Changing the World - on a tiny budget

Jutta Treviranus

Director, Inclusive Design Research Centre

& Inclusive Design Institute

OCAD University

Toronto, Canada

The imperative....

• Being online is no longer optional

• To study, work, vote, buy things, receive healthcare,

socialize, express our opinion, volunteer, travel,

manage our finances, receive government services,

enjoy culture.....

• Rich Internet Applications are becoming the norm

for anything interactive

• Exclusion will lead to dire social consequences for

society

• Inaccessible interfaces will exclude a growing

number of users

The seemingly insurmountable mission...

• a tiny global community

• very limited resources

• technically complex agenda that not yet fully defined

• addressing thousands of moving targets

• some in areas we are restricted from

• across a huge disjointed terrain

The very risky wager....

• RIAs are created by an ever-increasing number of developers

• Using a changing and growing set of tools

• Implementing ever-evolving designs

• We need to:

• reach every developer

• affect every development tool

• respond to every advance in design

Even worse...

• Many developers use closed proprietary development environments

• Many create applications using mash-ups that draw components from

disjointed sources

• Most know nothing about accessible design

• Some don’t care

• All have competing priorities

How to win friends and influence people...

• Isn’t this the age old accessibility story?

• Advocacy and education at the highest levels

• If we don’t have power let’s befriend people who do

• Not as easy as decreeing that there shall be ramps

• Hard to communicate what RIAs are and what is

needed to make them accessible

• With complicated provenance of most applications

we cannot depend on power hierarchies

The cost of appealing to human kindness...

• But our mission is noble and our need is great

• If we appeal to developers they must respond with

charity and kindness

• Most people ignore the appeals

• Untenable power imbalance without lasting change

• With charity comes debt

• Appeals become irksome

• We become pariahs to be avoided

The Problem with Blunt and Rigid Instruments

• Laws and policies?

• Laws work when the changes are clear, simple,

well understood, consistent and stable

• Long time to enact and a long time to change

• Require easily testable and consistent criteria not

dependent on subjective judgment or contextual

exceptions

• No room for subtlety or diverse approaches

• No room for experimentation

The problem with black and white and one-size-

fits-all

• disability is not a binary

• greater relevant diversity in people grouped as “disabled” than

in those grouped as “non-disabled”

• fewer degrees of freedom to conform to assigned grouping

• design compromises made for one person to help another

• need to move from one-size-fits-all to one-size-fits-one

Why people don’t do what is good for them...

• Changes would benefit everyone

• Will help with device independence, mobile delivery, reuse,

updating, maintenance and general usability

• Good for developers and providers of applications

• Developers should implement changes for their own good, the

good of their employers and their customers

• Human nature to work toward own self interest

• But....

• brushing teeth, documentation....

Precarious Values

• No one would disagree that they are important but ...

• when other matters compete for our attention they are the last to be

considered

• disproportionate vulnerability to procrastinations

• frequently fall off the table all together

Cacophony is no way to communicate

• Must reach agreement on strategy

• Cannot give contradictory messages

• No room for competition or egos

Levers and Food Chains

• Development tools and toolkits

• One lego block at a time

• Beginning of the food chain

• The lesson of iodine and flouride

Concrete and Good Habits

• Conventions become more stubborn and impervious

to change as they cure or age

• Their effect propagates like rabbits or bed bugs

becoming more difficult to eradicate

• Actions must be timely and close to the beginning

• We must establish positive habits

Hitch-hiking and the Virtuous Virus

• Other, more popular causes going the same direction

• Infecting and infusing accessibility

• Virtually invisible

• Indivisible from host

The art of persuasion, the art of seduction, the

science of judo

• repackaging accessibility

• shedding the myth that accessible design is:

• Drab

• “Dumbed down”

• More costly

• More time consuming

• appropriating the power of the opponent

Two year olds, teenagers, Tom Sawyer, networks

and feeling needed

• well if you are doing it...

• wasn’t it my idea?

• the privilege of doing the right thing

• virtuous networks and personal engagement

• bottom up rather than top down

Biting, chewing, swallowing and managing

expectations

• Establishing boundaries, defining scope?

• Exclusion

• Changing landscape

• Organic growth from a solid core?

Pouncing where the mouse has been...

• Always playing catch up

• Need to predict and drive the innovation

Change the world?

• We don’t have the muscle

• We don’t have the numbers

• We don’t have the money

• We have the heart

• We have the community

• We must have the cohesion

• We must have the smarts