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…
Accessibility Meme: A common accessibility New Year’s Resolution is updating ACR/VPAT documentation
A common accessibility New Year’s Resolution is updating ACR/VPAT documentation. ACR stands for Accessibility Conformance Report and VPAT stands for Voluntary Product Accessibility Template. Having the same defects show up in consecutive ACR/VPATs is a sign that the accessibility team…
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…
Accessibility Meme: One of the reasons why people think accessibility is expensive is repeated external audits
One of the reasons why people think accessibility is expensive is repeated external audits. If you are not ready to do anything with the audit results, don’t do the audit. Like food in a trash can, accessibility audit results deteriorate…
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…
Accessibility meme: It doesn’t matter where accessibility is located within an organization
It doesn’t matter where accessibility is located within an organization. It could be part of IT, QA, Design, or IDEA. The important thing is that the buck stop somewhere to make the final call. The accessibility team can’t say “we…
“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…
Accessibility Meme: Accessibility Mentorship
We’re coming up to the end of National Mentoring Month in the US. Accessibility as a topic is largely reliant on information being taught from one individual to another. There is little in the way of for credit college courses,…
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.…
Accessibility Meme: early happy Groundhog Day
Friday posts never do very well in terms of engagement, so I’m going to wish everyone an early happy Groundhog Day. In the movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray played a character who woke up every day on February 2 and…