Leveraging The Accessibility Community As An Asset.pdf

Kim Patch led a discussion on leveraging the accessibility community as an asset for universal design at the Boston Accessibility Unconference. Participants shared their understanding of accessibility and universal design, citing examples such as curb cuts, captioning, and audio descriptions. They emphasized the importance of designing things well from the start, making things intuitive, and removing barriers to use. The group discussed what's most important in terms of accessibility, including text on the web, color contrast, and keyboard accessibility. They also shared how they became aware of the need for accessibility, often through personal experience or knowing someone with a disability. The discussion highlighted the value of the accessibility community as an asset for business, improving efficiency and productivity for everyone. Suggestions for increasing awareness and promoting accessibility included regulation, education, better tools, and encouraging development of extensions to modify browsers. If given an audience with top software makers, participants would emphasize the importance of using text, keyboard access, making things usable and intuitive, and setting standards. The discussion concluded with the need for more people with disabilities to help with testing for major companies and the value of diversity in raising the intelligence of a group.