The state of web accessibility is pretty depressing.
- Standards have been around 20+ years, but 97% of the top 1mil sites fail to meet them.
- Standards are hard to learn but automating accessibility is terrible and makes it worse.
- Standards are still the bare minimum. (cont)
- Standards have been around 20+ years, but 97% of the top 1mil sites fail to meet them.
- Standards are hard to learn but automating accessibility is terrible and makes it worse.
- Standards are still the bare minimum. (cont)
- Standards are the best way to make consistent experiences but this makes non-standard or novel experiences even harder to design for.
- We still largely have a "market driven" approach to accessibility, which means justifying human rights in terms of a business case.
- We still largely have a "market driven" approach to accessibility, which means justifying human rights in terms of a business case.
- Veteran folks burn out all the time and new folks have a pretty hard time getting started.
- The veterans who don't burn out are often pretty grumpy and are not kind when they spot the same mistakes happening they've been seeing for 20+ years.
- The veterans who don't burn out are often pretty grumpy and are not kind when they spot the same mistakes happening they've been seeing for 20+ years.
- Accessibility specialization can HURT your pay (Consultant a11y engineer/analyst: 100/hr. Consultant engineer with a different, deep specialty: 200-300/hr).
- Accessibility isn't woven into jobs and therefore the work is often on a contract basis.
- Accessibility isn't woven into jobs and therefore the work is often on a contract basis.
- Browsers don't strictly enforce valid semantics
- HTML/JavaScript doesn't require accessible patterns or defaults
- Laws don't strictly enforce standards
- Guidelines have to be discovered and implemented by one's own initiative
- Litigation is slow and favors those in power
- HTML/JavaScript doesn't require accessible patterns or defaults
- Laws don't strictly enforce standards
- Guidelines have to be discovered and implemented by one's own initiative
- Litigation is slow and favors those in power
- Self-advocacy becomes an exhausting chore with folks often going unheard and given little agency
- Community members making the technology around them (such as open-source projects) more accessible without compensation isn't sustainable
- Community members making the technology around them (such as open-source projects) more accessible without compensation isn't sustainable
- New tools coming out every day which make it even easier to make new things faster... massively increasing the problem of scale without addressing the decades old accessibility issues that still exist
- Older tools relying on voting, grants, and volunteers to fix issues
- Older tools relying on voting, grants, and volunteers to fix issues
Anyway. I'm tired but still here. I hope y'all are too. We certainly need you.
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