Did you catch accessibility too?

[jeshyr]

[OK I have been meaning to post this for about a month and I keep putting it off on account of not having the right phrasing, but hey ... wrong phrasing will have to do]

My basic question is to those developers/volunteers/users of Dreamwidth who are NOT themselves users of accessibility technology...

I know that a bunch of folks here have become accessibility converts/evangelists. By which I mean that you're not just "doing accessibility" because Dreamwidth requires you to, but you're really understanding why it's necessary and important and often you're pointing this out to others in other contexts away from Dreamwidth too.

I know that a project can require people to "do" accessibility, but a project can't make people *care* about accessibility... and most projects that "do" accessibility at all are in the first category. So ... how did you come to care about accessibility, especially if Dreamwidth was involved??

I have been chatting to Liz Ellcessor who is writing a book about web accessibility specifically and wants to know about Dreamwidth's accessibility from the inside, but it's also just a thing I have been wondering about more generally too. Dreamwidth is known for "doing accessibility" well and part of that is that we have got a bunch of people fired up about it and that's a really hard thing to do!!

So how do you think you caught accessibility?

Comments

[automaticdoor]

For me, it's a lot like kabarett said: I'm committed to social justice and to Wanting Everyone To Be In On Things, so why wouldn't I? I'm fairly neuroatypical and consider myself part of the disability rights community, most of my best friends have physical and/or psychiatric disabilities... it just seems like it's a natural fit. My closest friend in close proximity to me uses a wheelchair and we're blocked from doing a lot of things together because of accessibility issues, so the analogy, as kabarett said, is pretty clear. Further, I also get severe migraines and have trouble with color distinguishing and audio processing at times, so though I don't use adaptive tech, I do like to make sure things are web-accessible in other ways.