Agile thinking

 Just like in agile design practices, you start with the basics of a proof of concept or a wireframe of an idea so all stakeholders can understand how something works. From there you refine the features, the ideas and eventually the specifics are worked through with all stakeholders involved.

To me digital accessibility is the same, you lay the wireframe or foundations of the basic knowledge, skills and understanding to all stakeholders and then from there you can develop and refine those skills and that understanding further. Without a wireframe you can’t see the big picture and you can’t get buy-in, and in wider society that basic wireframe or buy-in of digital accessibility awareness is just not there. 

We currently only have web developers or enthusiasts working in silo, and that’s not all stakeholders. You just wouldn’t work like that on a project of such public importance, especially one that is intrinsic to current and future equality and inclusion.

I wholeheartedly believe that the foundations, or the underpinning wireframe of awareness, come from education, and the earlier you underpin that knowledge in the minds of young people the more likely you are to lay the framework for lifelong application and the development of understanding the bigger picture and the importance and impact for designing for all. 

These basics need to be taught in schools, so as a society we have that wireframe starting point to build a wider culture of inclusive digital practice and awareness. 
Without this, we are in a cycle of ‘unlearning’, retrofitting or fixing, rather than addressing the needs and understanding at source.

In my lean six sigma training I was taught that you ‘back track’ to identify the blocker.

The blocker is that as a society we are not trained or aware of how to create accessible content and then time is spent at the end duplicating effort to ‘fix’ the problem, when it would be more efficient to do it right first time. In my own experiences, a document or web page that has been created using the right practices first time round takes far less time than it does to fix. Often the basics to get right are simple, yet complex to unpick if they are not there. 

In many organisations people are employed to fix or remediate, when surely it would be more cost effective to teach people right in the first place rather than to fix problems or deal with complaints. To me, the narrative of accessibility being a problem that we fix doesn’t sit right, yet universal design does.

We all take for granted those things we already have that we designed for all, take dropped kerbs, they help those in wheelchairs, but also those with prams, pushchairs or pulling a suitcase. What about?????? All designed so everyone can benefit. 

Often it’s the lack of the basics that disable people the most, no captions on a film, webinar, YouTube video or Teams meeting for example completely alienates those with hearing impairments, yet that can be easily rectified, if only people were aware. 

A basic wireframe is to have captions enabled in that Teams meeting, that’s a basic. This is the social model of disability in its most basic form, users are completely disabled by the basics of captions not being put in place not because of their hearing loss. The same as that fully hearing student trying to watch a lecture they missed on a busy train to catch up, they are disabled by the lack of captions that would help them in the noisy environment, without them they just can’t watch it. It’s these basics not in place that disable people, not disabilities.

The basics are vital and often universal, and that’s why we need them on the curriculum.