It is unfortunate that it takes landmark agreements far too often for progress on accessibility in the first place. Several years ago Major League Baseball was heralded for their agreement and commitment to accessibility. Progress was indeed made and I know I was one who commented on the agreement and progress.
The agreement closing date has long past and so the answer to the question about what happens afterword in their case is, “Unlabeled image Unlabeled image /121.svg.” If you don’t like that answer, how about “Unlabeled image Unlabeled image /140.svg?” Both of those answers are taken from www.mlb.com/scores as of this writing, and are how two teams are indicated from the live scoreboard when accessed with multiple screen readers.
They are just two of the more than 370 accessibility failures reported by multiple accessibility auditing tools run on the page. Of course, accessibility tools are just part of the story and I’m a big fan of user testing for accessibility. In this case I’m serving that role and just wanted to look up the score of a ballgame. I guess when I sort out who is represented by 121 or 140, I’ll know the score.
This is not a criticism of the efforts that lead to MLB’s agreement. It is, however, a serious question around what it is going to take to make accessibility matter long after the agreements end because I can assure you representing a baseball team as 121, 140 or any other random nonsense is not accessibility the way I want to experience it.
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