Dear everyone, 

Thanks so much for the really interesting thread on the subject of Web Accessibility and its ongoing 'thingness'. I think there's a couple of elements which I wanted to come back to, picking up partly on Jonathan's comments today.

I was once warned by an eminent museum colleague that when talking about 'diversity' you should always avoid starting to list the communities you're aiming to work with - on the principle that someone will always be left out or offended. While this is a pragmatic view, it raises the problem of how you know when you're being 'diverse', and whether you should do more of it, less of it, or about the same.

From the discussion so far, it seems to me that the same can be said of 'accessibility'. In one sense 'web accessibility' is indivisible from 'accessibility' in the sense that we have a professional, ethical and moral obligation to ensure that museum services are usable by the widest possible audience. 

In another sense, if we're going to demonstrate that we're acting on this obligation (or make the case upwards for money and support to act on it), we need some way of evidencing it. The positive thing about WCAG, Bobby etc was that - imperfect though it was - it gave you some externally-justifiable metric with which you could say 'look, this report here says this bit of technology is not accessible enough, we must do better'. Whether that report actually translated into a more accessible experience or not for people with specific needs was something of a moot point - the underlying point was that we wanted to get better, we could make a case for investing in getting better and the general improvement in quality and accessibility was to everyone's benefit. 

The museum community as a whole has a habit of getting all hot and bothered about something, agonising over it, then internalising it and moving on to the next thing. This was why I really asked whether web accessibility is still a thing - I am interested, now that it has effectively gone out of fashion and we're all talking about enterprise, is it that the principles have simply become embedded and internalised, or have we stopped caring about access?

From the discussion, it seems that nobody has stopped caring - the principle has been internalised, and there is a critical question about whether accessibility is a core consideration in the 'app vs. mobile-optimised' debate. It does, however sound as though the reinforcement of the principle hasn't necessarily been hard-coded into funder requirements, and I know that at governance level Directors and Trustees find themselves making income-focused decisions that are sometimes at odds with the 'best' professional answer. 

Ultimately, this comes down to ethics for me - the MA Code of Ethics (review pending) is pretty clear on the subject of both accessibility and diversity. In practice, we ought to ensure that any decision museums make about their use of technology, from procurement to specification to promotion, accords with our professional ethics. Hence, it ought to be unethical to create an app or website that is inaccessible, and funders ought not to be supporting unethical practice. Similarly, it ought to be unethical to use public subsidy to create products which do not have a reasonable shot at sustainability - which may not include apps whose business plan is 'because, you know, iPhones'.

It would be great to see some framework in place which said, essentially, "we're a museum, which means that we operate according to a professional code of ethics. That code of ethics requires us to be committed to accessibility and diversity in all of our work. This commitment is evidenced by...our procurement rules, our access policy, our collecting policy etc etc". I'd love to know whether people feel their museum has this kind of commitment in place!

All best, 

Nick 





Nick Poole
Chief Executive
Collections Trust
Tel: +44 (0)20 7942 6080
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-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bonewell, Perry
Sent: 05 February 2015 10:24
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MCG] Is Web Accessibility still a thing?

" So you could look at today's lack of focus on web accessibility by museums as resulting from the absence of a business argument as compelling as the ones sold by the native app marketeers."

NOF made a decent fist of making accessibility a consideration by making it a condition for funding.

It's a bit of an old saw for me on this list but I've witnessed scenarios where funders make no demands whatsoever.

This is fine I guess if you have a team that values these requirements, but if you're a lone voice in an organisation and trying to make a case to "deaf ears" about how best to approach web projects and consider accessibility, usability and sustainability and so on, external guidance or conditions would be a tremendous help.

-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dr Jonathan Hassell
Sent: 05 February 2015 09:45
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MCG] Is Web Accessibility still a thing?

Thanks for starting such an interesting thread, Nick.

I've been interested in the replies re whether responsive mobile sites or native apps are preferable for sustainability and inclusion. I think these illustrate one of the difficult things about the terms 'accessibility' and 'inclusion' - whether they are about making a digital product work for people no matter their abilities or disabilities, or whether they are about making a digital product work for people no matter what device they use it on.

I've always thought the conflation of those two separate issues into 'accessibility' is unhelpful. After all, I may be able to change the device I use to access a digital product, but I cannot change my abilities or disabilities no matter what assistive technologies are available to help me.

I've nothing to add to the great thoughts here already on responsive vs native.

But, as an accessibility professional for the last 14 years, I do have a perspective on Nick's original question of where 'web accessibility' fits into people's priorities these days.

So far, I've not seen anyone on this list saying that web accessibility is high on the list when they specify products.

That is sad. But it is understandable.

From listening to my clients, which include museums and more, the appetite for organisations to make their digital products usable by people with a broad range of abilities and disabilities tends to trend up and down.

Whenever a new law (the DDA turning into the Equality Act 2010) or a new standard (like WCAG 2.0 or the UK Accessibility Standards BS 8878 I created in 2010) brings web accessibility to the surface, organisations take note and check what's in it for them.

And that's where people's reasons for "doing" accessibility are so important. As Dave Gerrard mentioned, there are moral reasons for including people, as well as legal ones. But often organisations look at what they've got to gain (the potential of a new audience, but no-one's proved that with actual figures; the potential of mitigating legal risk, but no-one's been sued yet) and what they've got to lose (what seems to be lots of money to make web accessibility happen, which could have been spent in other places).

So you could look at today's lack of focus on web accessibility by museums as resulting from the absence of a business argument as compelling as the ones sold by the native app marketeers.

However, I think it pays to think about accessibility motivations very differently. As Richard Malloy's mention of his iBeacons for adding audio description for visually impaired users hints at, done properly, using creativity rather than emphasizing compliance to WCAG 2.0, accessibility can actually make products more innovative, not less.

I have huge numbers of examples of organisations making leaps of innovation through thinking about the needs of people with various impairments - back as far as the typewriter and telephone, to today's cool mobile apps like Zombies Run.

In fact, some of the greatest innovations in mobile are coming from the accessibility community, as celebrated every year at conferences like m-enabling - see my video interview with its chair at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqoN7mrIskE

Thinking about the needs of your potential audiences with impairments could be the thing that makes your next website, mobile app or exhibition stand out from all the rest.

Does that sound like a better place from which to start thinking about web accessibility?

And, if you will forgive a quick plug, it's never been easier to embed accessibility in your development process, as Nick hopes. My new book 'Including your missing 20% by embedding web and mobile accessibility' provides a complete framework for doing that.

You can find more information on the book, and free video interviews on the state of the art in digital accessibility from accessibility experts from across the world at: http://hassellinclusion.com/book/

And please let me know if I can help anyone 'sell' accessibility to their organisation, in a way that feels like a win-win for the organisation and its audiences.

Bon chance

Jonathan

--

Prof Jonathan Hassell
Director, Hassell Inclusion

Author of the book "Including your missing 20% by embedding web and mobile accessibility" - available now on amazon

Blog: http://hassellinclusion.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jonhassell


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