Conversations around web accessibility
Interviews with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility.
In which Ire tells us that she thinks convincing framework developers to implement accessibility will have more impact than trying to change individual developers’ minds.
In the first part of my interview, Ire Aderinokun tells us that accessibility will not take you a massive effort if you’re using HTML correctly.
Ire is a front-end developer and user interface designer. She currently is working on a startup called Buy Coins.
Continuing my chat with Beth. We discuss, among other things, accessibility as a coding challenge vs having to meet tight deadlines – and how sometimes developers chose to do things the way they know to meet these deadlines.
Beth is an accessibility specialist and a UX interaction designer. She was part of an award winning team at United. She compares acceptance of the need for accessibility as the 5 stages of grief.
Marcy tells us that her greatest frustration is that for all of the energy that we put into this all the time it feels like we’re stagnant in terms of accessibility actually getting done. And that it’s hard not to get derailed by that.
Marcy tells us that it’s important for folks in the accessibility community to listen to developers’ needs. She also states that we ought to be more positive, and to stop making people feel bad about accessibility!
Eric tells us accessibility shouldn’t be just technical curiosity. It’s about people.
Eric tells us, among other things, that relationship building is a good way to get passed the hostility some people have towards accessibility.
Alex is a developer who has experienced the difference between baking in accessibility from the start compared to trying to retrofit accessibility into an existing project – which leads to a lot of trial and error and wasted time.
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.
