Should journalists learn about accessibility at Journalism School?

Should journalists learn about accessibility at Journalism School?

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Back to basics

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When journalism as a product was a static creation it’s probably fair to say accessibility wasn’t even a thing. How could you make a newspaper accessible for blind or low vision readers or allow your audience to control the size, colour or structure of your pages. The reality is you couldn’t. That’s no longer the case. Today’s digital arms race and hyper competitive market? means news organisations are having to work harder and harder to attract new audiences. The modern newsroom is unrecognisable from what it was ten or fifteen years ago. Developers and UX designers have become a core component in how digital news is created, ?and yet, despite the ever advancing slew of technological innovations in how news is created, the actual task of teaching the craft of journalism and? ?storytelling hasn’t evolved to consider the differing access needs of ?audiences.

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More than an afterthought?

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It’s often left to the army of developers and designers to try and make content accessible, but here’s a thought… what if accessibility were to be a core module at journalism school? I’m fairly confident that most working journalists understand the need to reach underserved and often forgotten? audiences and create content? accordingly. The way all audiences physically access the content? they create should also be considered. We know that making things more accessible for some people ultimately benefits a lot more. The curb cutting effect.

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In Nieman Journalism Lab’s annual state of the industry ???predictions report for 2022, Joe Amditis predicted that accessibility would become more than just an afterthought. Has that prediction come true? The reality is it depends on who you ask. Joe thinks “accessibility should be a mandatory part of journalism education — and in education more broadly, given how central digital media has become to our lives.”

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In his class at Montclair State University, "Multimedia production for strategic communications," Joe makes a point to introduce accessibility concepts early and often. “We usually start with the basics, like the importance of alt text for screen readers, and as the course goes on, we dive into more advanced topics like audio descriptions for video content. My goal is for students to develop an accessibility mindset that they carry with them into their careers.”

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Mind the gap

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Journalism instructor ?and accessibility advocate Patrick Garvin thinks there’s a gap in educating journalists on accessibility and believes more training needs to be offered around the fundamentals. ?In this piece by Aldana Vales ? offering tips to make your visual journalism more accessible, Patrick suggests journalists should at least understand how to write a decent alt text or why colours alone can’t be used to convey meaning.? ??He also thinks that “a lot of journalists seem to treat it as something like flossing, or not eating sugar, or visiting their elderly aunt: something they should do more of, but it’s not so important that they will radically change their behaviours to ensure that it gets done.”

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Accessibility queen Alexa Heinrich agrees with Patrick about the gap in the education of journalists around accessibility. Speaking to me for this newsletter Alexa said ?“Journalists should have more formal education and training when it comes to accessibility”. She also thinks ensuring the accessibility of the content shared by journalists is a matter of ethical responsibility and that they have ??“a duty to? provide equal access to information for all individuals, ?regardless of their abilities.”

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When she was still active on Twitter Alexa said she regularly seen journalists share content with no thought about accessibility. “They’d post screenshots of articles without providing alt text or supporting links. It was frustrating, as you can imagine. It’s also just contradictory to the point of journalism, which is to inform the public and share information. You can’t do that properly if you’re creating barriers to the very information you’re trying to share.” ?

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More diversity please

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Would accessibility be more of a consideration if more disabled people were making content? Quite probably. Diversity though as we know is a bit of an issue in journalism at the moment. A recent report from the FT’s strategy consultancy found that fewer than 1 in 5 media workers think diversity is a priority in their organization, something the NUJ believe is down to the continuing homogeny of the media industry

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Of course Accessibility isn't just about alt text or colour contrast, although getting those right will bring huge benefits for ??a lot of the audience. It’s about so much more. ???Employing more disabled journalists with lived experience of the a11y barriers is an obvious way to raise awareness, but what can’t happen is that disabled people become unofficial testers or consultants for newsrooms who can’t or won’t commit to an accessibility lead. ?All journalists need to be more aware of their audience and get the fact that many people will be accessing their content in different ways. We all want our work to be read right? It makes ??sense to know how audiences are accessing that work.

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Alexa Heinrich believes that “if journalism programs educated students on models for understanding disability, members of the media would have a greater respect for accessibility and the impact it has on people with disabilities. Accessible reporting can help challenge stereotypes, dispel misconceptions, and promote a better understanding of the disabled community.”

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I wrote in 2022 as part of my fellowship with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism about ??how we need to ensure blind audiences aren't left behind in the visual data revolution. I was hopeful then of a fix if there was increased awareness of the problem. Still waiting. I think gen AI will eventually play a part in ensuring blind audiences do have access to vital information, but for now a lot of the a11y heavy lifting is still being done through alt text, and we all know how much more educating needs to be done to ensure journalists ?can write impactful text descriptions for all images. More about that in upcoming newsletters.

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So where does the responsibility lie?

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News orgs are acutely aware of audiences and the need to? reach them in a way which suits their needs. ?Holden Foreman at the Washington Post and Jaime Tannerat The New York Times were both hired to focus squarely on accessibility, but these are still kind of supporting roles. ?Accessibility shouldn’t be considered ????an aside. It’s an integral part of reaching all audiences. ?Every single person in the newsroom should understand where and how audiences are accessing content. Fundamentally ?accessibility is about audiences.

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It’s also very telling how accessibility isn’t really considered in the conversations around journalism. A recent piece from the International Journalist’s Network looked at? 5 podcasts on the state of journalism today and not one mention of accessibility. Maybe this is a gap in the diversity of journalism?? as a whole?

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In an essay for The New York Times, dean at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism graciela mochkofsky put forward the proposal that one way to fix a? journalism industry in crisis is to make J-School free. An interesting thought. Great alt text by the way NYT.

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Accessibility vs creativity

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Many journalists fear accessibility and think it’s about compliance. I’ve no hard data to back this statement up, but If we take it as true as a starting point we can reframe the narrative and approach delivering our journalism in different ways as an opportunity. ?

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I asked the? NCTJ and BJTC if they knew of any journalism courses in the UK who offer accessibility as part of their courses. Still waiting on an answer. ?

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Patrick Garvin did flag some courses in the US ?where a11y is mentioned. He’s also trained some news organizations on basic accessibility concepts over the last few years and has been brainstorming ideas to help make a11y easier for people to learn, understand, and implement.

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There are some great examples of a11y in newsrooms across the world which I’m planning to spotlight over the coming months. I can’t help ?think though that the a11y conundrum could be fixed by better awareness of audiences. This should be happening as a matter of course. There’s great work being done. We need more of it though and we need everyone involved in journalism to champion accessibility. The load has to be shared evenly and not just left up to UX people or web developers. Fingers crossed the tide is turning. ?

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Thanks so much for reading this far.? Please do let me know what you think of the newsletter and what more you’d like to see. I’m planning on looking at Gen AI in the next few weeks. Also the European Accessibility Act and what it might mean for journalism when it’s introduced next year. ??

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Thanks again and feel free to share ?

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