Accessibility is a Waste of Time

I recently had an hour long (very intense) debate with one of my web designers over accessibility. He knows I’m the “self-appointed accessibility goddess at UT”…and yet, he still thought accessibility was optional on a specific project he was doing for me.

He thought, “no blind person will ever use this content” and it made him really angry that I would require him to add alt. We spent more time arguing about the issue than it would have taken him to fix it. But…the time was well spent, because it was a deep seated philosophy and I think I finally found a way to help him see why it really is a worthwhile endeavor. It wasn’t until I got to SEO that he even started to think it might be valuable to add alt.

When it comes right down to it, web designers can still fall prey to the “this is a waste of my time”. And that is where our opportunity lies. We need to uncover those deeply hidden beliefs and examine them in the day light, listen to the reasons why they think it is a waste of time…and then…carefully respond with real reasons why it is worth it.

Written on my white board is an accessibility rule of thumb I proposed to my designer. It reads:

Accessibility Goal = 100% (but since I can’t pull that off today…here is how I make day to day decisions)

  1. Make it Accessible – I expect it to be accessible.
  2. Undue Burden + Not Important Content – If, and ONLY IF, you feel that making the content accessible will create an undue burden AND the content is “not important”…then come talk to me about it…and we will brainstorm solutions together.

In the end, I never want to waste your time.

5 comments

  1. He thought, “no blind person will ever use this content” and it made him really angry that I would require him to add alt.

    Wow… It always boggles my mind to run into people that think that. I just had to re-code a boatload of XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript written by someone who thought along those lines and reduced loading time, increased accessibility, increased usability, and made it much more maintainable, all in one fell swoop.

    I have a meeting in an hour to go over the few points of inaccessibility in our Ajax-drive UI and how I’ll improve it to meet (and hopefully surpass) Section 508 compliance for the next release. Putting alt text on an image seems like such a basic, simple fix…

  2. That reminds me of a time I was up against a deadline designing pages for mobile devices. As the deadline loomed, I (with a heavy heart) dropped accessibility and just tried to get the design finished (knowing that no one in my well defined audienced had a disability)….and SMACK…my inaccessible solution failed.

    At which point…I took a moment to just laugh…and say to myself…”see what happens when you don’t live by your principles!” Then I picked myself back up and created the accessible solution.

    I love it when reality and my principles are in alignment!

  3. If I could get my institution to recognize the value and necessity of DOCTYPE statments, I’d be happy. Given that, I don’t hold my breath too much for accessibility. I do whatever I can on pages I can control, though. The rest of our webmasters, it’s like I sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher to them.

  4. Patrick…thanks for the perspective…I’ve got a lot to be grateful for…seeing that my institution has already implemented an Accessibility policy.

    (deep breath)…thank goodness for a new day…powered by a great cup of coffee…and the knowledge that while our progess may seem slow…that each step forward brings us closer to the goal!

Comments are closed.