1) It’s not enough to find the accessibility tickets, they have to be fixed. 2) It’s not enough to fix the tickets, they have to be prioritized at the same level of importance as feature defects. 3) If you haven’t…
What People Think Accessibility is and What Accessibility Actually is
When people talk to accessibility professionals about how accessibility is about eliminating complicated features, tell them about the role using disabled personas and performing usability and accessibility audits pay in making products more usable for people with disabilities. When people…
Accessibility can only be implemented at the culture level in psychological safe organizations
As companies begin looking at initiatives for the New Year, they may be thinking about how to improve their accessibility and disability inclusion. However, creating a culture that cares about accessibility and disability inclusion is difficult in an organization that’s…
Accessibility isn’t complicated. People who do not understand accessibility over complicate it
For my second-to-last post of 2023, I want to answer one of the most common questions I get in my DMs – “How do I start with accessibility in an organization that has not yet valued this as part of…
The Most Important Disability Inclusion Starting Point is Knowing the Organizational Self-Identification Rate of Employees with Disabilities. You Can’t Improve What You Don’t Measure
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…
