RE: Requesting Initial Feedback on "Alt-Text on Demand" for Academic Articles

If you need to remove something – that’s a legal or policy decision and likely something that needs to be on the table.  My point though was that you need to be looking at it from the right lens – not the lens of we are doing this because of people with disabilities.  If you are going to do something because of people with disabilities – post content from the start in accessible format – the ADA is 29 years old.

The right lens as to why we are asking these questions are there are opportunists out there who will use access by people with disabilities to make money and there are real people who do need access to content and the content was posted in an accessible way because of past policies and procedures.      How can we meet the needs of customers, avoid opportunists, address the immediate issues, and change our future policies and procedures to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Short term changes such as a request form may be needed, removing outdated content may be needed – but decision should be made by examining the facts and not an us vs. them knee jerk thinking.

Jonathan

From: Peter Shikli <pshikli@bizware.com>
Sent: Monday, September 23, 2019 12:52 PM
To: Jonathan Avila <jon.avila@levelaccess.com>; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: RE: Requesting Initial Feedback on "Alt-Text on Demand" for Academic Articles

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Jonathan,

I agree, but we're left with the rather commonly unpleasant question, "What should an agency do when they don't have the budget to remediate leftover content after they remediate what they could?"  Unless they adopt our approach with the request forms, which isn't applicable to everyone, they are left with only two options if we discount wishful thinking, remove or remain liable for inaccessibility.  Which would you advise?

Cheers,
Peter


________________________________
From: Jonathan Avila <jon.avila@levelaccess.com<mailto:jon.avila@levelaccess.com>>
Sent: 9/23/19 8:53 AM
To: "w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>>
Subject: RE: Requesting Initial Feedback on "Alt-Text on Demand" for Academic Articles
I'd question this statement "to deprive sighted users on behalf of the disabled.". Removing content from a site does not benefit users with disabilities either -- no one wins. Inclusive design is not about "us" vs. "them" -- it's about everyone.

Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles 'chaals' (McCathie) Nevile
Sent: Sunday, September 22, 2019 6:35 AM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Requesting Initial Feedback on "Alt-Text on Demand" for Academic Articles

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On Fri, 20 Sep 2019 18:06:08 +0200, Peter Shikli
wrote:

> We remediated what we could with the budget available, but what to do
> with the rest. One option was to comply to the law by simply >removing
> them. The optics of this didn't appeal to us; to deprive sighted users
> on behalf of the disabled.

This is the heart of the issue.

Destroying something of value because it isn't as good as it should be is generally a bad idea. The proposed solution is sub-optimal, but letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is also a bad idea. Thinking through it carefully, and making the best of what you can actually achieve, is generally a good thing.

Enabling people to contribute a potential text - which should be reviewed before being added - is also a good thing in this scenario.

cheers

Chaals

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