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…
Accessibility Game Theory
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…
Practical Guidelines for Making Destructive Actions Accessible
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…
Bend, Do Not Break: Building Resilient Accessibility Programs
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…
Practical Steps for Disability-Inclusive Recruiting
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…
The Problem with Blanks for People Who Are Blind or Low Vision
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…
So, Your WordPress Theme Isn’t Accessible: How to Fix It Using a Phased Plan That Survives Updates
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…
Partial Accessibility Is Sometimes Worse Than No Accessibility at All
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.…
WIIFM: The Motivational Question Behind Every Accessibility Conversation
Every person sitting through your accessibility presentation is silently asking the same question: “What’s In It For Me?” They may not say it out loud. They may even agree with you in principle. WIIFM might be hidden in other thoughts,…
The Faces Age Verification Cannot Read
TL;DR: Half of U.S. states now require online age verification, and the systems doing the verifying were not built with disabled faces in mind. Age verification is having a moment in the United States. Half the states now require it…