The title of this post is a direct quote from an article Alice Boxhall just published: A threat model for accessibility on the web. The post talks about the challenges in creating web standards that successfully support accessibility needs, and how frustrating that process is.

You should read this article. It will help you understand how standards are created. It will also help you understand why many accessibility practitioners actively oppose using some standard features. It’s easy to believe that once something is a standard that it is safe to use…but that’s just not true.

This quote about neglect really stood out to me. It’s at the core of what I wrote about in my own recent article about enjoying maintenance work. It’s also at the root of much of the work I do. Working on Able Player is about ensuring that neglect doesn’t turn a great accessibility tool into a liability; and working on WordPress is about helping protect the accessibility of a tool that’s used by millions upon millions of people.

This is hard work. And, like Alice says, it means that you, the accessibility specialist, have to act as the naysayer. You are the person who fights against moving forward, to prevent a fundamental inequality for some users. It’s hard to be popular when you keep saying “no, this isn’t ready.”

Any specific examples?

Working on WordPress, there are a lot of places where I have seen this in practice. The lead up to the first core release of the block editor was exactly this. The project was rushed, and released prematurely. There was a desperate need to sit back and embrace accessibility in the architecture and interaction model that never happened.

There was a belief for some people inside the project that accessibility was being embraced. This is part of what led to conflict between accessibility specialists and the block editor development team.

In my opinion, this belief stemmed from this assumption, quoting from Alice’s article (emphasis added):

The unacknowledged assumption seems to be that problems can be addressed with rote, mechanical effort, and thus that accessibility can be relegated to a low-skill profession: performed by those who lack enough talent to succeed in more valuable fields, or undertaken with ease by people with real skill in other areas.

There was a lot of confidence that the very skilled React developers building Gutenberg are capable of handling the accessibility needs of the project on their own. And they are, indeed, very skilled developers. I won’t argue with that.

But they were also dismissive of real problems exposed by the accessibility team, and had a simplistic understanding of accessibility needs. This resulted in us publishing a lengthy article documenting problems with the editor shortly before release in which we actively dis-recommended the new editor for anybody with accessibility needs.

The process feels better now, though it is still difficult. There’s a greater depth of understanding of accessibility in the block editor development team, for one thing. But, more importantly, there’s greater awareness when higher-level accessibility feedback is needed.

There are still gaps; there are some problems that keep recurring that should be preventable. For example, controls without labels. We need linting that prevents that. But the process is still better, overall.

But the consequences of past decisions are hard to deal with. It was incredibly demoralizing for anybody working on accessibility in WordPress, and has resulted in years spent repairing earlier decisions instead of moving forward.

Now I’m going to talk about money

Without funding, none of this really happens. The most important work I do is to work on WordPress and on Able Player. Those are places where what I do has a real impact on the world. They are not the majority of my income.

There are companies out there who have taken on helping to support accessibility in WordPress – I’m sponsored by GoDaddy and Kinsta part-time to contribute to WordPress. At the moment, Rian Rietveld and I are the only accessibility specialists with any funding to work on WordPress. Rian’s sponsorship is specifically focused on documentation, so I’m the only person engaged on code.

I have not yet received any support for my work on Able Player. Admittedly, Able Player has a much smaller footprint than WordPress. I’m hoping to shift that, however. I want to keep moving that project forward, but I also have to be realistic about what I can do without support.

If you want to help fund my work on accessibility, please help out! I could use your support!

I’m trying to be more active about getting people to help support my work. I’d love to be able to be full time on open source accessibility.