One of the hardest parts of accessibility work is convincing other people to do the work or help us to do the work. I’m going to tell you about something new I’m trying.
Your homework from this article, should you choose to accept it, is: when persuading people to do a11y work, agree with the objections and work from there.
Quick aside: the clumsy conjunction “but/and” 📖
Use “but/and” to join phrases and ideas that need a turn or a twist.
I discovered this via author and awesome weirdo Robin Sloan. When you want to join two sentences, “and” is linear, which is not always what you want. When you want to join two sentences, “but” negates everything before it. “but/and” is clumsy, but it works! I’m explaining it because I’ll be using it a lot.
For example: “Writing an article is kinda scary, but/and it’s a lot of fun”
Why “but/and”? 🤔
Why did I move to “but/and”, and what did I move from? Well, previous tactics included: taking the moral high ground (“we should do this because it’s the right thing to do”); myth-busting (“We don’t have any users with disabilities? Maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy because they can’t use our stuff! Or maybe they’re just not showing up in our stats or research?”).
These two tactics kinda work, but feel adversial, like we’re fighting our colleagues. I found myself thinking: I should use inclusiveness, empathy, perspective, like we do for our users!
Okay, let’s but/and some things.
1. Accessibility is boring 🥱
Doing it just for compliance is boring, for sure. And sometimes it’s not shiny or glamorous work.
Accessibility is boring but/and it’s worth doing, even though it’s boring.
Other boring things we do: Maintenance work; Security updates; Writing tests. We don’t avoid doing these things because they’re boring. We realise how important they are, so we do them despite the fact that they’re boring.
2. Accessibility is difficult 😖
You know what? It’s easy to get ARIA wrong and end up making it worse. And that’s not great. On top of that, some frameworks make it easier to do the wrong thing, to make an inaccessible version.
Accessibility is difficult but/and it’s worth doing, even though it’s difficult
Other difficult things we do: learning new things almost every day! We work in a very fast-paced industry. A recent example is CSS Grid. It’s only recently become widely useable, and it’s still changing even now!
3. Accessibility is time-consuming 🥺
Designing and developing and testing code can be time-consuming. It’s as true for a11y-specific code as it os for any code. And it can be especially time-consuming if it feels boring or difficult (or both!).
Accessibility is time-consuming but/and it’s worth doing, even though it’s time-consuming.
Other time-consuming things we do: cross-browser (and device and tech) testing. We don’t decide not to test across different browsers because it would take too long. We do it because we want the end user’s experience to be as good as it can be.
Conclusion
Accessibility is boring / difficult / time-consuming but/and it’s worth doing, like the other boring / difficult / time-consuming things we do.
Your homework from this article, should you choose to accept it, is: when persuading people to do a11y work, agree with the objections and work from there.