Pat’s Point of View

I’ve been reading a few things lately regarding the issues with WCAG 2.0 (including Joe Clark’s recent article and Lisa Seeman’s email to the WCAG working group) and it occurred to me that perhaps resistance to accessibility is due to people’s fear of disability.

Let’s just assume for the moment that accessibility is just about catering for disabled users. It’s not, but that’s still how most people—particularly large corporations—continue to think of it, and it’s this group of users can be effected by inaccessible services in very significant ways well beyond mere frustration. When confronted with the thought of being disabled in some way, it’s pretty scary, no matter how forward-thinking, how enlightened or how much of a supporter of web-standards you are.

Whether it’s a vision impairment, a learning difficulty or motor control disorder, the thought that you might be in such a situation can be terrifying. It’s important to point out that many people who have disabilities as per medical diagnosis don’t consider themselves disabled, and live perfectly productive and fulfilling lives. My point isn’t that they’re ‘worse off’ or pitiful, rather that most of us would perceive an illness or loss of ability or faculty, as less than desirable. I think this might be more than enough to stop people from ‘getting into the head’ of the audience in order to understand their needs and build something that effectively meet those needs. Perhaps it’s just too scary to think about what it would be like to be in that position.

I’m not excluding myself from this, although I must admit I’d never though of website accessibility in this way before now. Really thinking about what it must be like to live with a mental disability, for instance, and trying to participate in our society, along side those of us fortunate enough to not have any such challenges, is terrifying. Not being able to live my life as I currently do, not being able to do the things I can do, not being as lucky as I am…makes me not want to think about it.

Now of course there are other reasons for disregarding the accessibility movement; particularly economic ("it costs more to make our website accessible") but it could be that we just don’t want to think about it. We ignore it. Maybe this is why we feel a lot better making some sort of effort towards accessibility. If we tweak some code or drop in an alt attribute, we’re doing our part which means we don’t need to think about it any deeper.

But I’d like to think that by going further and creating truly accessible content and services we can make at least one (possibly small) part of some people’s lives easier (and I’m talking about being able to buy your groceries online even though you have can’t use a mouse or keyboard, not ensuring the latest Big Brother gossip is viewable on a mobile phone). Wouldn’t we all appreciate that if we were in ‘their’ position?

See what people are blogging about: WCAG 2.0, accessibility, disability

Popularity: 11% [?]