Michael thinks the most important thing that we fail to do on a daily basis is talking with people with disabilities or talking with the users in general.
Transcript
Nic
Hi. I’m Nic Steenhout. And you’re listening to the accessibility rules soundbite a series of short podcasts where people with disabilities explain their impairments, and what barriers they encounter on the web. Today I’m speaking with Michael Ausbun . Michael is an accessibility specialist who currently works at a university in the States. So welcome aboard Michael, how are you? I’m doing well. How are you? I’m doing good. Glad to finally get to talk to you about this. We’ve been bouncing ideas back and forth for several months now. But finally, taking time to do this.
Michael, what is your impairment or your disability?
Michael
Yeah, so I am blind. Blind is the way that I choose to identify. I lost my sight at age six as a result of a condition called hydrocephalus. Basically, the ventricles on my brain were blocked. And it resulted in fluid being built up on the optic nerve, resulting in optic nerve atrophy. Growing up, it was really interesting, because I was told that I needed to identify as visually impaired because I had some residual vision. And for a long time, that was how I did identify. When I turned 18, I really got interested in disability activism and identity politics. And in doing some research, I realized that it was totally respectable to be blind, and that there was nothing wrong with it, a lot of the tropes that I had been led to believe around blindness were incorrect, such as blind people don’t contribute to society, all they do is sit at home and live off the dole, etc. And in that process, I learned also that a blind person could continue to live on their terms, and compete on terms of equality with our non disabled peers. And so I’m very happily blind.
Nic
I think this question of self identity is so important. It’s actually critical for disabled folks. Lovely to hear your take on that.
Michael
Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, when we talk about self determination and living in the world, it’s absolutely critical. That, you know, we learn to embrace some kind of identity. You know, other folks might relate to their disability differently than I do, and that’s totally fine. But when we look at some of the root cause problems with accessibility, and with employment and things of that nature, and really, inclusion and equity, it oftentimes boils down to the expectations that we hold for disabled folks. And a key part of the expectations, to me seems to be the way in which we identify or you know, what our identity means to us? Hmm, yeah.
Nic
We’ve spoken at length about barriers we encounter on the web. And I know that you probably could talk for a week about the different things. What one barrier do you think, is the most annoying for you at the moment.
Michael
I think at the moment, the biggest barrier is the proliferation, or the increased use in using Aria live regions, specifically Aria alert, to convey meaning to screen reader users. In a lot of cases, I’ll be moving through a website that might be a recipe website, or my wife, who’s also blind, just recently told me that she was visiting a website for a stamping project that she just started and in a lot of times, our screen reader will be reading through and all of a sudden it will say alert, yada, yada, yada, and most times the message really isn’t all that important. You know, it really could wait until after the screen reader is done conveying the information and the relationship between the elements that are on the page. Before I actually need to know what has occurred.
Nic
What would be the top two or three cases were using aria assertive, or role of alert actually be justified or warranted?
Michael
I think if it were Something that we’re absolutely dire such as a warning, the computer will shut down in 10 seconds. Or alert, you have a virus because you’ve wandered down the wrong dark area of the internet and you shouldn’t be here. Those types of messages, I think would be critical information for me to know. But press ALT one for screen reader mode. Definitely not something that is needed at all.
Nic
Yeah, I would venture to say that screen reader mode would not be needed at all because it should be marked up in a way that works for all assistive technologies without having separate modes.
Michael
Yeah, absolutely. I think that there is a big gap in the understanding of HTML for a lot of folks. And you know, we’ve seen a lot of discussion recently online with, we ought to replace HTML and CSS with just JavaScript and let’s go that way. And people fail to to think about it in a way that HTML really is the bone structure that really guides, folks. Right. And so,
Nic
Yeah!
Michael
I think you’re 100% on target. If we reconceptualize the way that we are thinking about the foundations, then a screen reader mode is absolutely unnecessary.
Nic
If you had one message to pass on to designers or developers, what would that message be?
Michael
I think the most important thing that we fail to do on a daily basis is talking with people with disabilities or talking with the users in general. A lot of solutions that I’ve seen folks come up with are super creative, and they could be very interesting. But in functionality, or in reality, if we talk to users is actually solving the problem that is theoretically non existent. A really good example of that would be things like overlays or screen reader modes. And a lot of cases, they purport to solve this mysterious problem of nobody can access the Internet, and so they don’t have an ability to gain knowledge or book, their hotel and poor people with disabilities. It’s so hard. But I would venture to say that 9 times out of 10, in my experience, most issues are at a level in which they are annoying, yes. But in terms of task orientation, and completing the day to day ventures on the web, the experience is not nearly as dire as perfect, you know, as detailed by these folks who want to implement all of these fancy solutions. And really, it comes back to getting back to our foundations and engaging the people that you want to save. Because, you know, we really don’t need saviors we need partners in terms of creating a more equitable digital space.
Nic
I really like that: We don’t need saviors we need partners. What a fantastic note to end this soundbite on. Michael, thank you for sharing your thoughts and for being such a great guests. Thank you for having me. And that’s it for now. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this accessibility soundbite Please support the show at http://patreon.com/steenhout