear: "What's WCAG, I've never heard of
> it in
> 30 years of sales".
>
> <end quote>

I think the rest of the email is also interesting for us. We have to
reach out and educate people developing frameworks for an inverse
trickle down effect. Its the basis is accessible, stuff is less likely
to break built on top of the stack.

<quote>

> Most of the time companies just say they will add in accessibility
> later,
> but they don't give a date and don't want to work with me to add
> accessibility.
> This is the wrong approach. You can't just "add" accessibility. You
> need to
> design your product or service to the widest number of users possible,
> then
> you may consider your product usable by a specific group of users.
> It's really the company's fault for not getting UX testers for all the
> possible users they wanted to serve, or evaluating the product from
> the
> developer for different features that need to be included.
> It's also the tools the developer is using. If they use most widget
> frameworks from React, for example, Screen reader users won't be able
> to
> use them. There is no way for the developer to know this without
> testing
> them self.

</quote>

Currently many organizations think that accessibility can be fixed or
addressed later. That it is a technical hurdle instead of a human one.
Accessibility needs to be a cornerstone of everyone’s education. From
the project manager over the content strategists over the graphic
designer to the videographer, coder, implementer.

Eric


--

Eric Eggert
Web Accessibility Specialist
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)



_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ce message et ses pieces jointes peuvent contenir des informations confidentielles ou privilegiees et ne doivent donc
pas etre diffuses, exploites ou copies sans autorisation. Si vous avez recu ce message par erreur, veuillez le signaler
a l'expediteur et le detruire ainsi que les pieces jointes. Les messages electroniques etant susceptibles d'alteration,
Orange decline toute responsabilite si ce message a ete altere, deforme ou falsifie. Merci.

This message and its attachments may contain confidential or privileged information that may be protected by law;
they should not be distributed, used or copied without authorisation.
If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this message and its attachments.
As emails may be altered, Orange is not liable for messages that have been modified, changed or falsified.
Thank you.

________________________________
This email, including any attachments, is intended only for the person(s) to whom it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged information. Any unauthorized distribution, disclosure or use is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient of this email, please contact the sender and delete this email, including any attachments, immediately. Thank you.