In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

An experiment in asking politely for accessibility.

Captain Awkward

The argument that if (marginalized group of people) would just (!) ASK (nicely, in just the right way using exactly the perfect tone and obeying all the unwritten secret rules) for (their human rights), they would be given immediately them by the innocent benevolent rulers who just didn’t know what they needed is so common that it should be in Derailing for Dummies

Here’s what happened when one lawyer with low vision and superhuman patience decided to test that theory.

In particular, I suggest it as a must-read for all user experience design/user interface developers. People with money want to use the internet to buy your stuff! You could not be a jerk and make more money at the same time!

24 thoughts on An experiment in asking politely for accessibility.

  2. Looking at her list of inaccessible websites makes me cringe. I knew it was bad out there for accessibility, but the specifics just bring it right home – the majority of my time on the Internet is spent on websites that would be inaccessible to me if I relied on a screenreader, and the vast majority of those website service maintainers do not care or do not understand how messed up that is.

    I’ve run my own blog through WAVE a few times, but it only shows so much and I don’t know how to fix Blogger’s platform problems even if I try to make my content as accessible as possible. (I am aware that I probably have a contrast issue by having a light blue background and dark blue links, but my colour schemes are a big part of what make my platforms feel like home to me and too high contrast bothers my eyes after a while – I just wish there was an option for other people to view my blog in whatever format they liked.)

    For anyone who’s day isn’t quite ruined yet, may I also suggest the Accessibility Fail comm on Dreamwidth. One of the recent stories also documents someone’s attempt to let a website service know that they were inaccessible to her – their response fell under the “hostility” category and how.

  3. In the web design industry, accessibility fixes like this are known as 508 Compliance, and are pretty much a requirement if you want to do any work for govt-related entities. The standard has been in place since 2001 (aka OMG FOREVER, in terms of the internet), and has become so ingrained that it’s considered “best practices” at this point. Plus, doing things like filling out alt tags and maximizing your use of text do wonders for a site’s Google-fu. It would be stupid NOT to do it.

    So what I’m trying to say is not only do these developers make things harder for their disabled customers, but lack of compliance means they are bad developers in general. I’m reminded of the Chris Rock bit about “shit you’re just supposed to do”, and 508 compliance has been at that point for years. If you code the right way (like my company does *horn toot*), it takes care of itself.

  4. I’ve designed a lot of corporate websites, and I’ve always made a point of including accessibility requirements in my proposals.

    I was but am no longer shocked at the sheer volume and vitriol of resistance to such a minor, easily implemented measure. I’ve been told that blind people can’t use computers anyway, that people with disabilities aren’t their target market, and that it wasn’t feasible for some other absurd reason or another. (Answers: Yes they can, and do. Yes, they are, whether you know it or not. Yes, it is completely feasible, often trivially so, especially if you design it into the system at the outset.)

    I still really, really don’t understand why there is so much hostility toward the idea, but from what I’ve seen, much of it’s coming from C-levels for some reason. And even when it’s coming from other quarters, they could override it by simply making it a blanket requirement.

    Short version: Don’t yell at me, yell at the suits!

  5. I’ve encounter similar hostility when asking for reasonable accomodations for people who work in my group. Its ridiculous the pissing and moaning people go through for things that don’t impact them in any way. If I hear “but if everyone did it then [insert catastrophe]” one more time… I can’t even imagine how frustrating it must be if you are asked to fight those battles constantly just to navigate life.

  6. I recently had an experience of trying to argue for something for someone with a disability (changing a flight date for free). The people we talked to in person wanted to help us and the people we talked to on the phone were not helpful at all. I was nice enough but showed no interest in leaving and was ready to be less nice. I wish niceness would work but it often just doesn’t work that way. I think niceness gives the impression that it would be nice if something were changed but it isn’t so necessary.

  7. I just wish there was an option for other people to view my blog in whatever format they liked.

    I realize this may be a bit like killing a fly with a hammer, but there’s a Firefox extension called Greasemonkey that allows users to make client-side changes to websites. If someone has vision problems they can use it to change the colors of the sites they view.

  8. THANK YOU for highlighting this post. I’m in the web/ux community, and while I advocate for accessibility, I’m not an expert so I ask for accessibility professionals to be brought in. Having this post to point to will ensure I can make the point even more clearly in future.

  9. Lisa:
    I’ve designed a lot of corporate websites, and I’ve always made a point of including accessibility requirements in my proposals.

    I was but am no longer shocked at the sheer volume and vitriol of resistance to such a minor, easily implemented measure. I’ve been told that blind people can’t use computers anyway, that people with disabilities aren’t their target market, and that it wasn’t feasible for some other absurd reason or another. (Answers: Yes they can, and do. Yes, they are, whether you know it or not. Yes, it is completely feasible, often trivially so, especially if you design it into the system at the outset.)

    I still really, really don’t understand why there is so much hostility toward the idea, but from what I’ve seen, much of it’s coming from C-levels for some reason. And even when it’s coming from other quarters, they could override it by simply making it a blanket requirement.

    Short version: Don’t yell at me, yell at the suits!

    What is it with this? I feel like I hear this a lot; as soon as someone mentions doing something to include customers that might not fit your “standard mold,” it’s like it’s the hardest damn thing to do in the world. Is it because we call them “accommodations” rather than “standards”? Would that help at all?

  10. Oh goodness, website accessibility issues – one of the banes of my existence. On top of relying upon images to display text, Flash objects for everything, and text that reads like a drunken jumble when passed through a screenreader, it’s interesting how many sites’ layout breaks when you require a large font size or specific colours to comfortably view a site. Mass media outlets are particularly bad for this, and you’d be stunned how many sites with input fields hardcode either the text or background colour, but not both. Hardcoded black text on a user-specified black background, anyone? Even a user stylesheet with ! important attributes doesn’t completely solve the problem.

    I work at a company that produces accessible content and describes existing programming, and the subject of online media accessibility has come up quite often as we’ve expanded our operations. Curiously, the subject of asking for voluntary accessibility improvements and the less-than-successful results of such efforts came up in a discussion that I probably can’t say anything specific about, though I will say it was raised at a time and place that *may* directly result in certain accessibility improvements in Canada.

  11. I should also mention David Lepofsky, a low-vision lawyer who hauled the Toronto Transit Commission before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal twice to make them announce all surface and subway stops. Those efforts directly improved my life. I had a couple of scary times, before cheap GPS-aided map devices and smartphones became available, when drivers failed to call out a particular stop when requested, or didn’t use the announcement system to do so, and I missed a stop in an unfamiliar neighbourhood.

  12. In my corporate experience, we are much more likely to resent someone who isn’t nice when they request something – but we’re much more likely to implement it, because we know there will be consequences if we don’t do it. For little favors, niceness goes a long way – but for big favors, niceness really hurts your chances.

    What further confounds the money motive (“people with disabilities are too small a group to matter”) is the culture of web developers & programmers, which often (though not always) is antagonistic towards users. Users are regularly depicted as ignorant, unreasonably non-tech-savvy, and extremely demanding. I’ve met developers who refused to make a usability change because they insisted their users were so stupid that no change would help, or that despite many users bringing forward a particular issue, the problem was the user and not the software. I find they respect “standards” to some degree, but they do not respect user needs.

  13. I’ve encounter similar hostility when asking for reasonable accomodations for people who work in my group. Its ridiculous the pissing and moaning people go through for things that don’t impact them in any way. If I hear “but if everyone did it then [insert catastrophe]” one more time… I can’t even imagine how frustrating it must be if you are asked to fight those battles constantly just to navigate life.

    I’ve been banging up against that wall for going on 20 years now. For two decades I’ve been fighting and struggling and demanding so much that the process of entering a new space, finding all the things that are going to fuck with me, picking my battles, and then steeling myself for the inevitable backlash. Last week I started a new job at a very small, very specialized, therapeutic high school. Theres a culture of accommodation because of the nature of the program.

    Until I found somewhere where accommodations were just in place, where people got it, I don’t think I even allowed myself to realize just how much the constant fight impacted my life. Intellectually I knew, but it wasn’t quite real until I walked into my new office and found a jack for my iPod sitting on the desk on the off chance I needed to regulate stimulation.

  14. Theres a culture of accommodation because of the nature of the program.

    Still, I’m impressed by this. I’m in a program to add a special education credential to my teaching certification. My requested accommodations may now be forever in limbo because one of my professors denied the request (arguing that they fundamentally changed a program component) then challenged my appeal.

  15. Quite disappointingly, I’ve found that sites purporting to be social justice sites, which you’d THINK would prize accessibility and inclusivity, or would at least take a gander at intersectionality (one in particular, which is often approvingly linked to here) whose owner-not-founder have told people requesting accomodations such as the ones described by the OP and the links by posters 1 and 2, to pretty much fuck off so they can concentrate on their target audience.

    It’s really disappointing, and I haven’t a clue what might ‘make’ them (and others) change ‘accomodations’ to ‘standards’: Organize a blog-cott? Encourage other blogs (ahem) to shun/not link to them? Can’t picket because it’s a blog, not a physical facility- which is a shame, because I’ve seen inaccessible buildings ‘suddenly’ put in an ADA-compliant ramp, etc.

  16. Lisa:
    I’ve designed a lot of corporate websites, and I’ve always made a point of including accessibility requirements in my proposals.

    I was but am no longer shocked at the sheer volume and vitriol of resistance to such a minor, easily implemented measure. I’ve been told that blind people can’t use computers anyway, that people with disabilities aren’t their target market, and that it wasn’t feasible for some other absurd reason or another. (Answers: Yes they can, and do. Yes, they are, whether you know it or not. Yes, it is completely feasible, often trivially so, especially if you design it into the system at the outset.)

    I still really, really don’t understand why there is so much hostility toward the idea, but from what I’ve seen, much of it’s coming from C-levels for some reason. And even when it’s coming from other quarters, they could override it by simply making it a blanket requirement.

    Yup. I’m not even important enough to be involved in proposal writing, so I just try to sneak in whatever I can in the hours I was allotted to complete my work.

  17. Still, I’m impressed by this. I’m in a program to add a special education credential to my teaching certification. My requested accommodations may now be forever in limbo because one of my professors denied the request (arguing that they fundamentally changed a program component) then challenged my appeal.

    I’ve been running into god awful special ed situations for my entire life, so I get what you mean. This school is somewhat special because its run by clinicians rather than teachers or administrators and acceptance of difference is a big part of the program’s overall culture.

  18. BHuesca:

    It’s really disappointing, and I haven’t a clue what might ‘make’ them (and others) change ‘accomodations’ to ‘standards’: Organize a blog-cott? Encourage other blogs (ahem) to shun/not link to them? Can’t picket because it’s a blog, not a physical facility- which is a shame, because I’ve seen inaccessible buildings ‘suddenly’ put in an ADA-compliant ramp, etc.

    I suppose one equivalent might be Google-bombing – posting and sharing lots of links complaining about the website, so that people who Google the website in question will see these complaints about them in the first page of results. Even threatening to do such a thing might gain leverage.

    Another would be organizing a DDOS attack – basically flooding their website with traffic (either real traffic or artificially created traffic using DDOS techniques) and bringing it down temporarily. This might work well if the message is: your website, down, is exactly how inaccessible it is to us normally. How do *you* like it!

    Another is complaining to the website’s sponsors or advertisers. Generally companies are pretty risk-averse and will cause ruffles with the website in question if there’s a chance it could reflect on them poorly, and most websites get their income from advertising.

    And another is just to overwhelm with comments and emails that have a singular request until they give in. I’ve seen that actually work, sometimes.

  19. The Canadian government went to court to argue that web accessibility was too onerous of a requirement, and when the court say “Ha ha, no, you have an obligation to make government websites accessible”, they appealed. I believe it is still in court right now, although I admit I’m no longer following the case.

    For the month of May Accessibility Report Card did a list of high-profile feminist blogs and gave them grades on their committment to accessibility. I’m not sure why it stopped because I’m unsure who the author is, but it’s “fun” reading, if by “fun” you mean “frustrating.”

  20. Anna, that link was very interesting. It seems that this website does a poor job of making its content easily accessible. What really struck me about that report card was that most of the factors were very easy fixes like adding captions under pictures and using descriptive words for links instead of just “this” or “here.” Pretty easy, basic stuff. I can understand that transcripts take more time to provide but even that I think feminist sites should be doing.

  21. As some already indicate, the problem here may not be so much a lack of desire to fix accessibility issues as it is a problem to fix any user issues. You people have normal jobs, right? What is the general attitude toward anyone who creates work outside the norm? Argue theory all you want, but a Monday morning hangover is still a Monday morning hangover.

  22. @Ardiril
    Soooo, someone’s Monday morning hangover is more important than someone else’s ability to do their job at all or just move around in the world? Yeah, that’s a problem.

  23. Soooo, someone’s Monday morning hangover is more important than someone else’s ability to do their job at all or just move around in the world? Yeah, that’s a problem.

    Not really. I mean, that guy with the Monday Morning Hangover already has a job and a track record as a contributing member of society. He’s entitled to acces because, well, you know, he’s important and useful and stuff. Some random disabled person, though? C’mon, our economy is in the shitter, we don’t have the funds for that kind of charity…

    /snark

  24. Regarding bus stops: A friend of mine who drives a (city) bus told me that drivers are required by Federal law to call out every stop, and that there are Federal bus inspectors who ride the busses to make sure they are doing this. I’m sure they aren’t on every bus all the time, but when I told him that the bus drivers in a different city I visited weren’t doing this, his comment was “They’ll get caught eventually.”

    I didn’t know if anyone else had heard this, but I thought I’d share.

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