AUL Open House: Notes from March 13, 2018

Topic: AUL Forum

• This session was a lead discussion with four controversial statements used as starting points. The polemical nature of the statements was deliberate to generate lively discussion and debate - and the strategy worked. Below is a quick look at all four statements.
• Accessibility work and accessibility workers are not exceptional.
  Exceptional work is about saving lives (surgeons) or risking lives (acrobats) or both (fire crews). Other work is deemed exceptional by proxy; it is about improving lives or extending them. Accessibility work is often seen as exceptional because we are helping people with special needs, but it is more helpful for everyone to approach it as regular work.
• When we say "accessible", we actually mean 10 different things.
  The word "accessible" can mean a variety of things - it is doable, it is convenient, it is intuitive, it is efficient, and so on.
• Whether the site is public or private is irrelevant to accessibility.
  If you have one medicine that is over the counter and turns you purple and kills you in two days and the other that is prescription only and turns you green and kills you in three, both are poisons that should be removed from the pharmacy. Same with inaccessible private and public sites - both should be fixed.
• Accessibility problems are rooted in the pursuit of the latest technology for its own sake.
  Simple and predictable interfaces built with usability in mind don't cause nearly as many problems as flashy interfaces built to impress and stun.