Accessibility is About Real People

When I wrote my post on accessibility the other day, what I really meant to say is what basically what Rob Foster wrote. Very roughly summarized, accessibility is about real people, not checklists.

The issues of accessibility are a daily reality for my family. For us, it’s not a political issue at all. Our oldest daughter, Ramona, has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair to get around.

…

Here’s my point–if your brother or sister had a disability, you would give a crap. But you don’t have to have a sibling in a wheelchair to genuinely care, even if it’s only in your work.

And:

And from my perspective, accessibility is about giving a crap.

Accessibility is NOT a checklist.

Accessibility is about usability.

Accessibility is a paradigm shift.

Accessibility is a personal issue.

Checklists and accessibility reports are just tools to help you make things accessible – they can be really powerful if they’re used with the right intent, but they’re not the answer.

That’s why I’m so glad to see Ephox adding not just more and better accessibility checking and reporting into their products, but also tools to make it easier for authors to get accessibility right. We need to do more though, so much more, but at least it’s a start and we can start taking this message out to all the web content administrators that we talk to and try and get them to care.