As I and several other a11y advocates know, getting others to care about accessibility isn't easy. It should be, considering the many moral and bus...
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
I appreciate the article, especially the part about how anyone can be temporarily disabled. Accessibility is like globalization. Not only do you need to plan for it up front, but taking it into account leads to better design.
Please, trust me that I'm not one of those people who takes offense when someone talks about white guys. I'm not into the whole "proud to be a white guy" thing at all. Your statement doesn't offend me and didn't stop me from enjoying what you had to say.
But still, why? You wrote an excellent article on an important subject, so why unnecessarily politicize it? Does it add anything?
As per the "white guys" point, I'm simply stating what I've observed in my experiences. My own guess as to why this is that, as one of the groups discriminated against the least in modern society compared to historically marginalized groups, its easiest for us to overlook the needs of other groups. It takes more effort for groups near the top to remember things are different others, and it takes further effort to remember this and create long-lasting change.
So yes, I think it adds something, is worth talking about, and isn't "unnecessary politicization" for a topic like this. If I used this post to rail against how how American infrastructure has languished due to gasoline taxes not increasing with inflation due to consumer pressure, then that'd be unneeded politicization :P I will remember to add some more details in later posts so it doesn't seem like just a throwaway comment, so thanks for the feedback!
Here's an exercise for you to check if it's appropriate to use "white guys" in an article: replace the "white guys" with "black guys", "jews", and "women". Then read each sentence out loud. If it sounds OK, go ahead an use it. If it strikes the wrong chord, you might have a bias.
See my previous response, thanks! 😊
See my previous response, thanks! 😊
And they felt like it wasn't because they wanted to add a personal anecdote. It's very necessary.
Or maybe it's because our industry "white guys" are the largest group by far (at least in North America and Europe), so it's unsurprising that they give most of the feedback. In that regard, your statement is technically true but it adds nothing to the story and it's actually distracting from the main point.
I could reply that I've heard the same remarks from women, proportionally to their presence in IT, but it'd be a throwaway comment as well, because I'd need numbers to support my thesis. You will need too, if you plan to clarify your statement (I'd welcome your effort).
Sure. We can all agree on that. But how does the information that remarks against accessibility usually come from white men help us in that regard? Do we need to prepare to debate with them in special ways? Can we ignore such arguments if they come from, say, an Asian woman? What about countries where white men are a minority?
I personally don't think it's politicizing the topic, but on the other hand if you say that "it adds something", I reply that it's not clear how, and the risk is that it could flame the discussion with off topic remarks and without any deliberate goal.
It doesn't politicize the topic. It politicizes the article about the topic.
The quoted line simply highlights the fact that a disproportionate number of developers fall into the category of "white guy" (guilty as charged); many of whom seem incapable of seeing beyond their personal experiences (hopefully not entirely guilty). Whilst that's not necessarily a demonstration of conscious bias on their part; it is a significant contributor to why the tech industry repeatedly makes mistakes that adversely affect "minorities" - most of whom are not actually minorities. The perceived "default" ("white guy") is not representative; and so the needs of others are not properly considered: e.g. "Most of Our Users Don't Need Accessibility"...
For those who are affected the issue is political.
Read Technically Wrong if you want some illustrations of this issue.
I helped open this can of worms, so I'll add this helpful Vulcan proverb. I'm not a Trekkie and I'm embarrassed to know a Vulcan proverb.
Thanks for writing this up, this is great.
It's so infuriating that this is something we need to fight for. I get that some people aren't familiar with what accessibility is, and still need to learn. I've been there!
But for those that do know, I don't understand how it's seen as a valid option to shamelessly discriminate against people. We shouldn't have to come up with a bunch of different angles to convince people to do the right thing.
I know the feeling, part of me loved writing this post and another part of me hated that it needed to be written. Especially since for many counterarguments, I had to take into account that many people won't care about how much it helps people and need to hear arguments purely in terms of business and lost dollars.
I don't want accessibility to only be accepted for the economic benefits, but sadly for many people that's all they'll listen to. Trying to encourage more positive change, to me, means accepting that and working with it when needed. Not easy, but hopefully it helps the change come sooner.
Yup, totally agree. I actually do like highlighting all the other benefits you get from accessibility - there's a lot of great stuff that comes along with it! And I try to understand where people are coming from, rather than shutting down and getting upset that they don't care. It just gets to me sometimes.
Awesome article, bookmarked for later use.
Google has an awesome Udacity course on Web Accessibility, and the first lesson is a very straightforward overview of what a11y is and why everyone needs it, including the points you made about temporary injuries and other short-term conditions leading to literally everyone needing accessibility features at some point. I seriously recommend every web dev just take like 15 minutes and do the first lesson at least: Accessibility Overview
Whole course is here:
classroom.udacity.com/courses/ud891
I had the privilege of retrofitting accessibility into a fairly large application that had omitted accessibility for version 1, version 2, and version 3.
Version 4 had accessibility. But in order to put in accessibility, we pretty much had to rearchitect the entire application from stem-to-stern. It was a herculean effort.
The interesting thing, to me, was that the application would have been better architected -- better separation of concerns, better abstraction, better M-V-VM -- from the get-go had it had accessibility in version 1. Why? Because accessibility can be thought of as a second UI.
And if you have 2 UIs on the same engine, you will -- by necessity -- have better architecture. And that better architecture is basically free in version 1. Then version 2 will be based on a better foundation. And version 3 will be based on a better foundation. (There's more to clean code than merely adding in accessibility, but just having 2 UIs puts pressure to have a better architecture.)
And most importantly, you won't need to devote 20 developer years of effort to fix the mess for version 4.
(This was a C#/WPF/.NET application, so was using UIA, and had to be MSAA compatible. And as a free bonus, we got bona fide automation capability as well. Accessibility for websites is a different domain, and has its own conventions to address the accessibility needs. I got to work in that area too -- and for HTML/CSS/JS being mindful for accessibility isn't even hard.)
Thank you so much for sharing this anecdote! I agree, having a good focus on accessibility earlier on can create better and cleaner architecture throughout an application. And as you've shown, the effort to make something accessible multiples exponentially the longer you put it off.
When you start off early, accessibility isn't really that tough. It's just a different mindset and knowing what common mistakes to avoid :)
These are all the same arguments I imagine small business owners made in the push back before handicapped accessible parking spaces but all it would take to implement most likely is a stencil, measuring tape and some paint.
Quote of the year
Seeing you write it that way makes me want to make an anime quote image from it.
So I did 😛
In case anyone needs it, I created bit.ly/EVERYONENEEDSIT to easily point people back to this post.
Use freely & aggressively.
That is so simple and incredible, thank you!
On the first point, maybe a lot of your users don't need accessibility because the people who need it can't become users right now because you don't have it? 🤔I think that's an important argument to be made too.
Great article! I will treasure your counter arguments.
But on the other hand, in my case they also reply that "it's a web application that's going to be used internally only, so we don't need accessibility".
How can I reply to that? 🤔
I work on internal apps as well, and I'm our accessibility person more often than not in workplaces I end up. Here are some of the points I like to use to explain that to folks:
Relating accessibility in terms beyond disability but to common every day situations we all face even on a temporary basis is a very helpful tactic to make sure accessibility doesn't get left behind for internal projects.
Nice write-up.
I also see #2 & 4 being used against security as well as accessibility. Which is probably why I'm taking on both as my main championing points in my Web Developer growth plan.
Security and accessibility are both needed from the start, even if you think your audience won't need/use it. Adding them in later on is always harder later down the road, which is why they are just dropped.
And yes, building security into the app/website/whatever is also often seen as 'too hard', when in fact, it's really just about considering all use cases and planning/coding for it (same for #a11y).
The most extreme example of #5 I experienced was a relatively senior manager at a company producing a CMS essentially aimed at charities (particularly in the Higher Education fundraising sector) telling me accessibility didn't matter because there hadn't been any real legal test cases (though actually at the time there already had been). I had a relatively junior role at the time but did my best to pressure them for improvements. The end result was a direct complaint from them to my manager: apparently it was rude of me to question the poor accessibility support; and they managed to dig up a few forum posts where I'd - perhaps too bluntly - expressed my dissatisfaction with their product. Sadly they still appear to be in business :/
Thumbs up for this! I am currently writing my bachelor thesis on accessibility and these are arguments we hear every day when we speak to developers.
A better article on accessibility medium.com/@krisrivenburgh/the-ada...