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Month: June 2020

Job Hunting while DisabledFour individuals in a warehouse setting wearing brightly colored safety vests, one of them a woman in a wheelchair
Twitter and Inaccessible “Voice Notes”Once upon a time (in tech, this is maybe 2–3 years ago), Twitter actually cared about accessibility. For a while, they were the preferred social media platform for people with disabilities, primarily because their framework functioned well with screen readers, and competing social media was awful. But their competitors started to improve. Pinterest is accessible now, and Facebook and LinkedIn are less terrible than they used to be. And somehow either through intent or attrition, Twitter lost its permanent accessibility team, and started relying on “volunteers.” And the volunteers weren’t involved when Twitter made the inexplicable decision last week to release a new feature that was completely unusable by people with hearing loss. “The volunteers behind accessibility at Twitter (there is no formal team) strive to do their best to ensure products are shipped appropriately,” wrote Andrew Hayward. To which I mentally replied: Are you seriously kidding me? In what way is this an acceptable strategy? How is the voice of a volunteer group within a corporation going to be able to fight against the business demands to push out inaccessible software? How is an organization as large as Twitter going to attract and, more importantly, RETAIN employees with disabilities without a formal accessibility program? Twitter followed the standard corporate ableist practice cookbook throughout this entire incident. Ingredient #1 — Silence First, there was silence. Because pretending that you haven’t behaved in a discriminatory manner always makes the problem go away, amiright? Ingredient #2 — Complaint goes viral, and here come the excuses Then when Matthew Cortland (a disabled attorney) complained and the complaint went viral, Twitter followed the silence with excuses, each more feeble than the last. The standard feeble ableist excuse that is always trotted out when something like this happens is “it’s an early version / beta / feature preview.” “Not quite ready for prime time” is never a valid excuse for software inaccessibility. The best accessibility is included from the design phase, not jammed in at the end. For those of you who are budget conscious (and who isn’t these days) starting with an accessible design means you are less likely to spend unnecessary money late in the release cycle, and also more likely to hit your planned GA date. Ingredient #3 — Apologize Then when the disability community ratcheted up the noise, the lengthy profuse apology from the designated executive scapegoat was released. Ingredient #4 — Promises of an Investigation The next ingredient in the recipe is always from executives promising to look into the issue and to do better in the future because, of course, the offending company isn’t ableist, this was just a one-time aberration! Ingredient #5 — Gushing Praise The end of almost every ableist recipe is gushing praise, frequently from the non-disabled community, thanking the organization for “stepping up” and admitting they were wrong. Praise for fixing something that should have never happened in the first place is incredibly misplaced!!! The recognition should have gone to Matthew Cortland and the people like him, including my bosses’ boss, who hounded Twitter unmercifully until someone high up in the company realized the extent to which they had well and truly effed up. Ingredient #6 — Add a dash of misdirection, smoke, and mirrors Please note: At no time did Twitter acknowledge that they allowed a permanent accessibility team to vanish, to be replaced by volunteers who weren’t integrated into the product development and release cycle. This makes the whole screw up even worse because Twitter, at one point, knew enough to have an accessibility team and either deliberately or through metastatic indifference allowed them to be replaced by a group of “volunteers.” Twitter *had* an accessibility team. Whether through attrition or intent, they no longer have one, and now they are feeling the pain of having made that decision. They need to do a lot more than say, “our bad, we promise to do better in the future.” A large donation to fund non-profit captioning would be an excellent start. Surely if Twitter had done something racist rather than ableist, a large donation to an appropriate charity would be the FIRST thing that they would have done. But somehow that never happens when people with disabilities are the ones on the receiving end of the discriminatory behavior. Also, they need to fix their software, rehire a permanent accessibility team, and implement disability training for its entire staff. These steps will show genuine remorse while reducing the chances of something like this ever happening again. People think accessibility is hard. It isn’t. The Americans with Disabilities Act did not make stairs illegal. It requires that there be a ramp and an elevator to allow people to get to every point that people using the stairs can get to. As my bosses’ boss put it in his tweet, “there was no ramp here.” The ramp for this feature would have been so easy to create. Twitter had the tech. They just failed to care. What is hard is getting corporate employees to give a when: They are rewarded for getting software out, not getting ACCESSIBLE software out. They don’t have enough people with disabilities (or other underrepresented minorities) participating in the process who will catch this kind of stuff long before it is too late to fix. The Innovation Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Design Thinking, Sustainability & Creativity Follow 69 Sign up for The Innovation Digest By The Innovation Official newsletter of The Innovation Learn more Get this newsletter Emails will be sent to ejazwiecka@yahoo.com. Not you? Twitter Social Media Equality Accessibility Deaf
My favorite books on accessibility and related topicsArtistically stacked tunnel of used books with one book that appears to be floating open in the center of the tunnel
Accessibility MemesGame of Thrones Ned Stark saying “one does not simply create memes about accessibility”
No, you are not entitled to pick my brain for freeAn acquaintance of mine posted on LinkedIn that her company had recently joined a leadership organization on disability. I was intrigued, so I clicked on the link to see what the organization was all about, wondering if it might be a good fit for me to get involved with as well. I am a keyboard-only user with glaucoma. Those disabilities mean I can’t use a mouse, and I also frequently use magnification. For me to be able to interact with a website, I need: the little box that shows up around a web page element (called a keyboard focus indicator) to highlight what will happen when I press the return key. a “skip to content” link (known as a “bypass block”) to not have to press the tab key 57 times to get to the center of a page. The site in question that I was looking at advertises itself as a professional hub for disability leaders — and it was TOTALLY INACCESSIBLE to the population it claims to be an expert in. There was no bypass block OR keyboard focus indicators, two of the most fundamental items listed in the WCAG international guidelines for accessibility (and yes, these guidelines are well-known in the country this organization is based in). The lack of a bypass block is a Level A defect (most serious) The lack of a keyboard focus indicator is currently a Level AA defect (less serious, but still a very basic violation). However, the keyboard focus indicator guideline is proposed to move to Level A in less than five months. Level A defects are the WCAG dealbreakers. Bugs caused by not following WCAG 2.0 Level A guidelines completely block entire groups of people with disabilities from being able to use your software. And missing two of the most basic of the 50 guidelines (these two particular guidelines take all of five seconds to test) is living proof of complete and total lack of understanding of what it means to have a disability and how to include, not exclude that community. Apparently this leadership group related to disabilities is a hub for disability leaders that don’t have disabilities? Think about that a little bit. The universe that this organization claims to represent doesn’t allow access to users the community that they are claiming specialized expertise in teaching OTHER organizations about. They say that their membership is open to disabled people everywhere. Well, that’s probably true, but only if your disabilities aren’t the kind that requires the use of assistive technology. This website/organization combination is probably one of the most arrogant and ableist things I’ve ever seen in a while. I wish I could say that I hadn’t seen it before, or wasn’t going to see it again, but that would make me a liar. When I mentioned this to my friend, she tagged one of the organization’s leaders, who then replied in the most incredibly tone-deaf and non-caring manner: “If there is something needs fixing let us know” One thing that I keep hearing over and over from Black people as one small piece of fallout from the George Floyd incident is how effing sick and tired they are of white people coming to them and saying “teach me.” There are few Black employees and many white ones in an organization. The Black employees are overwhelmed, and they are starting to respond en masse — “There are plenty of books out there. Google is free. I’m tired. Go teach yourself.” As a person with a disability, I feel a fair amount of commonality with people of color. I didn’t choose to be disabled. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t disabled. Being disabled is part of my identity. I can’t wake up in the morning and decide I’m not going to be disabled. I am continually surrounded by people unlike me who don’t understand my lived experience. People continuously make assumptions about what I can do based entirely on stereotypes associated with being disabled. The unemployment rate for people with disabilities is drastically higher than for people without disabilities because of those stereotypes. Many “disability initiatives” make decisions about what is best for people with disabilities without actually INVOLVING people with disabilities. If the woman from the organization had asked nicely or from a place of curiosity, I might have dug deep to find one more teachable moment. But there are plenty of books out there (including mine, coming next February). Google is free. I’m tired. Go teach yourself. Learn how to run a WCAG audit to benefit and include the people you claim to be helping. It took me 15 years to acquire the skill set I have (plus 11 years of college). Don’t ask me for $15,000 worth of free consulting, ESPECIALLY if you are a for-profit organization. And really, this organization should stop advertising themselves as a leading organization related to disability until they actually understand how people with disabilities use software and what they need to do to include, not exclude them. 61 Disability Equality Inclusion Leadership Development Consulting
Can an ADA lawsuit be filed against a company located outside the US?Child next to large standing globe with finger to the east of Ethopia
Why Accessibility is a Good Career Choice for Women with DisabilitiesLaptop on a table with one hand operating a touchpad and a second hand pointing to a screen
People with disabilities control $8 trillion in spendingmany dollar notes
An award-winning business product that is the opposite of inclusionQ.Workntine pod (photo from Business Insider)
John Maeda’s 2020 CX Report and AccessibilityBlurry computer monitor with Dashboard tracking things like quality scores and cost for conversion