The Little Red Hen did all the work. She sewed the grain, pulled the weeds, watered the sprouts, harvested the grain and baked the bread. All along she asked for help but no one was there with her until they…
Accessibility Meme: Putting accessibility in the Definition of Done or the MVP
Putting accessibility in the Definition of Done or the MVP (minimum viable product) makes it harder for it to end up on the cutting room floor when budgets are cut and products are pushed out before they are ready. It’s…
You want to appear inclusive? Do something that you think might help people with a specific disability. You want to BE inclusive? Do something that all people with disabilities can equally use, and include them in the process
Who are accessibility celebrations for? We have National Disability Employment Awareness Month, but the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is still more than double that of non-disabled individuals. We have Autism Awareness/Acceptance/Action Month, but 85 % of autistic people…
Accessibility Meme: Accessibility Defect and Functional Defect
Companies with immature accessibility practices categorize accessibility and functional defects separately. They typically don’t start fixing accessibility defects until most of the functional defects are completed. This means that, in practice, very few accessibility bugs are fixed prior to release.…
Product owners don’t wake up in the morning and say to themselves “hey, I’m going to break the law and completely ignore and annoy 20% of my potential customers.” But, that is what companies do when accessibility is not part…
Accessibility Meme: The worst response that an organization can deliver to a disabled person (or someone advocating for disabled people) is that their request is annoying
The worst response that an organization can deliver to a disabled person (or someone advocating for disabled people) is that their request is annoying. Any response that contains an element of dismissal, minimization of the problem, or outright ignoring the…
Never make decisions for your users. Either make decisions with your users, or build enough flexibility that your users can make the decisions for themselves
Making decisions for your users leads to frustration, especially for people with disabilities who will waste a lot of time trying to figure out how to undo the decisions you made if it is not what they wanted. Start with…
Accessibility Meme: he intersection of “Ouch, that hurts” and “Damn, that’s so true.”
This week’s accessibility meme is at the intersection of “Ouch, that hurts” and “Damn, that’s so true.” If you ask me to point at one single problem behind the 97% rate of inaccessible websites is as simple as this: developers…
When someone tells you something is impossible because of your disability… Take that as an express invitation to show them how it’s done
Anyone who has had a disability for any length of time can recount dozens of times they’ve been told either a) something couldn’t be done to include them or b) the person with a disability shouldn’t be trying to do…
When organizations do not bake accessibility reviews into its entire management process for both code and content, remediated digital properties are all but guaranteed to backslide into inaccessibility.
True story. In 2010, I went to an accessibility conference in Oakland. I had an emphatic conversation over lunch with some folx at my table about how important it was to embed accessibility into every part of an organization because…
