Where we develop robust web sites with emphasis on accessibility
I agree with this entire thread, especially the action part.
Don’t get me wrong. Awareness is great. But we’ve been doing awareness now for I don’t know how many years or even decades, and it just seems to me that for every step forward we take, there are six more going backwards.
If awareness doesn’t become actuion, it’s just feel-good talk. And I’m starting to wonder if all the talk being generated around accessibility isn’t getting to a point where we’re seeing diminishing returns.
This is an article about a proposed change to the ADA in the United States. Two members of Congress have introduced a bill to limit the ADA and how it
applies to technology. The ADA already applies to websites and mobile apps. Disabled people can now file a lawsuit to make sure they can use websites and
apps. The new law would not allow a private lawsuit until a disabled person first went to the Department of Justice. This would take time and delay fixing
a website. Lawsuits have been important to making the ADA work for 30 years. It is not fair to limit disabled people’s civil rights.
a name plate reading “Legislation” in front of a legal gavel
On October 1, 2020 a “bill to amend the Americans with Disabilities Act” was introduced in the United States House of Representatives. Titled the “Online
Accessibility Act,” the opening paragraph might sound appealing to advocates for digital inclusion. A deeper look reveals dangerous legislation for those
who care about civil rights of disabled people in the digital age.
I hope this doesn’t become law, but hope is not a strategy, so I’ll be paying attention to the progress of this bill and calling my representative if it starts to get some legs.
Updates: has responded to the Tavern article, as has Adrian.
WPTavern disagrees with Studio 24’s decision to drop WordPress over Gutenberg. I was going to write a long comment on that post, but then I figured I’d just address it on my site.
The Tavern’s disagreement hinges on the W3C prioritizing accessibility over its commitment to open source. And I’m wondering why that’s a bad thing.
Open source as a rule, (and FLOSS in particular, from Stallman on down), continues to consider accessibility one of those things that should be left up to the choice of the developer instead of something that should be implemented so that everyone can enjoy the freedoms granted by the GPL and other licenses. And anyone who has spent any time advocating for accessibility within the free spoftware space knows this. There’s a reason advocates are giving talks about the rights aspect of this instead of technical talks.
That talk’s from 2017, and I can’t think of another talk given by an accessibility advocate in that space since then. I can’t speak for anyone else but I get the impression we’ve finally just given up on trying to convince the Free Software movement that accessibility should be a requirement instead of a nice-to-have at best.
So it’s kind of nice to see the W3C flip tables over this.
Prioritizing accessibility over open source/free software isn’t the wrong thing to do, it’s the right thing to do, especially given the state of accessibility in the FLOSS space.
With regard to Gutenberg specifically, out of the eight projects I’m working on right now, two clients can use it without wanting to throw something, and only one of them really enjoys it. That client doesn’t have a disability and doesn’t use assistive technology. I still find Gutenberg to be an efficiency nightmare, and I’ve been using it for seven months now. And while I don’t think there’s a person alive who would say that the accessibility of the thing hasn’t improved, the part of that talk by Joe Dolsen left out is that the issues that have been closed and the accessibility successes are a start.
There’s also this, from his post on this subject:
When I read that statement, I feel like it implies that I gave a positive report on the accessibility state of Gutenberg in a way that isn’t really accurate.
Both those statements are absolutely true: two-thirds of the issues reported in the initial accessibility audit of Gutenberg have been solved, and the
overall accessibility is, indeed, vastly improved over the release, as would be expected given the first piece of information.
But it ignores the fact that those accessibility issues are not the only concerns raised on the project. They only encompass issues that existed in the
spring of 2019. Since then, many features have been added and changed, and those features both resolve issues and have created new ones. The accessibility
team is constantly playing catch up to try and provide enough support to improve Gutenberg. And even now, while it is more or less accessible, there are
critical features that are not yet implemented. There are entirely new interface patterns introduced on a regular basis that break prior accessibility
expectations.
And the statement that Gutenberg is vastly more accessible than at release is not particularly significant. At release, it was woefully inadequate; now
it’s bearable and largely usable, but in no way enjoyable. And in certain respects, it is lacking extremely basic features, such as support for adding
video captions within Gutenberg.
Note also Joe’s comments regarding WordPress and internationalization. They’re important, and I’m seconding them completely.
Improvement is excellent, but it’s not done. And speaking as someone who has to use Gutenberg on a pretty regular basis, it’s not ready to be deployed if you’re concerned about whether or not people with disabilities can add content to your system.
I hope that the W3C’s decision will convince WordPress’s leadership to prioritize accessibility at a higher level. But hope is not a strategy, and I don’t think organizations or individuals should be expected to stick with something that clearly isn’t meeting their needs or is even causing problems for the sake of their devotion to FLOSS.
I think Gutenberg is a great idea, despite the all-too-frequent flare-ups that still happen over accessibility issues. But I definitely don’t enjoy using it, and I don’t know any people with disabilities who enjoy using it either. And WCAG 2.0 is the minimum. You could completely conform to WCAG 2.0, and it doesn’t mean you’ve created something people with disabilities can use as effortlessly as everyone else.
Until Gutenberg gets to a point where it’s as easy to use as the classic editor, (if it ever does), organizations who either employ or want to employ people with disabilities are going to continue to drop WordPress over it. And telling them to fork WordPress or to maintain the classic editor plugin after WordPress stops doing that isn’t a solution to the problem. It’s about the most obtuse thing that could be said.
This is an article about Lainey Feingold’s website. The site has been updated. Lainey is very grateful to web developer Natalie MacLees who made the changes
and designed the updated site. Natalie’s company is called Digita11y. One change is that summaries of each article, like this one, are at the top of the
page. Another change is there is no more copyright symbol. Instead the site uses Creative Commons. This makes it easier for people to share what they find
on the site. The new site also has a picture of dolphins on every page. Lainey thinks lawyers and advocates don’t need to be sharks. The dolphin is a symbol
of cooperation and relationship.
I’d like to raise a glass upon the new redesign of @LFLegal’s website by @nataliemac of @hiredigitally.
Lainey’s website has been, ever since I encountered it more than a few years ago, an absolute joy to browse and use.
And it just keeps getting better and better.
It’s also a joy to link to in other contexts, (Episode 19 of the Making Better podcast, for example), because I know for a fact that if podcast listeners click the link to Lainey’s site in that episode they will find everything they could possibly want to know about either Lainey Feingold or structured negotiation.
The ease of finding things became important when I was editing the intro text for the Making Better episode because I found myself in the position of having to edit text for length while also not leaving out important stuff.
Looking forward to the reign of our dolphin overlords,
A very happy user
Improve readability of your content by using left-justified text instead of centered text.
It’s easier and faster to read text that doesn’t force the reader to search for the beginning of each line.
This is one of those articles I keep around to share with clients who request centered text.
I figure it’s time to bookmark it somewhere and also today was a good day for it to show up in my Twitter feed because I have a call with a client on this exact subject later today.
This just has to come out. You know, thinking about Microsoft’s Surface Duo or whatever, all I can think of it is that it’s running Android. Why? Because hardware doesn’t matter to me, not that much. Sure, RAM and CPU power matters to me, and disk space of course. But what really matters, …
I’m just curious. Is there anyone other than Fandroids, (die-hard fans of Android) or Google who is seriously suggesting that Android is on par with Apple when it comes to productive accessibility?
On a more serious note, I think Devin’s making a very valid point. Apple may be a company I hate to love, but there’s a reason I switched from Android to Apple a long time ago and it has nothing to do with my love of corporations
The only part of Devin’s post I’d quibble with is the part about whether or not people are pushing for accessibility in the open source arena. If there’s not buy-in from project maintainers and/or project founders, accessibility is going to be an up-hill battle.
And it doesn’t help that the leadership of the open source and free software communities are basically ambivolent at best about this whole accessibility thing.
I was actually looking into getting myself a Surface, but if they’re running Android I think I’ll hold off on that.
Oh and hi devin, glad I found you on the fediverse. That was a nice Monday morning bonus.