Join fellow like-minded product owners looking to learn and contribute to authentic conversations on accessibility and inclusive design packed into just 5 minutes a day.
How do you strike the balance?
Striking the balance between making the easy thing right and making the right thing easy in web accessibility is a crucial discussion. Do you choose the path of least resistance or fight through the discomfort and take the path of inclusiveness? The easy thing is copy pasting some code you found online. It might seem like the quick fix, but it often doesn't take into account the diverse needs of all your users. The right thing is making your website universally accessible. It involves considering diverse user experiences, and making sure what you create will work for everyone, regardless of disabilities. It's about making accessibility a natural part of your development process. It's about considering accessibility the norm, rather than an afterthought. If we can make these two be the same, we'll all be that much better off. The problem is, do you make the easy thing right or the right thing easy? |
Ship accessible websites. Faster.
Join fellow like-minded product owners looking to learn and contribute to authentic conversations on accessibility and inclusive design packed into just 5 minutes a day.
Does this sound familiar? The meeting was scheduled for 9:00 but somehow at 9:06 Zoom still says "Waiting for host to start the meeting." When it finally starts, the organiser casually mutters "sorry, previous thing ran long" while fumbling with screen sharing. It's okay though, because they'll happily steal those minutes back by running fifteen minutes over the scheduled end time. Everyone waiting lost those first minutes. And everyone with a follow-up commitment will nervously look at the...
It's very tempting to hand over responsibility over accessibility to other people. If you're a developer, it's the designer's job. If you're the designer, the developer needs to implement accessibility. If you're the product owner, it's the tester's job to make sure everything works with assistive technology. This is easy. Because if someone else accepts responsibility, then we're off the hook. I see two problems with this: 1. Someone else must always be willing to accept the responsibility...
Accessibility. 13 letters. We thought it was such a lenghty word that we use the numeronym a11y to write it out. It has all these definitions floating around, each one just slightly different than the next. I think the reason why we can't settle on just one is simply because, like the word itself, accessibility is a loaded concept. It's just like a bulky piece of luggage you lug around and when you finally set it down on the floor and start to unpack, it'll likely fill the room. The...