The age-old debate about the glass being half empty or half full is one I’ve had many times when discussing accessibility in both my personal and professional lives. For me it is true that technology has allowed me to do things that as a child I never thought would be possible. It is also true that technology, and the lack of accessibility at times, has cost me in multiple ways. Missed professional opportunities, judgement of my intelligence and skills through no fault of my own because I couldn’t use a particular application, extra time to find ways around issues and the full cornucopia of what I’m sure anyone who requires accessibility could recite as well. In fact I can put a fairly accurate dollar amount to some costs of accessibility barriers I’ve experienced with the financial industry in particular. There is also the cost to family, friends and colleagues because as much as one might try not to ask another to play human assistive technology (screen reader in my case), the times it ends up being necessary are still far too often.
So for me the question isn’t really about half full or half empty, it is about giving myself and everyone else an equal amount. If others are getting a full glass, those of us who have accessibility needs in my world view deserve the same.
Now that’s an easy world view to have but there is another part of reality that when you start with a world filled with inequity, the resources to address those inequities have to come from someplace. This leads me to something I’ve been thinking about a great deal of late. I’m not sure of the best term but the one that comes to mind for me is what I’ll call “ethical accessibility”.
In my opinion, one of the fundamental challenges we face in accessibility is that too often participation alone is judged as the measure of accessibility success. Many companies put out VPATs (voluntary product accessibility templates), accessibility statements and other affirmations of their commitment to accessibility. Rarely, however, does this come with accountability for when issues will be resolved, the level of investment or other commitment to an environment of no accessibility barriers. The decision making framework behind decisions around accessibility is often opaque.
My formal college degree is in journalism. I recognize the profession has evolved, not always for the best, but ethical standards were one of the cornerstones of my education. Those standards offered a clear framework for handling many complicated situations.
Many industries, for both the businesses and those working as professionals in the industry, have ethical standards. They set a level of expected behavior for everyone involved. To be clear, the absence of any standard in no way means anyone is acting unethically. That is not my point. In fact, without a standard, it is quite tough to characterize any behavior.
The vacuum created by this missing ethical standard in accessibility leaves too much too chance. It actually makes accessibility challenging for everyone involved in the ecosystem. Imagine for example, an accessibility ethical standard that said no product can be released with any WCAG (web content accessibility guideline) issues present. Now, the developer has significantly less mystery about which issues to address and the purchaser has much less of a dilemma about whether deploying a product is adding or subtracting to the accessibility of the workplace.
I’m not advocating this should or should not be the standard. Such a standard should be developed with discussion from the range of constituencies impacted. I am advocating for some standard to exist.
There is no doubt that accessibility has moved forward in multiple arenas. Again, that half full perspective. This is great. Whether it is due to legal requirements, increased awareness of the importance of diversity or the many other reasons society moves forward isn’t the point here. Rather, whether one is what I’ll call a consumer of accessibility or a producer, what I wonder about is, what does it mean to be an ethical player in this arena?
I define a consumer of accessibility as someone who uses accessibility features and content and a producer as someone who creates the same. Rarely is one isolated to being in one category. In my own life, I often fall into both categories as do many. I need accessibility as someone who uses screen reading technology. In various parts of my work, I also easily fall into the producer side because of my employment.
On the consumer side, what does it mean to be ethical? For example, if I discover an accessibility issue, what obligation do I have to report that to the maker of the technology? Equally important, what is a realistic expectation for me to wait for the issue to be repaired. A day, week, month, never? We’ve heard a great deal about “drive-by” web accessibility lawsuits of late. I’m not a fan of that behavior but what role should the law play then? What recourse does the typical accessibility consumer have? Advocacy, raising public awareness and the rest are often costly and can be quite haphazard in terms of results.
On the producer side, what does it mean to be ethical? I’m not interested in the legal requirements here, although clearly those can play a part in being an ethical accessibility producer. What does it mean though beyond any legal requirement? Does this mean you fix every accessibility issue? Does it mean you do not launch a product or service until it meets a given accessibility standard? How do criteria such as resources, feasibility of making something accessible and more come into play? What obligation should you have to communicate known accessibility issues or the decision making process behind choices?
Yes there are often accessibility policies but I urge people to read them and ask yourself if those policies answer some of the questions I’ve raised here. I have read probably at least 200 different accessibility policies and the answer is decidedly no. This is not to say they are poor and unhelpful. But there is a world of difference between saying that an organization strives for something and that it will be a certainty, whatever that certainty happens to be.
To go back to my journalism example, whether you agree with them or not, most media organizations have an ethical standard as to when an anonymous source will be used or not. Do accessibility policies give clear guidance as to when accessibility issues will be present? Clearly there are times when companies make choices to not fix certain accessibility issues.
Again, the issue here isn’t to say such behavior is right or wrong. It is to say that as an industry we would benefit from a clear standard to which organizations could agree.
Even without an industry standard, accessibility policies should be broadened to include the ethics that govern decisions for an organization, expand how situations when those standards have not been met will be communicated, how the organization evaluates itself on such a standard and more.
If I go to a restaurant, I have a reasonable expectation that what I order from the menu is what will be served. Far too often that same expectation is far from met when it comes to accessibility. In fact, were that meal given the same treatment as accessibility, I might tell the restaurant that something was missing from my meal and if I’m lucky the gap would be acknowledged but with little idea when or if I’ll ever get what I actually ordered.
Imagine five people ordered the same beverage as another example. Far too often in today’s accessibility reality what would be delivered are five glasses filled to wildly differing levels. Half empty or half full would be just the start of the discussion.
There’s been talk about accessibility being a fundamental human right. If that is indeed true, something I believe is the case, how do you measure anyone in the industry against such a standard? How many accessibility issues do products get to have before you are judged an abuser of a basic human right? Does the good the company does get measured against the harm?
These are not necessarily simple questions and the answers are not always straight forward. That said, having some sort of ethical standard to which those who want to subscribe could certainly help. I’d also say that the continued absence of this level of clarity is only going to continue the trend of more accessibility legislation because governments are finally starting to recognize that their citizens are deserving of more equality in the accessibility arena.
To give just one example here, I have written more than once about my frustration with OverDrive and the lack of accessibility to their Libby app. It seems like history in a way these days, as the app has become for me a model of positive accessibility and one I use routinely to read books and listen to audio.
When the app was first released libraries were in the end promoting a very inaccessible experience and doing so with public tax dollars. Was that ethical? How about a “secret” message visible to only screen reading users saying OverDrive knew the Libby app wasn’t accessible? Ethical, yes or no? An ethical accessibility policy could answer such a question with greater confidence.
What should any individual library have done differently and how do you factor in the availability of reading material that the experience did make available to some?
I know in the case of the Madison Public Library, they put a message on their web site where the Libby experience was promoted communicating their efforts to work with OverDrive and indicating that a “secret” message was less than ideal. This happened after I brought the issue to the attention of library and other city officials. I’ll never know what finally prompted changes but it wasn’t long after that when publicly visible accessibility efforts with the Libby app started showing up.
More than three years ago, the New York Times ran an excellent article about the challenges in accessibility for many investment firms. Little has changed in the time since that article was published. Many of the organizations mentioned are devoting resources yes but as a consumer of the results from more than one of these firms, the progress is maddeningly slow in my opinion. I can also point to direct financial costs that the lack of accessibility has caused me.
Is it ethical for companies to use these organizations to provide financial services to their employees? How do you balance the accessibility requirements against other equally important criteria? In some areas outside of accessibility, I can assure you there would be a zero-tolerance policy for violations of whatever the standard or policy in question happened to be. For a range of reasons, rarely, if ever, is that the case with accessibility today.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers here. But what I do have is the desire to see again what I’ll term ethical accessibility move forward. In my view of the accessibility world, consumers and producers would come up with a shared set of guiding principals that would govern actions in the accessibility space. Then, much like other areas where society is working to address long-standing shortcomings, you either get onboard or you don’t and if you don’t, well others can decide what that says.
Failing any industry effort, individual accessibility policies could be enhanced to cover the ethical underpinnings that will be used around accessibility.
What you don’t get to do is pick or choose. More than 25 years ago Oregon Senator Ron Wyden rightly stood up for the rights of a guide dog user who was denied access to the Senate floor. At the same time, Senator Wyden’s web site was filled with obvious accessibility errors with multiple contacts over the issue going ignored. While I am not able to find my editorial that resulted in the only phone call I’ve ever received from a U.S. senator, that was published in the Oregonian any longer, I’ll say here what I said then:
Accessibility is not a part time proposition. You don’t get to choose when you’ll make something accessible and when not. Ethical accessibility, like any ethical standard, isn’t something you turn on and off. It is easy to live your values if you can cherry pick when to do so or only because a law says you must do it.
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