Ah, that most desired of things – the triple A pass. Be it at a rock concert, a backstage pass at the theater, or a behind the scenes look at a tech conference, those three A’s are always the pinnacle of attendance goals.
But what if we apply that AAA approach to other areas?
A year ago someone told me that something as simple as using #PascalCaseInHashTags can make a massive difference to someone using a screen reader. It’s the difference between hearing a jumble of letters, and a cohesive set of words. SO SIMPLE, yet massively important especially to those with dyslexia or using screen readers.
Since then I try to ensure that I am more inclusive in the way I compose social media posts, but not a lot else if I’m brutally honest.
A short while after I stumbled upon someone talking about making Power Apps more accessible. With a few simple changes such as naming things like screens and components an app can become more friendly to screen readers etc. Not a big stretch for me as I always try naming things in a clear manner, it’s the old school programmer in me.
Shuffle forward a while and I volunteered to help out with Scottish Summit 2021. I was then asked to look specifically at the Accessibility track and reviewing talk submissions etc… ok, there’s too much coincidence happening here.
Me being me, I wasn’t going to just settle for doing an cursory job of reading and reviewing and leaving it at that. Which leads me to where I am right now.
Now depending upon your own personal experiences Accessibility can mean different things. For the person with a physical disability it can be making sure they don’t have to navigate stairs. In the case of someone with colour-blindness it can be ensuring your design palette is clear to differentiate. For the deaf it can be sign-language or captioning, for the blind it can be audio description and tactile feedback.
As I thought about it, it became clear that there’s a lot of work to understand the challenges. The more understanding, the more scope for change and improvement. The more change, the more inclusion.
The more I though about it, the more the phrase “Accessible by Design” kept ringing in my thoughts. “How do we make community events more accessible and inclusive?”, “How can I build apps and solutions that anyone can use?”, “What can I do to raise awareness of the blockers that exist within tech life?”
In a conversation with Mark Christie this whole subject came up. He asked one question that really struck home especially; “What was the last project where you were asked to make it accessible?”
Take a moment, think about it…. we’ve got time….
As I thought about it the answer was a very big fat “Never”. It’s not that people want to be exclusive, it’s just that it’s never thought about. If it does get mentioned then it’s usually put on the backlog for the end of a project. This concession usually carries the caveat “if there’s time and budget”. Not really what we should be going for really.
And so begins an interesting journey for me. One where I am going to try and talk to people about accessibility and discover what it means. Then, I’m going to see how we can make our consultant lives more “Accessible by Design”.
That way everyone can have a Triple-A pass.
I hope you’ll join me on this!
Cover photo by seabass creatives on Unsplash