#topic/accessibility #max/lessons-learned

Axe-Con 2024

Recently I “attended” Axe-Con 2024, a virtual conference dedicated to accessibility in the digital experience. I create digital experiences for people at work all the time, whether I’m writing guides or making recommendations about how to handle/process content in the classroom. (Attended is in quotes because I watched many of the videos after it was over, though I did catch one or two live sessions!)

As I’ve gained experience and grown as a right-hand person to several people way smarter than me, I’ve been given more opportunities to voice my opinions and I’m listened to. I’m heard. My boss sometimes pings me just to ask for advice. I have non-profit executives scheduling time to ask about leadership and process issues, or how they might improve employee engagement.

I want to show up for that in a way that extends beyond “what I think” or “what I know.” Here’s what I think: Designing for accessibility is designing for everyone. Decision-making for accessibility is decision-making for everyone. Drafting for accessibility is drafting for all readers. Whatever you do. You don’t need to have people with current accommodation requirements to design for that future.

This conference helped me see that I’m a disability advocate only to the extent that it extends to my disabilities. I don’t often think outside of that scope and while it’s still much wider than someone not thinking about accessibility at all, it’s not wide enough for me anymore. I’m moving up in the world. People are listening to me, so I need to start speaking on behalf of others too.

I’ve done a lot of professional development towards learning how to write for accessibility, but I know so little about applications for the stuff people are actually asking me about.

Recently, Teams did an update–I’m wondering how long it’ll be New Teams–and that update included a “feature” where the scrollbar in the channels, chats, search results, chat list, and channel list only appeared when you use the scroll-roll thing on your mouse.

I don’t use a mouse. I don’t remember the last time I used one, except for when I had no other choice. I have a tremor in my hands, legs, head, and voice which is inconsistent and makes things like mouses very difficult to control. In my early 30s when the tremor started to steadily decline, I had to make a lot of major lifestyle changes, such as not using a mouse so I could keep my pace at work. (It’s always there, it doesn’t end, it’s not painful, and it doesn’t hinder that much most of the time.)

Instead, I use the trackpad. I turn off the trackpad “special features” that mimic the mouse, and then I’m fine. As long as I use the right technology for me, there is nothing to hinder my work. At least… not until someone makes an update that assumes all users are using the same technology, and it’s not the one I’m using. You could make an argument for “keeping up with the technology trends” if you’d like to, but my argument is: “Why do we design for only one experience?”

Microsoft made this update assuming that enough of their users are using a mouse or the scroll-tech that it wouldn’t make a big impact. I had such a hard time keeping up with any chats. If anyone wrote a message larger than the screen, I couldn’t read all of it (a few workarounds like copy/pasting elsewhere or making the text very tiny). I did get to learn several keyboard shortcuts, though.

I don’t run into these types of issues very often and thankfully this was fixed very quickly (we reported up). When I brought it up to my team, though, none of them were familiar with the issue. They all use mouses. They’re the people that the “feature” was for. They had a smooth experience when we were forced to switch to New Teams.

Between that recent experience and the massive amount of stuff I learned through these talks, I’m wonder: How many questions am I missing out on because I simply don’t know enough? How many ways could I be advocating for users with needs that are “cost effective” enough to slide into the standards? I’m sure we could be doing a lot more than we are now and still stick to a sustainable amount of effort for the team to handle.

I am ashamed I didn’t have this motivation earlier, but I guess that’s the power of knowledge.

Created 2/23/24