Too many companies ignore accessibility until they are threatened with litigation. That is the worst strategy, ever. “I didn’t know about accessibility” and “I didn’t get to it” are not excuses that will get your organization off the hook. alt:…
Marked Safe From being called “Differently Abled” today
Yesterday was International Day of People with Disabilities. How did I celebrate? – I bought a belt for my elderly father and went grocery shopping with my mom – I did laundry – I put some Thanksgiving leftovers in the…
I am more than a diagnosis. I am a person with decades of lived experience as a woman with multiple disabilities. You cannot and should not try to simulate my lived experience
At least once a week, I hear about some disability “advocate” using disability simulation to try to create empathy with non-disabled people. This is wrong in so many dimensions, and is even more irritating when that advocate says it’s OK…
You can take a perfectly accessible website, document or mobile application and break that accessibility with one poorly thought through update.
Accessibility is never “one and done” That’s because code and content updates are never done. Every code and content change needs accessibility review. When accessibility is built into your culture, those reviews become second nature. When accessibility is a checkbox…
waiting for the accessibility tickets to make it into the backlog
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…
