Gary Barber on Killing Accessibility

This is well worth the read, here are just a cou­ple of gems from Gary Barber’s arti­cle titled Kill Acces­si­bil­ity:

The old UX catch call is never truer here – we are not the users. The dis­par­ity between us and the peo­ple we are really work­ing for, with acces­si­bil­ity, is some­times just too great for us to even get a idea of what it is like, no mat­ter how many videos of peo­ple using assis­tive tech­nol­ogy we see.

And this zinger:

In real­ity there is no socially inspired pub­lic rela­tions value in acces­si­bil­ity. A busi­ness can be seen to get more value out of spon­sor­ing a guide dog than mak­ing their web site accessible.

The rest of the arti­cle is well worth the read. (via @scenariogirl)

Accessibility Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail and a Win

After see­ing a num­ber of acces­si­bil­ity fails posted on the Fail Blog:

It was great to see this one on their com­pan­ion blog, Epic Win:

Mad Pride

Newsweek tagline: “Why some men­tally ill patients are reject­ing their med­ica­tion and mak­ing the case for ‘mad pride.’”

From The Grow­ing Push for “Mad Pride”.

I am famil­iar with var­i­ous move­ments that cel­e­brate the pos­i­tive aspects of dif­fer­ence such as Dis­abil­ity Pride, Deaf Pride and Crip Pride, but only recently came across the idea of Mad Pride, a move­ment that cel­e­brates the pos­i­tive aspects of men­tal health diag­noses. The move­ment has been around for awhile, but a recent Newsweek arti­cle was the first I learned of it, at least that I remem­ber since I received my own men­tal health diagnoses.

There is much good that comes from accept­ing a men­tal health diag­noses and “com­ing out” to friends and fam­ily. Ben­e­fits include an increased under­stand­ing, a sense of com­mu­nity with oth­ers with like expe­ri­ences and a greater open­ness to receiv­ing help and man­ag­ing lifestyle. Of course there can also be neg­a­tive con­se­quences, but I believe that the per­cep­tion of those is gen­er­ally greater than the reality.

On the other end of the spec­trum from “mad pride” there are many who suf­fer from the debil­i­tat­ing effects of “mad shame”- an unwill­ing­ness to acknowl­edge a men­tal health diag­noses in ones self. In between those two extremes are the masses of peo­ple who have a men­tal health diag­noses that treat it as an ill­ness man­aged through some com­bi­na­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, self-medication or other treat­ment options.

When first diag­nosed with a men­tal ill­ness, I found myself some­where in the mid­dle– never ashamed, but nei­ther was I anx­ious to shout it from the rooftop. Since that first diag­noses there have been long peri­ods of dark­ness and frus­tra­tion, I’m in a good place now with a com­pletely dif­fer­ent diag­noses (ADHD). I now freely share my diag­noses and am feel­ing suc­cess­ful in work and fam­ily life and my ADHD is a an impor­tant part of that success.

Addi­tional Resources

• ‘Mad Pride’ Fights a Stigma (New York Times article)
• Mind­Free­dom (non-profit orga­ni­za­tion focused on human rights and alter­na­tives for peo­ple labeled with psy­chi­atric disabilities)
• Mad Pride Wikipedia Entry

Disability Perspective

A “man on crutches” is shar­ing the expe­ri­ence of just one small part of his day affected by his dis­abil­ity, get­ting a seat on the bus in the seats reserved for rid­ers with dis­abil­i­ties. He has done an excel­lent job of con­vey­ing his expe­ri­ence and per­spec­tive through images:

Peo­ple Who Sit In The Dis­abil­ity Seats When I’m Stand­ing On My Crutches

See the Person, Not the Disability

Great video I came across at walk­ing . is . over­rated:

In his post titled, Some Sweet Dis­abil­ity Think­ing, Red ref­er­ences a post from Mark Smith:

If you told me of all of the com­pli­ca­tions of your dis­abil­ity – phys­i­cally, emo­tion­ally, men­tally, socially, eco­nom­i­cally – and I sim­ply replied, “So what?” would you be offended?

In fact, I give this very response to my friends – and, more impor­tantly, myself – every day when it comes to the chal­lenges of liv­ing with dis­abil­ity: You and I have dis­abil­ity hard­ships, so what?

Read the rest from Mark Smith’s post titled Three Pages in the Trash.

“So what?”

Never Leave Home Without a Spider-Man Costume

This is a great story from Thai­land where a stu­dent with autism had a panic attack and climbed onto the ledge out­side of his third floor class­room. It was the student’s first day at a new school and no one was able to con­vince him to come back inside, so the local fire depart­ment was called.

Fire­man Som­chai Yoos­abai shows up and hears that the stu­dent loves comic book heroes. It just so hap­pens that Som­chai hasa Spider-Man cos­tume that he keeps in his locker. He puts cos­tume on and quickly and safely con­vinces the stu­dent to come back inside.

More at:

• Spider-Man Saves Autis­tic Boy in Thailand
• Fire­man dresses as Spider-Man to res­cue boy

Web Accessibility vs Life Accessibility

After lack­ing the moti­va­tion to write a post for almost a year, I was finally able to admit that I don’t care about web acces­si­bil­ity as much as I thought I did. If you are look­ing for good, cur­rent infor­ma­tion on web acces­si­bil­ity issues there is a long list of peo­ple who you should fol­low before Curb Cut.

That said, I care very much about dis­abil­ity issues. Curb Cut has been an acces­si­bil­ity blog writ­ten pri­mar­ily for read­ers already inter­ested in acces­si­bil­ity issues. How­ever, depend­ing on your past expe­ri­ence you may or may not give a crap about dis­abil­ity issues.

My inter­est in web acces­si­bil­ity orig­i­nated from my rela­tion­ships with two of my broth­ers who were born with Down syn­drome. Like a good brother should, I wanted to make the web a friend­lier place for them. Well, it turns out that Patrick has no use for the Inter­net. Dallin Paul is a heavy Inter­net user, but thus far has been able to find every America’s Fun­ni­est Home Video Peo­ple Get­ting Hurt Col­lec­tion and Power Ranger video on YouTube with­out any prob­lem. If my goal is really to make the world a bet­ter place for them then it is time to refo­cus my efforts. There is lit­tle I could to for the Inter­net that would make it more use­ful to Patrick or Dallin Paul, but con­sider the following:

• Patrick has worked for over 10 years at a Uni­ver­sity food court. He works hard, is depend­able and well-liked by col­leagues and cus­tomers. Nev­er­the­less, there is very lit­tle chance that he will be offered a full-time posi­tion or any kind of benefits.
• Dallin Paul still has a fear of attend­ing church with my fam­ily because of some very unfor­tu­nate expe­ri­ences he had with Sun­day school teach­ers grow­ing up. When he does attend, he is wel­comed by some, tol­er­ated by oth­ers and ignored by every­one else.

I have spent a num­ber of years as a teacher in spe­cial ed class­rooms, trav­el­ing with Spe­cial Olympics teams and vol­un­teer­ing with var­i­ous dis­abil­ity orga­ni­za­tions. You wouldn’t know any of that from read­ing Curb Cut in the past. My dis­abil­ity expe­ri­ence is the only real value I have to offer and I pur­pose­fully kept it out of my writ­ing on web acces­si­bil­ity. Shame on me.

Here’s to a more authen­tic Curb Cut.

Personas of Persons with Disabilities

I recently pre­sented on dis­abil­ity aware­ness in build­ing acces­si­ble web­sites to a group of inter­ac­tion design­ers. At the end, I was asked about exam­ples of a spe­cific per­son with a dis­abil­i­ties as well as design con­sid­er­a­tions for that per­son. This is what I found:

Per­sonas of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties and Rec­om­mended Design Considerations

• Fluid, a user expe­ri­ence project for open source projects, cre­ated the per­sona of Sara Wind­sor, a fac­ulty mem­ber who is blind and out­lines some con­sid­er­a­tions in design­ing an acces­si­ble user expe­ri­ence for her.
• Liv­ing with Dis­abil­i­ties, pro­files for a blind per­son, low vision, hear­ing impaired, motor con­trol impaired, and cog­ni­tively chal­lenged, with design con­sid­er­a­tions for each– from the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan.

Per­sonas of Per­sons with Disabilities

• Two per­sonas– Roger Retiree and Kim, College-Student
• Exam­ples for Per­sonas from a Web Acces­si­bil­ity Project (PDF) , fea­tur­ing Tracy Young rep­re­sent­ing young peo­ple with visual impair­ments and Ger­ald Old­man rep­re­sent­ing old peo­ple with disabilities.
• Dis­abled Per­sonas from JA-SIG includ­ing Brent Blind­man, Melissa Motorim­paired and Clark Colorblind.
• Uni­fied Mod­el­ing Lan­guage Actors: “Per­sonas with Dis­abil­i­ties”, I’m not sure what the title means, but this arti­cle con­tains a list of per­sonas and a descrip­tion of how they were created.
• The WAI has a draft of the per­sonas that they used in their redesign, includ­ing a per­son with a disability

Regard­less of whether or not you use per­sonas, the exam­ples are help­ful to go through to bet­ter under­stand acces­si­bil­ity from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, even though that per­spec­tive is that of a make believe person.

If the per­sonas aren’t doing it for you, take a gan­der at some of these videos and expe­ri­ences to get a bet­ter feel for how per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties access the web:

• Assis­tive­Ware videos on com­puter acces­si­bil­ity, don’t miss the user pro­files of the peo­ple in the videos (via Roger Johans­son).
• WebAIM Dis­abil­ity Simulations
• Screen reader and screen mag­ni­fi­ca­tion videos

Addi­tional Resources

• Includ­ing Acces­si­bil­ity Con­sid­er­a­tions in Personas
• Usabil­ity: more than skin deep from Lisa Her­rod (audio avail­able here)
• How many users with dis­abil­i­ties should you include when con­duct­ing a usabil­ity test for accessibility?
• Per­sonas on Wikipedia
• From Where I Sit” Video Series, eight stu­dents from the Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­sity dis­cuss their expe­ri­ences in the col­lege class­room as stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties (via Do-IT Videos page)

Access to the Web for People with Intellectual Disabilities

If you are look­ing for infor­ma­tion on how to make craft more acces­si­ble web­sites for per­sons with cog­ni­tive dis­abil­i­ties, here are a few posts on the topic:

• Cog­ni­tive Dis­abil­i­ties, WebAIM
• Cog­ni­tive Dis­abil­i­ties and the Web: Where Acces­si­bil­ity and Usabil­ity Meet?, Heather Mariger (2006)
• Cog­ni­tive and Learn­ing Dis­abil­ity Matrix, Joe Clark (2006)
• Devel­op­ing sites for users with Cog­ni­tive dis­abil­i­ties and learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties, Roger Hud­son, Russ Weak­ley and Peter Firminger (2005)
• Design­ing for Users With Cog­ni­tive Dis­abil­i­ties, Erica Kolatch (2000)

All of the above guide­lines and sug­ges­tions are essen­tial and rel­e­vant to any dis­cus­sion on web acces­si­bil­ity. That said, is is also impor­tant to take a step back and look at who we are talk­ing about when we refer to users with intel­lec­tual disabilities.

Intel­lec­tual dis­abil­ity is also referred to as men­tal retar­da­tion, devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­ity or cog­ni­tive dis­abil­ity (which seems to be the pre­ferred term in the web design world) and has elicited a num­ber of “offi­cial” def­i­n­i­tions. Intel­lec­tual dis­abil­ity is found with dis­abil­i­ties such as Down syn­drome, Frag­ile X, autism, and cere­bral palsy, among many others.

Who do you think of when dis­cussing intel­lec­tual dis­abil­ity? I think first of my two younger broth­ers Patrick and Dallin who were both born with Down syn­drome. You may think of a fam­ily mem­ber, a coworker or some­one at your local gro­cery store and each per­son you think of may have a wide vari­ety of dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter­is­tics and abilities.

Undoubt­edly when a per­son with an intel­lec­tual dis­abil­ity gets online, there are many bar­ri­ers to be over­come. How­ever, there are also many bar­ri­ers that keep peo­ple with intel­lec­tual dis­abil­i­ties from get­ting online in the first place. Here are just a few:

• Basic com­puter skills

  For many per­sons with intel­lec­tual dis­abil­i­ties a deci­sion is made early on whether to focus more on aca­d­e­mic skills or on func­tional skills to best pre­pare for life after grad­u­a­tion. Basic com­puter skills may be entirely left out of the curriculum.

• Liv­ing arrangements

  For any num­ber of rea­sons, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple with intel­lec­tual dis­abil­i­ties live in long-term care facil­i­ties where com­put­ers and/or the inter­net may not be available.

• Expec­ta­tions, or rather lack thereof

  Low expec­ta­tions may come from the per­son with a dis­abil­ity, a fam­ily mem­ber or care­giver and can be very powerful.

• Poverty

  “In the year 2004, an esti­mated 28.2 per­cent of civil­ian non-institutionalized, men and women with a work lim­i­ta­tion, aged 18–64 in the United States lived in fam­i­lies with incomes below the poverty line.” (www.disabilitystatistics.org- login required). If you had to choose between pay­ing for elec­tric­ity or your Inter­net ser­vice, which would you choose? (In case you are waf­fling on that one, remem­ber that it is dif­fi­cult to turn on a com­puter with­out electricity…)

For­tu­nately, there are some elec­tronic and soci­etal ramps in place to help over­come some of these bar­ri­ers– gov­ern­ment and pri­vate pro­grams that pro­vide finan­cial and job train­ing sup­port, spe­cial­ized edu­ca­tion pro­grams, self-advocacy efforts and a rapid expan­sion of unin­ten­tion­ally intel­lec­tual dis­abil­ity friendly web­sites. Per­sons with intel­lec­tual dis­abil­i­ties may or may not be able to do their bank­ing online just yet, but the explo­sion of visual media has opened door for all kinds of acces­si­ble online expe­ri­ences. I’ll refer again to my brother Dallin who has become extremely pro­fi­cient in using a vari­ety of online tools to find images, audio and video of his much beloved Power Rangers.

Let’s keep work­ing on mak­ing the web acces­si­ble for every­one, but on occa­sion it is help­ful to stop and con­sider just who that ‘every­one’ is.

To close, a quote from a paper pro­duced by the Inter­net Soci­ety titled Global Trends that will Impact Uni­ver­sal Access to Infor­ma­tion Resources:

The ben­e­fits of address­ing the prob­lems of inac­ces­si­ble design extend to include all peo­ple, includ­ing the com­mu­nity of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties. (About 10% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion are dis­abled, with a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount falling into the poor pop­u­la­tion in emerg­ing economies). It is imper­a­tive that there be some way to insure that peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties in the devel­op­ing world are not sep­a­rated from every­one else. There must not be even more of a Dig­i­tal Divide opened between peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and the efforts to pro­vide Inter­net access to all in emerg­ing economies. Once it is under­stood that acces­si­ble design is always in synch with low tech­nol­ogy solu­tions, then big steps can be made to help every­one gain access to the infor­ma­tion society.

See Also:

• The Grow­ing Dig­i­tal Divide in Access for Peo­ple with Dis­abil­i­ties: Over­com­ing Bar­ri­ers to Par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Dig­i­tal Econ­omy Cyn­thia D. Wad­dell, (1999)
• Nomadic­ity, Dis­abil­ity Access, and the Every-Citizen Inter­face, Gregg C. Van­der­hei­den (1997)

10 Reasons People Care About Accessibility

I don’t know why you are read­ing this blog, but I there are a num­ber of rea­sons that peo­ple become inter­ested in acces­si­bil­ity issues. Do any of the below cat­e­gories sound famil­iar to you or maybe some­one you have worked with? Pre­sented with no author­ity and in no par­tic­u­lar order:

Why do you care about accessibility?

1. Fol­low­ing the Crowd. My favorite A-list blog­ger keeps talk­ing about acces­si­bil­ity and I don’t want to be left behind.
2. Curios­ity Killed the Cat. Enough about alt tags already, what’s the big deal with accessibility?
3. Work­ing for a Liv­ing. My boss cares and there­fore so do I.
4. The Plain­tiff will now Approach the Bench. The lawyer guy keeps telling me that I need to care about accessibility.
5. Me, Myself and I. I have a dis­abil­ity– I cre­ate acces­si­ble sites so that I can use them.
6. We are Fam­ily. I have a fam­ily member/friend with a disability.
7. We are the World. You know, “It’s true we’ll make a bet­ter day. Just you and me”.
8. Pow­er­ful Mar­ket Forces. Why on earth would I make my site harder for cus­tomers to use?
9. Pride cometh Before the Fall Of course my site is acces­si­ble, it also val­i­dates as XHTML Strict, I have never used a table in my life and I read W3C meet­ing min­utes for fun.
10. I don’t. Oh, okay– fine. (there– that makes 10).

Any oth­ers you would add to the list?

As long as a web devel­oper is moti­vated to cre­ate an acces­si­ble site, does it mat­ter what their moti­va­tion is?