It’s time to make some New Year’s accessibility resolutions. Before you get started, remember that your leadership will likely want you to prove objective improvements before giving you money to spend. Measuring where you are is the first step to…
If You Want to Find Out What Your Disabled Potential Customers Need, Talk to THEM, not Their Friends, Caregivers or Family Members
Nothing substitutes for lived experience. To do accessibility and inclusion right, you have to: 1) Do the research 2) Do the research with the right people. By all means, talk to caregivers, interpreters, and family members. But their perspectives may…
There are two categories of website accessibility-infrastructure and content. Both have to remain accessible for the experience to be accessible.
So many people think accessibility is “one and done” but it is anything but that. Every time you make a change to the code, the accessibility has to be reviewed for that area. Every time you make a change to…
“Nothing about us without us” is not just a slogan, it is the deepest desire of every person with a disability
The lived experiences of people with disabilities cannot be simulated or imitated. The only way to get an inclusive product or service is to make sure that people with disabilities are included at all decision points. That means establishing an…
Bad accessibility isn’t the fault of the accessibility team. Bad accessibility frequently starts with not including accessibility during the design process
To legitimately claim that your design organization is mature, you must have these four things: 1) A checklist designers that can be used to make sure their accessibility choices are consistent and correct. 2) Accessibility reviews during the design process.…
People with disabilities are tired of having to waste our resources and time suing people for equal rights that the Constitution and federal law are SUPPOSED to automatically provide to us
8200 lawsuits*. Over double what was filed ten years ago. That is the number of ADA lawsuits filed in 2023 by people with disabilities who were discriminated against. Over 90 % of these cases are won by the plaintiff.** That’s…
There is no accessibility ‘quick fix’ Good accessibility requires systemic culture change
There is no accessibility fairy. No tool will make a website WCAG compliant with only one line of code changed (and a monthly payment, indefinitely of course) On multiple occasions, I’ve had salespeople ask me for one of those “completed…
Accessibility bugs are a GOOD thing. It means that someone got far enough along in your product to find a bug, cared enough to report it and will continue using your product more easily after it is fixed
Most people think product bugs are a bad thing. In the area of accessibility, that is frequently not the case. The key is how the company responds to the bug: 1) Make it easy for the bug to be reported…
There is a reason W3C and WCAG don’t mention disability in any of their standards. All product accessibility efforts must focus on assistive technology, and not the medical conditions people with disabilities have
People with vision loss can use magnification, screen readers, or the combination of the two. People with dexterity issues might use a mouse, keyboard, or alternative keyboard. You can’t tell anything from a person’s diagnosis about how they will interact…
Vicarious Discrimination Contributes to the High Rate of Burnout in the Accessibility Professionals’ Field.
Have you heard the phrase vicarious discrimination before? Vicarious discrimination is when you witness either first or second-hand discrimination against another individual that belongs to the same underrepresented community that you do. So, for example, if you are helping someone…