Conversations around web accessibility
Short discussions with disabled people about the barriers they encounter on the web. Hear about web accessibility in our own words!
Dacey says, among other things “If you’re going to include animated GIFs, I would recommend them not playing by default, but allowing the user to click a play button.”
Listen to disabled people year round, not just on International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
Kelly says “if you have long tables and lists actually put borders on them”, so she knows what she’s picking up.
Kevin says: Give user choice: “Obviously what’s good for me won’t be good for someone else. We shouldn’t be designing for a kind of homogeneous grade of people.”
Ruben, talking about text reflow, says sometimes “text will actually go over the container and sometimes I can’t even see what things say. I have to open up the developer console and actually look at it”.
Julia tells us that “it’s so easy to kind of get caught up with the latest features or the latest like tricks that you learn about to make, you know, a shiny website. But you have to consider the usability of all of your users not just, you know, the folks like you or the folks that are super tech savvy”
Meryl tells us, among other things, that “If we notice the caption, it’s a sign they’re not good quality.”
Dave says accessibility comes down to simplicity. And I think there is elegance in simplicity. But so many times we see all the bells and whistles that pop up on a website that people think gives it an elegant beauty or makes it makes it more pleasurable to the eye. What ends up happening is it makes the website more difficult to use. And that isn’t to say that simple can’t be beautiful.
Ben Lesh says if you can do your best to actually get the users focus on what matters and kind of limit the noisiness of the other things that would be a big deal for certain folks.
Mike tells us about automating accessibility: “as a blind consumer, of content, information, whatever, I don’t care where I get it, as long as I get it. Information is what I need.”
