Pushing for more accessible user experiences can be an uphill battle depending on the business holders with whom you’re dealing. While some may flat out not care, more often they are reluctant to take the additional time, effort and cost to bake accessibility into an overall project.

Whether armed with lots of money and time or not, you have your voice — never be afraid to speak up when there are opportunities to make an experience more accessible. It can be on the micro level (“that font against that background is going to be really difficult for people with sight limitations to make out”). It can be on the macro level (“all those videos on the site? we really need to add captioning”).

You may lose. You may get a pat on the head and told to go play somewhere else. Keep trying!

Some approaches may work better than others. Stressing the moral and social obligations of creating accessible experiences is a valid, noble route — but businesses won’t always respond to that, even if their intentions are good. Spending money is spending money…and sometimes accessibility can be costly, such as the prospect of retrofitting a completed web site.

There are some great references like Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization to help.

I’ve been super jazzed about accessibility for the past couple years, but I know how easy it can be to feel you’re fighting a losing battle. There were times in my past job that I lost the energy when up against an overwhelming ambivalence towards accessibility (or even web standards in general). But then were were times like when I was able to enact color contrast improvements to an internal booking interface, to make it easier for someone with severe color blindness to better do her job.

Sometimes you have to pick your battles and alter your strategies, but don’t give up and let the fires of inaccessibility spread. Even small changes start to add up.

Tags: accessibility, ux, web standards

I haven’t blogged in over a month, which is not a good thing. However, the main reason that I haven’t is a very good one.

A week from today, I am starting a new job — and it’s directly in User Experience.

When I wrote The Evolution of a Designer, I talked about how time, experience and passion naturally progressed my career towards user experience. I no longer saw myself as strictly a designer or coder, but instead someone striving to build, from concept level through completion and beyond, experiences that users, whether they are disabled or not, can easily understand and navigate through towards whatever their end destination.

What I didn’t realize on that day in March is that, mere months later, I’d get the opportunity to join a User Experience team being formed from the ground up.

I’ve been at the same organization (The Mark Travel Corporation) for over twelve years. I consider myself blessed to have had the opportunity to forge a rewarding career in the Web industry, from an entry-level HTML coder to seasoned web designer to manager of a large team of designers and producers.

Throughout that journey, I’ve learned a lot of things. One, I’ve realized that the most beautiful designs in the world are just pretty pictures if they don’t get the user exactly where they need to go. I’ve realized that whatever the experience — a web site, an application, etc. — content that is poorly-crafted or with no clear strategy will destroy it. And I’ve certainly realized how incredibly easy it is to overlook disabled users in creating these experiences.

Now, I’m delving into a role in which I can truly, day in and day out, focus on getting all of that right, and making a difference along the way. When a large company firmly establishes that user experience needs to be in front of everything they build, that’s a tremendous, exciting opportunity.

I’m beyond thrilled.

As I travel down this path, I’m sure I’ll have plenty to share along the way.

Tags: accessibility, content strategy, user experience, ux, web design

I thought I’d throw out a question, and encourage people to submit comments or respond via Twitter (which I’ll submit here). If this proves to be successful, I’ll have found a nice theme for weekend blogging!

This weekend’s question:
What are your favorite, go-to accessibility blogs and web sites?

Feel free to submit one choice, or 100. Any and all comments are welcome.

If you’re new to accessibility and still figuring it all out, but are a devotee to user experience, sharing general user experience blogs is just dandy too.

I’ve maintained my Related Links page here and there, but would like to do a better job showcasing the many great accessibility resources out there. I’d love to hear the sites other people frequent.

Thanks in advance!

Tags: a11y, accessibility, AxS, blogging, ux

As I progress in my advocacy of web accessibility, I’m noticing a sea change in what I consider myself professionally.

For the majority of my career, I’ve considered myself a “web designer”. While I’ve never felt my designs to be the most eye-popping, stunning masterpieces, I inherently put together visuals that are straightforward, clean and effective. Still, web design was my wheelhouse, and the subject of my strongest advocacy. Beautiful designs equalled great web sites.

Though it’s been out there for a few years now, I recently heard the quote from web design and standards luminary Jeffrey Zeldman:
“Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.”

That sentiment is really sticking with me. Decoration.

I’ve been in the web/e-commerce industry for twelve years now. Now more than ever, I’m seeing that design is but a piece to the puzzle of an effective web site. A finished jigsaw puzzle reveals the whole picture; one solitary piece doesn’t.

Content is a key piece.
User experience is a key piece.
Accessibility (or more broadly, well-constructed, semantic markup) is a key piece.

I’ve too often watched content writing, user experience and accessibility get kicked to the curb. This isn’t always intentional — sometimes they get skipped to meet rushed deadlines. Sometimes it’s just ignorance to their value. “Make it beautiful and people will come!”

And so, I’ve seen designs that look absolutely phenomenal…but do not effectively tell me what the site is about. I’ve seen designs with brilliant visuals and sizzle…that are hard to navigate. I’ve listened to marketing folks harp that their site needs to be beautiful and “sexy” (a nauseating word to describe web sites)…but don’t take a single moment to actually listen to their users.

If a site has the greatest aesthetics in the world, but it doesn’t take into account its users, it’s a failure. At the end of the day, people — whether they are disabled or not — want to get where they need to go.

Design will always be part of who I am. But I’m no longer swayed simply by shiny objects and pretty pictures. Something beautiful constructed in Photoshop is great….but it better clearly show what the site is about, have clear-cut navigation, and elements that are important and logical to visitors. And it sure better not throw up obstacles to those with disabilities simply trying to get what they need.

Over the past year, I’ve found myself cutting down on the web design RSS feeds and replacing them with user experience ones. I’m not interested in the latest PhotoShop tips and tutorials. I’ll leave those for others — the most important thing to me now is advocating the union of design, user experience, content and accessibility, not focusing on simply decoration.

Tags: accessibility, content, jeffrey zeldman, user experience, ux, web design

When I’m talking about web site accessibility, I often find myself qualifying at times, “accessibility, especially for those with disabilities.” At first, I’d catch it and ponder if that was a redundant statement.

It isn’t at all redundant. Making a web site “accessible” doesn’t strictly mean making it easier to navigate for those with disabilities. By structuring a website with clean, correct and orderly code, images and text with sufficient color contrast, supplying meaningful alt tags, logical tabbing order, etcetera, you’re creating an experience that’s all around better for all visitors.

Clean, concise site navigation benefits everybody. Descriptive links that actually identify where they are taking you benefits everybody. Forms that are properly labeled and orderly benefit everybody.

There are also people visiting your site with slower Internet connections. There are those who prefer browsers other than just Internet Explorer or Firefox.

There are also visitors to your sites who particularly prefer semantic, clean code. They’re called search engines. Poor or nonexistent titles and header tags hurt search relevant, in addition to giving screen readers a hard time identifying pages and elements.

Accessibility covers a whole lot of ground beyond just disabilities.

Tags: accessibility, header tags, search engine optimization, seo