Conversations around web accessibility
Interviews with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility.
Adrienne McDonnell is a front end developer at Elsevier. She says that knowing how to navigate a site with the keyboard is a fundational skill that all developers should know. She also reflects on the fact that all the accessibility specifications are very dense and can be overwhelming for people new to accessibility.
John Tubbs is an educator working for about thirty years in the area of high tech, digital education, online learning. He discusses accessibility and accomodations for students with disabilities – a topic we don’t hear enough about. He points out that his team is working towards universal accessible documents that can later be customized, rather than wait students to request accommodations and then scramble to make it happen.
Jen says that many of the needs for accessibility aren’t that hard to accommodate by developers and designers! I couldn’t agree more.
I love what Jen had to say about accessibility! She said, among other things: “accessibility is about the recognition that every human isn’t identical to every other human.”
Becky talks about accessibility needing to be in the curriculum for all computer science courses – and I couldn’t agree more!
In this episode, Becky talks to us about how changes in technology has changed her perception of accessibility. She also tells us how she came to be so passionate about accessibility!
“It’s a frustration of mine that too often when somebody asks me a question about accessibility, the only answer I can really give if I want to be succinct is, “It depends”.”
In a role reversal, for the first episode of the second year of the show – I’m the one being interviewed 🙂 Léonie Watson was kind enough to chat with me. It was fun to be on the other side of things 🙂
Eric says that accessibility “is a foundational principle of the web. Like literally the web is built on accessibility. The original specs don’t necessarily call it that, but that’s an organizing principle of the web. And to try to ignore it or overcome it is a lot like trying to paddle upstream”.
