E58 – Interview with Jen Simmons – Part 2

Jen says that many of the needs for accessibility aren't that hard to accommodate by developers and designers! I couldn't agree more. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at: Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/ Transcript Nic:    Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. You’re listening to episode 58. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you.   To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS and video at Twilio.com.   In this episode, I’m continuing my conversation with Jen Simmons. Last show was really awesome. I loved our conversation and talking about developers responsibility to educate themselves in accessibility and the concept of disabilities. If you haven’t listened to the show yet  I Really recommend it because Jen really prompted thinking in a wonderful way. So, Jen, thank you and welcome back. So, Jen, we were talking about achievements and, lets flip that around. What’s your greatest frustration about accessibility? Jen:    My greatest frustration about accessibility … It is the thing we were talking about last episode of sometimes the attitudes that developers can have. Where people just don’t care and they can put their own selfish-- I mean, I think it’s selfish-- put their own opinions or their own perspectives or their own idea about what’s needed ahead of what millions of people actually need. And I just don’t understand that. It makes me furious. Nic:    Wow Jen:    I think I actually lost a job over it once. And I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand how people can be so self-centred, so selfish to just not care. It is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And like you said, last episode, everybody at some point is going to die. Some people will die very quickly and with a lot of surprise. So those folks perhaps will never become disabled but like the rest of us. If anything you want to become old and you will slowly lose different kind-- your body will change. Things will change for you. Nic:    How do we change that? I guess it’s difficult to have ideas about that when it’s so hard to fathom why people are so selfish. But, how do we change that? Jen:    Yeah, I don’t know. I try to do it by simply showing people what they need to do to make their sites accessible. And working it into everything else I’m teaching. I’m teaching CSS Grid and I’m like, ‘Okay, here’s things you need to know about how to write semantic HTML as you’re using CSS Grid”. Because that’s how-- to me, that’s the way to approach a project. Like, “Oh, you want to sit down and figure out your layout. Well, first you have to have something to layout. Well, when you do that your markup is important. The way you do your markup is going to affect the ability that you have to do your layout. So let's look at the markup and consider what’s the best way to do the markup and while we’re doing that we are just going to naturally make accessible markup. I don’t add ARIA rules in those tutorials but I add all sorts of other kinds of things and consider what else is going on with the markup. But the also just think that in life will teach people. I think as all of us get older you get less arrogant and you become more wise and you meet a wider variety of people and you meet folks with disabilities and you work with them as colleagues and you realize, “Oh, shit”-- Oh sorry if I… Nic:    You can say anything you want. Jen:    I don’t know if I can say that on your Podcast but-- “Oh no!”. But … yeah. I shouldn’t have been doi