Category: Uncategorized

When companies talk about diversity and inclusion, they often forget about a crucial aspect: accessibility in the hiring process. Did you know that your obligations as an employer under the EEOC begin with an employee’s candidacy? Don’t you want your…

Most accessibility conversations about color stop at the contrast ratio between a foreground color and its background. That number is easy to determine, which is why automated tools report it and why procurement language asks for it. Contrast ratios calculate…

Two things happened to me that appear to have nothing to do with each other. 1) A stranger lectured me in a gourmet grocery store about a container of pre-chopped onions. 2) A few days later, I spent another evening…

Why do capable organizations keep buying and building inaccessible products, and how do you change the payoffs? Game theory studies situations where the best move for one party depends on what the other parties do. This includes competitive procurement, contract…

A destructive action permanently changes or removes data. These include actions such as closing an account, deleting a saved credit card, wiping a profile, and canceling a subscription that cannot be reinstated. These are the moments where an accessibility defect…

A passing audit measures a system on its best day, in a stable environment, with the people who built it still in the room. None of those conditions last. Accessibility resilience parallels general resilience engineering: the capacity of a system…

Hiring people with disabilities shouldn’t be complicated. Yet for many organizations, disability inclusion in recruiting seems impossible. Companies write diversity statements. They say the right things about equal opportunity and post jobs on disability-specific boards. They might even host an…

A sighted person glances at an empty space and reads it as part of a whole. A screen reader user lands on that same empty space and reads it as a question: Is this blank on purpose, did something just…

  You love your WordPress theme. It took hours to get everyone to agree on it. You’ve poured blood, sweat, and tears into getting your content just right. But it isn’t accessible. Maybe you are a Title II organization staring…

To people who do not use assistive technology, partial accessibility sounds like a reasonable compromise. Some access is better than none, the thinking goes, and an organization that fixed half its problems is surely better than one that fixed nothing.…