Making The Case for Accessibility To Hostile Audiences

Introduction

An ancient curse said, “may you live in interesting times”, and it seems that will definitely be the case soon.? Regardless of if you feel that our government needs a huge overhaul, or not the following is provided as food for thought for accessibility leaders in the hope that it helps you in the next months and years.

I’m sure that many of you are thinking quite a lot about how to maintain the accessibility gains you have been part of over the past decades given the explicitly stated intention of our incoming leadership to eliminate diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs.? If you don’t believe it, you can look at this article only showing the top-most negative effects of the Project 2025 strategies that so far seem to be in full swing.? See https://www.lflegal.com/2024/07/project-2025/? I have been thinking about this as well.? Here is what I have so far.???

This isn’t new.?

For those of us who have been doing accessibility for a long time now, many of the attitudes regarding DEIA expressed and stated now are not new.? We have expended a great deal of effort to make the accessibility gains we currently enjoy, so we need to re-learn our old lessons of approaching hostile audiences.? I was one of those students who had to fight just to go to school outside an institutional setting for the blind, and even then, in college textbook and such were generally inaccessible.? The only way to approach this is to make a clear case for what is needed and why, soft-selling things won’ work at all in my view.

While this isn’t new, this is different.?

I don’t recall ever hearing so many people publicly bashing accessibility.? But even so, the only thing you can do is approach everyone with clear and consistent messaging demonstrating the value of what you do.

Look at your Program from the incoming leadership’s perspective.?

Rightly or wrongly, and I’m saying this nicely, diversity is viewed by many of the incoming leadership as one group of minorities getting undue preference over others.? For the most part, equity, inclusion, and accessibility just come along for the ride.? Often providing people with disabilities, “special treatment”, is seen as an excessive burden.? So, from their perspective leveling the field is a fair thing to do regardless of if people with disabilities, or minorities currently, or in the past have had the low end of that field.? Getting rid of things like accessibility testing just seems like improving efficiency to some.? Employing people with disabilities is often viewed as more work than it’s worth.? Some folks will claim we can’t do accessibility now as we are so far over-budget that it just has to wait until our house is in order, whatever that means.

Don’t wait, build your case now.?

You have to be prepared for that conversation of, we are eliminating your Program, or your priorities are being reassigned, or however the axe falling might be phrased.? You need to get ahead of that if possible.? But how?? If you are not good at building business cases for accessibility get help!? You need to provide in simple clear statements that accessibility is efficiency.? Developing products that work for all employees, and members of the public reduces the number of individual accommodations needed at the end of the day.? Frame this as an engineering challenge that we can and should be able to meet now, not later as later we’ll just have more accessibility debt to deal with.? Accessible IT is usable IT and saves effort by all.? While you can include some empathy building components into your business case, they might not be of much help given the motivation to get rid of DEIA these days.? Instead of building empathy you can raise legal risks, but that driver might not hold much water if people think they just don’t need to follow regulations anymore either.? One thing I have learned is that you should always collect data on your Program’s successes.? Find it, organize it, and use it.? If you can show that for this much money you have orchestrated a percentage of new applications released as fully accessible, you should do that.? If you can show that legal risks were reduced, show it.? If you can show that you have educated the workforce to deliver accessibility, show it.? Show why someone who isn’t really very interested in your Program might figure that it’s doing positive work so let it continue.? Think about accountability and efficiency as big drivers.

Prioritize what you must keep and what can wait.?

Another thing I learned is that you must have a ready-to-go list of things you need funding for so that if funding pops it’s head up you are there to catch it for good uses.? In this climate you need to prioritize what are your core activities to maintain, and what can wait.? If your budget is going to get decreased by fifty or seventy-five percent, what can you realistically do with the remainder?? I suggest that outsourcing education to external Federal resources rather than pay for your own is one way to save money.? I suggest that focusing on establishing policies rather than focusing on testing is a good use of funding for now.? I suggest that if you do want to propose something new it is that you develop a way to better measure how accessibility is getting done or not within your agency, e.g. create something to track the funding you get and the activities and results that are based on that funding, as well as the outcomes.? This way you can better demonstrate the value of your Program when the next axe falling episode comes around.

Now what?

OK, you’ve looked at things from your leadership’s perspective, created business case slide deck and talking points, prioritized what can go and what to save, now what?

Don’t wait for the invite to get eliminated.?

Reach out at an opportune moment to talk to the new folks.? Ask for their thoughts on providing accessibility for people like disabled veterans, taxpayers trying to interact with the Federal bureaucracy, etc.? Raise your concerns with these audiences from your agency’s perspective.? If the chance comes up to separate accessibility from diversity, jump on it, and recommend it.? IT Accessibility should be seen as doing good engineering and viewed inside the CIO and acquisition areas.? Promote IT accessibility as keeping the lights on for employees and members of the public with disabilities, not extra special add-on stuff.? Something I’ve wanted to include in leadership briefings or interactions is providing them the simple fact that they can do accessibility now, and while it isn’t free that it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg either.

Finally, “be careful out there”, Hill Street Blues.?

Don’t stick your head out to get it chopped off by promoting massive expansions of your Program.? Propose reasonable things that should have been done for years, like policies, data collection, and focused remediation efforts.? As one of the founders of the whole Trusted Tester Program at DHS, I don’t know if I would want to propose starting that Program in the next six months if I were doing it over in these times.? Policies may protect you so work on them.? Don’t be the nail that stands up but keep those lines of communication open with the coalition of the willing.