Being an Accessibility Advocate - and why you should too

Following a post on LinkedIn about side hustles, where, in the comments, I mentioned working on an accessibility workshop. I was asked ‘What’s an accessibility advocate?’ I say it often and had an internal understanding but had never properly thought about defining it for myself or to anyone.

This was the beginning of my reply.

My definition is someone who promotes, talks about and actively brings accessibility into conversations.

That felt about right but I see lots of similarities with other disciplines and their advocates that I wanted to provide some context. A distraction from preparing to deliver my very first accessibility workshop at Sky in Leeds, but a worthwhile one I think.

So I continued;

A bit like security is seen as a pure specialism and scary by some, many see accessibility the same way. For both there is so much we can do.

• Ask if they have been considered early on in the process.

• What strategies are we using?

• Include basic tests in our exploration

Considered at the design stage instead of hard to add items they become design choices and therefore much cheaper. Considered after something is built, they are much more costly!

I was fairly comfortable with my answer now but I couldn’t quite drop the thought. I kept thinking about my immediate reply and was it really deep enough? Did I understand what I wanted to achieve by doing this as well as I assumed I did? Should I, as any good tester would, question my assumptions for a clearer understanding? I came to the conclusion, after some thought, that yes, yes I should question myself. It didn’t take long to identify that it is those things, but there’s more to it.

I make it very clear at the beginning of conversations, talks and even recently in a workshop given at Sky in Leeds and a meetup in Nottingham, that I am in no way an accessibility expert. But that doesn’t mean I can’t teach others what I know, spread the message and amplify others voices in the space. It never ceases to amaze me of the knowledge we take for granted as common place that isn’t widely known. Simple things like adding Alternate Text (Alt-text) to images accessed digitally seem obvious to allow people who need to use screen readers to navigate. But they only become obvious once you consider those users.

Over the last few years I’ve looked at different ways to spread the message.

• Invented a visual heuristic (https://www.thebigtesttheory.com/blog/2019/5/13/my-first-experiences-with-accessibility-testing).

• Shared information.

• Been a co-host of an accessibility power hour (https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/power-hour-accessibility-testing/26064) on the Ministry of Testing Club.

• Created a quiz I believe is unique (and so far very well received) and that I’m still improving. It is deliberately very visual, as that is the target audience, but I want to make sure non-visual people can also take part by providing a fully accessible version online. Although I suspect they know most if not all of the answers already!

The next stage is developing a longer workshop to help people to conduct a basic accessibility audit of their own sites and apps. Learning this will allow those attending to have those conversations up front and (hopefully) influence the design. Essentially, I’m hoping to inspire others to become accessibility advocates themselves. I have an hour and a half workshop already and am close to submitting a half day workshop to conferences. So watch out for it coming to a conference near you soon. I’m also considering offering this to companies in house covering my time and expenses e.g. less about making a profit and more around spreading the message.

The next logical question is why? What makes someone want to be an accessibility advocate? Personal experience? Or just that it’s the right thing to do. While it is the right thing to do the best explanation I can give comes from someone else.

Four-time U.S. Paralympic medallist Tucker Dupree used to do a lot of public speaking during his competitive swimming days. His talks would often challenge the audience to think differently about people with disabilities.

I’d always open my speech with, ‘As a person with a disability, I belong to one of the largest minorities in the world, and on top of that, it’s a minority that anyone in this room can become a part of at any point in their life. You can acquire a physical disability at any point in your life, and disability comes in every culture and in every colour…’

One thing I hold to be true in everything I’ve learned is that the general perception that Accessibility = Disability is not quite correct. In the majority of cases, things that affect people with disabilities can equally affect people without. While it is important of the people with, Accessibility is more about Inclusion so becomes wider than just conformance to the guidelines.

So overall while I’m happy with my contribution although I know it is only a drop in the ocean and it needs more to convince those with the power that this is something we have to do. No easy task but I feel, a worthwhile pursuit.

Near the end of writing this blog post, WebAIM published their re-analysis of the top one million web home pages which can be found at this locations, https://webaim.org/projects/million/update

They categorise errors as;

Errors are accessibility issues that are automatically detectable via WAVE, have notable end user impact, and are likely WCAG 2 conformance failures.

The other reason everyone should be accessibility advocates is what they found. A 98% failure rate. And that’s only based on automatically detectable errors! We can and should do better, but only if we look for and call out these issues.

My First Experiences with Accessibility Testing

My First Experiences with Accessibility Testing

This post has been written as part of the Ministry of Testing Bloggers Club Sprint 13 https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/bloggers-club-sprint-13-new-timelines/24995

 The brief was; Your first experiences with accessibility testing. How you started, where your learning began and any assumptions you had to question, change or drop completely.

Reflections from TestBash Brighton –Testing as a Team

Reflections from TestBash Brighton –Testing as a Team

During my time at TestBash Brighton possibly the most common subject to pop up was related to group testing activities.  Be that mobbing, bug bashes or whole team test days built into the process.  Maaike Brinkhof in her talk, ‘Exploratory Testing with the Team, a Journey Worth Taking’ explained how they undertook ‘Team Test Sessions’ before they released. 

This is the story of our first foray into testing as a team.

Reflections from TestBash Brighton – Being Brave

I’ve been a member of the online testing community for a long time, initially though Twitter by following some testing ‘names’ and then through the Ministry of Testing. A lot has been written about how welcoming the Ministry is and how they put inclusion and diversity at the forefront of their thinking and planning and I can only echo that. They have not only helped me improve as a tester, they have helped me improve as a person and had a massive and unexpected impact on me. They helped me be braver!

I’ve written poetry and parody lyrics to songs since I was young. These were always for me, with a couple of minor exceptions to my partner! You know, valentines and other mushy stuff… But something happened along the way and posting my first foray into testing related output (https://www.thebigtesttheory.com/blog/2017/11/26/if-ady-stokes-2017) in the club as well as my blog (which was also for me, never expected anyone else to read it) was a very big step for me. It took a long time for me to decide to share, then even longer to hit the Create Topic button. Fortunately there are some very kind people in our community who enjoyed it and encouraged me to do more.

At Brighton in my talk, Test all the Things with the Periodic Table of Testing, I had an irrational idea to create a song for people to join in and hopefully remember my table. I always get nervous before talking but it was several levels raised above normal thinking about singing (well, what I call singing) in public. Again I was encouraged by many but I need to shout out to Gem Hill and Emma Keaveny (our brilliant Essentials host) for their encouragement. To quote Emma;

Yes my friend, be brave! It’s the best place to be brave.

And it was! Despite my shaky voice, messing up the last chorus and going out of rhythm I did it! With more help from the amazing Gwen Diagram and João Proença through a Twitter request I had my support and the whole crown joined in. Warning, if you play this, you will hear my truly awful singing. No excuses, but it is a bit out of sync… honest… 😊

https://twitter.com/ministryoftest/status/1113369481596801025

Lyrics below if you want to see but the story isn’t quite finished…

Two days later I was even braver in the 99 second talks at TestBash. I read out my poem, Does it Work. The very first time I have ever read out one of my poems. I was shaking badly throughout to the point I nearly dropped the mic (not in a cool at the end way like Vern Richards (love him) suggested).

Being brave can sometimes have its rewards and mine was incredible. I’ve been a long-time admirer of Angie Jones and was fortunate to sit on the same table of her for TestBash. It literally made my week when I collapsed in my chair, stunned by the reaction and that I had actually beaten my fears, and Angie high fived me and said, ‘good job’. I have had it confirmed that despite being a 52 year old the correct label for my reaction was that I had a complete ‘fanboy moment’! I make no apologies for this, Angie is a legend, period.

If you take anything away from my ramblings please let it be, be brave. I am very confident in saying that whatever it is, whatever you want to try, we got you. Me, Ministry of Testing, the whole community. No judgement, just love. Be brave.

We Will Test You (music by Queen; lyrics by Ady Stokes)

Buddy you’re a visual heuristic

Describing the breath of the testing universe

You got elements in place

Paths you can trace

It’s something you can use all over the place, Singin’

We will we will test you (come on)

We will we will test you

Buddy you have different elements

Covering how you can test all the things

You now have a place

You can embrace

You can use this table all over the place

We will we will test you (with the periodic table!)

We will we will test you

Buddy you can scope your projects

Listing all the things that you want to test some day

No mud on your face

It’s no disgrace

To help you test the things give it pride of place

We will we will test you

We will we will test you

Reflections from TestBash Brighton - Testing is?

For my talk at TestBash Brighton Essentials (see ref below for slides and more) one of the things I covered was what I believe testing is. Over the last 6-months or so I have been mentoring a new tester on their journey and to start that journey, I had to explain what testing is.

There are a many, many attempts to explain testing and I even referenced one of my favourite descriptions in my presentation.

Testing is the infinite process of comparing the invisible to the ambiguous so as to avoid the unthinkable happening to the anonymous.

James Bach

Over time, the more I looked at how different people went to great lengths to explain the craft, the techniques, the mind set and from other perspectives. I though, there must be a simpler way of beginning the conversation as it is my opinion that when trying to explain what ‘testing is…’ we do ourselves a disservice and answer instead, ‘what testers do…’ or a close variation.

My belief is when we do this, we confuse ourselves and others and we would really help our craft and each other if we simply said;

Testing is part of risk mitigation for the product or system.

Now I know that might sound overly simplistic when we are sometimes put in the position of defending our profession and craft. But, we should follow up with;

And we do that by…

This way, when we talk about critical thinking, observation, problem identification and solving; explain why automation helps but isn’t a solution in of itself; offer advice about bias, empathy and inclusion; offer opinions on observability and testability and ask unexpected questions from the, ‘but that would never happen’ category, there would be a clear concept that all these things help us identify and reduce risk for the product or system we are helping develop.

I would be really happy to hear others opinions on this way of thinking. Please let me know in the comments or follow up on Twitter @CricketRulz

Refs:

https://www.ministryoftesting.com/events/testbash-essentials-brighton-2019

https://www.slideshare.net/adystokes/test-all-the-things-with-the-periodic-table-140052297

Talk link to be added later, may be Pro or attendees only, to be confirmed