Is Accessibility Contagious?

[jeshyr]

I've posted in dw_accessibility about what it is that makes accessibility matter to people, and I'm especially interested in getting responses from developers and other volunteers so please wander over and take a look ...

Cheers,
r

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for asking a great question. It's one I've wondered about and not been able to comfortably phrase, so hats off for putting it so usefully.

[feyandstrange]

Great discussion there.

I'm really not even a coder any more, so I don't count myself. But I know a bunch of coders, and the Web accessibility experts I can think of are all either a) disabled a bit themselves or b)got into it partly because of a close relationship with a disabled person. But there's a lot of overlap with the kinds of good coders who really care about the way HTML is supposed to work with people who care at least a little bit in principle about accessibility, versus the kinds of people who do it all in Flash and don't think it matters. (Like, my sweetie was pretty big on Web accessibility even before I became a Really Disabled Person as opposed to just kinda neurotypical but not disabled by anything on the Web except the occasional really ugly flashy thing).

I like "contagion" for the idea of "knowing a Real Person who has X quality makes me more sympathetic to and empathetic towards X People". We talked about that in queer activism - surveys showed that people who had an out queer friend or family member were more accepting of LGBT folks and more likely to support LGBT rights issues - and you see it in everything from cancer research donations to politics. There may be a fancier word for it, but yours works. :) And I know for a fact that people have "caught" some or more wheelchair awareness from hanging out with me; somebody said that going around for me for just a day really taught them a lot about how people react to a disabled person and what a PITA it was dealing with obstacles and people sometimes. (Seriously, people, I didn't push that door open button so the rest of you could walk through it, move over!)

[jeshyr]

I definitely think that accessibility is most easily contagious by knowing somebody who needs it! Just on a really basic physical level my local shopping strip has 1 step at the front door of about 50% of the shops, and I regularly have to tell this to able-bodied people who honestly NEVER noticed it... even people who work there, shop there weekly, etc. People with prams even don't always recall it, although they're generally better.

I think with DW we have a cool positive feedback loop going where we're known for accessibility so more users with accessibility needs use us, so therefore any average DW user is more likely to know somebody with accessibility needs than any average (say) blogspot or wordpress etc user. And because personal contact matters, this means our users are - on average - a bit more aware.

Of course all the other stuff matters too - that denise mentions accessibilyt in news posts, and that our staff coders treat it as serious and fundamental not "annoying add-on" comes down to beginner coders, etc. But the "personal touch" can't be overlooked!