Accessibility

There’s a new project from Igalia called Open Prioritization:

An experiment in crowd-funding prioritization of new feature implementations for web browsers.

There is some precedent for this. There was a crowd-funding campaign for Yoav Weiss to implement responsive images in Blink a while back. The difference with the Open Prioritization initiative is that it’s also a kind of marketplace for which web standards will get the funding.

Examples include implementing the CSS lab() colour function in Firefox or implementing the :not() pseudo-class in Chrome. There are also some accessibility features like the :focus-visible pseudo-class and the inert HTML attribute.

I must admit, it makes me queasy to see accessibility features go head to head with other web standards. I don’t think a marketplace is the right arena for prioritising accessibility.

I get a similar feeling of discomfort when a presentation or article on accessibility spends a fair bit of time describing the money that can be made by ensuring your website is accessible. I mean, I get it: you’re literally leaving money on the table if you turn people away. But that’s not the reason to ensure your website is accessible. The reason to ensure that your website is accessible is that it’s the right thing to do.

I know that people are uncomfortable with moral arguments, but in this case, I believe it’s important that we keep sight of that.

I understand how it’s useful to have the stats and numbers to hand should you need to convince a sociopath in your organisation, but when numbers are used as the justification, you’re playing the numbers game from then on. You’ll probably have to field questions like “Well, how many screen reader users are visiting our site anyway?” (To which the correct answer is “I don’t know and I don’t care”—even if the number is 1, the website should still be accessible because it’s the right thing to do.)

It reminds of when I was having a discussion with a god-bothering friend of mine about the existence or not of a deity. They made the mistake of trying to argue the case for God based on logic and reason. Those arguments didn’t hold up. But had they made their case based on the real reason for their belief—which is faith—then their position would have been unassailable. I literally couldn’t argue against faith. But instead, by engaging in the rules of logic and reason, they were applying the wrong justification to their stance.

Okay, that’s a bit abstract. How about this…

In a similar vein to talks or articles about accessibility, talks or articles about diversity often begin by pointing out the monetary gain to be had. It’s true. The data shows that companies that are more diverse are also more profitable. But again, that’s not the reason for having a diverse group of people in your company. The reason for having a diverse group of people in your company is that it’s the right thing to do. If you tie the justification for diversity to data, then what happens should the data change? If a new study showed that diverse companies were less profitable, is that a reason to abandon diversity? Absolutely not! If your justification isn’t tied to numbers, then it hardly matters what the numbers say (though it does admitedly feel good to have your stance backed up).

By the way, this is also why I don’t think it’s a good idea to “sell” design systems on the basis of efficiency and cost-savings if the real reason you’re building one is to foster better collaboration and creativity. The fundamental purpose of a design system needs to be shared, not swapped out based on who’s doing the talking.

Anyway, back to accessibility…

A marketplace, to me, feels like exactly the wrong kind of place for accessibility to defend its existence. By its nature, accessibility isn’t a mainstream issue. I mean, think about it: it’s good that accessibility issues affect a minority of people. The fewer, the better. But even if the number of people affected by accessibility were to trend downwards and dwindle, the importance of accessibility should remain unchanged. Accessibility is important regardless of the numbers.

Look, if I make a website for a client, I don’t offer accessibility as a line item with a price tag attached. I build in accessibility by default because it’s the right thing to do. The only way to ensure that accessibility doesn’t get negotiated away is to make sure it’s not up for negotiation.

So that’s why I feel uncomfortable seeing accessibility features in a popularity contest.

I think that markets are great. I think competition is great. But I don’t think it works for everything (like, could you imagine applying marketplace economics to healthcare or prisons? Nightmare!). I concur with Iain M. Banks:

The market is a good example of evolution in action; the try-everything-and-see-what- -works approach. This might provide a perfectly morally satisfactory resource-management system so long as there was absolutely no question of any sentient creature ever being treated purely as one of those resources.

If Igalia or Mozilla or Google or Apple implement an accessibility feature because they believe that accessibility is important and deserves prioritisation, that’s good. If they implement the same feature just because it received a lot of votes …that doesn’t strike me as a good thing.

I guess it doesn’t matter what the reason is as long as the end result is the same, right? But I suspect that what we’ll see is that the accessibility features up for bidding on Open Prioritization won’t be the winners.