Greetings everyone.
I would like to open by talking briefly about frustration. The kind of frustration that a person feels when they do not feel properly understood by others. A frustration that can be further exacerbated by indifference. In other words, not only does someone not understand you, they don’t care to. And I think it is that combination that is hitting us all especially hard of late. Especially here in the United States. It becomes more and more obvious every day that a large number of people remain purely “indifferent” about accessibility. In other words, they simply don’t care.
Unless they are in a position of litigation for breach of legal compliance, we often have no recourse to make things accessible except to yell. Loudly. As often as we can. To as many people as possible. Something I do myself as often as possible. Though I’m not sure how much effect it actually has in making anything more accessible. So now, when people yell at me, especially about accessibility, I try to process it differently. Below I would like to share with you a story that explains why.
As many of you know we have been making some changes to the Top Tech Tidbits and Access Information Newsletters of late to address some issues that blind readers in particular have been having with email clients for years.
These changes caused quite a bit of confusion for readers before we were able to get everyone updated with a post explaining what happened.
During this time of confusion I received an email from a reader by the name of Sarah Massengale. Sarah was polite, but angry. There were issues with the Top Tech Tidbits and Access Information Newsletters that were preventing her from having her best reading experience, and frankly, she wanted something done about it. Now, as an access person, anytime another access person tells you that you are not accessible, your first reaction might be to extol the virtues of the twenty plus years of blind reader feedback that you have baked into each template, but I urge you to resist. Why? Because it simply doesn’t matter if this reader is not having the reading experience they desire. Access must be all encompassing. So I asked Sarah to please outline for me, as specifically as possible, the issues that she was experiencing, and where exactly they were in the template.
Well, as luck would have it, Sarah was both a CPACC (Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies) as well as an ADS (Accessible Document Specialist) with her own consulting firm, so she very happily obliged. What I received was a very well though-out, passionate and professional response detailing every single issue that prevented her from having the best possible reading experience, using her specific setup and preferred method of reading. She also pointed out several items that she felt were “odd” within the code from an access perspective.
I was so impressed by her insights that I wrote her back and offered to pay whatever her hourly rate was for consultation. She agreed. And so we retained her to review the changes that we agreed to implement based on her recommendations. Many of them were simple, but powerful, such as making the “Read in Browser” link a heading, so that screen readers could jump right to it with a single key combination. Others simply got things out of the way. Like spacer images, which are still required by email clients, that were not being hidden from screen readers. The “oddities” that Sarah mentioned were simply deprecated coding requirements that are still in use specifically for email clients and SEO. In short, we learned from each other, and made both Top Tech Tidbits and Access Information News more accessible and easier to read in the process, for the blind in particular.
I was so pleased with what we had done together that I asked Sarah if she might consider staying on with Top Tech Tidbits in an Editorial capacity, and to my delight, she agreed. Sarah will now contribute articles on a regular basis (read her first article here) and consult for both publications as needed.
Sarah Massengale is the owner and founder of SM Accessibility Consulting LLC, a woman and disability-owned company that provides digital accessibility auditing and usability testing, inclusive design consultation, and a variety of disability and accessibility focused trainings. She is also a an Editor for the Top Tech Tidbits newsletter, a member of the National Federation of the Blind of South Carolina Board of Directors, the IAAP Global Leadership Council, and the National Advisory Council for the Rhonda Weiss Center for Accessible IDEA data.
Born totally blind, Sarah has over twenty years of lived experience with disability perspectives and access technology. An IAAP certified CPACC and ADS, she presents at conferences such as CSUN and M-enabling Summit. Her favorite passion project is working with INTO Design Systems, a community of American and European design systems experts, with whom she conducts frequent workshops on accessible design systems and components.
And finally, before we go, I am incredibly happy to announce a very simple new feature that I think will appeal to a very large portion of readers. Blind readers especially. A reader wrote in to let us know that one of the consequences of the recent change from email client to web browser was that he could no longer read Tidbits or AIN without an internet connection. And that was a problem for him. Because he really enjoyed catching up on access news during times when he would be without an internet connection. Therefore, in order to reinstate this functionality in addition to the new changes, we will now be providing each weekly newsletter in Microsoft Word format (.doc) as well. This link will be present, directly within the email that we send you, along with the link to read online. Just click the link to download, and read whenever you want. The Word Document will carry the same heading structure as the web browser version of the newsletter.
Until next time!
