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Category: Professional

Users Must Become Their Own Advocates

Last week, a second United States federal judge ruled that state anti-discrimination laws do not apply to airline websites and kiosks. Following this decision, JetBlue staff have reacted rather crassly to the court’s decision, posting Twitter messages like the following: “We’re glad that the court validated our position that state law should not impact a …

My Challenge to the Accessibility Community: We Need an Accessibility Body of Knowledge

In my post “Barriers to Improving the Accessibility Game Plan”, one of the things I said was: There is a shocking lack of independent and open knowledge out there on accessibility. If we were to assemble a full compendium of information that exists on accessibility on the web, what we’d find is that the information …

Why a Third Party Should Prepare Your VPAT

Introduction The Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, or VPAT, was created by the Information Technology Industry Council as a means for vendors to supply information to government agencies regarding the level of compliance with the Technical, Functional Performance, and Documentation & Support requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. This documentation format can help procuring …

Barriers to Improving the Web Accessibility Game Plan

This past March, Jared Smith moderated a session at CSUN titled “Do We Need To Change the Web Accessibility Game Plan”. The discussion at and after the session was filled with interesting perspectives. The diversity of viewpoints demonstrates what a complex topic this really is. I’d like to take my stab at addressing this topic, …

Prioritizing Remediation of Web Accessibility Issues

During my career, I’ve performed scores of audits and expert reviews to look at the accessibility of web-based systems (websites, web-based applications, intranets, etc.). Of those, I can count on one hand the number of systems tested that were pre-production. In nearly all cases, the testing was performed on systems that were already released to …

Chasing the Web Accessibility Business Case – Part 1

During my 8+ years working in web usability and accessibility, I’ve frequently been party to or witnessed numerous conversations relating to the “business case” or “cost justification” of usability and accessibility efforts. In my opinion, the conversations usually don’t go well – particularly on the side of the usability/ accessibility advocate. Here’s how they usually …

In Defense of “Checklist” Accessibility

Frequently on mailinglists, blog posts, and Twitter, I read about accessibility advocates decrying the sins of what they call “Checklist” accessibility. What the arguments attempt to assert is, essentially, that “Checklist” accessibility is not good enough, either because the checklists themselves are flawed or that the checklist takes the disabled user out of the equation …