In the United States, various parts of the federal government have made it painfully and consistently clear in its rulings that the federal government doesn’t care who created inaccessible content or code, if it’s on your site, then the site…
High Impact Accessibility on a Budget
It is easy to spend a lot of money on accessibility. Consulting companies that specialize in accessibility have a high hourly rate, and automated accessibility tools can run tens of thousands of dollars (or more) annually. Employees are typically expensive…
Accessibility — Separate but Equal is Never OK
This week, the US DOT ruled that Scandinavian Airlines’ separate site for people with disabilities was against the DOT’s web accessibility requirements. SAS was fined 200K, of which 100K is deferred if they behave. Their defense was that the consulting company whose…
An Accessible Christmas Carol
On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me · A lesson in accessibility On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me · Two contrasting colors · And a lesson in accessibility On…
Create your accessibility “Aha!” moment — By teaching VoiceOver to EVERYONE
Accessibility managers in large organizations spend a lot of time trying to convince people in decision making positions to adopt accessible practices — be it in development, QA, procurement, or whatever segment of the organization they are trying to influence. This usually…
Diversity Managers — Here’s what you need to know about Disabilities
When I start a new contract or job, one of the first meetings I pursue is with the Chief Diversity Officer. I am in the middle of completing the Cornell Diversity and Inclusion Certificate program. I go for four days about once…
Advice for the Aspiring Accessibility Tester / Manager
Since I started posting these articles on Medium, I’ve had several people reach out to me and say “Hey, I think Accessibility looks really awesome as a career choice. How do I get there?” Rather than answering each query individually,…
Prioritizing Accessibility Defects for Remediation
You have run your favorite automation tool. You’ve sifted through the results, suppressing duplicates, false positives (there aren’t many tools that automatically detect ARIA and suppress reporting the underlying issue that the ARIA addresses) things that are not within your…
Hiring an Accessibility Tester? Here is an approach that you should consider
A former team member reached out to me today. He was disappointed because he didn’t get an accessibility testing contract that frankly, he was overqualified for. When I asked what went wrong, he said “they wanted someone who knew more…