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Building the woke web: accessibility and social justice
- 1. @oluoluoxenfree Building the Woke Web: Accessibility and Social Justice
- 4. @oluoluoxenfree “Ain't no mountain high enough Ain't no valley low enough Ain't no river wide enough To keep me from you”
- 5. @oluoluoxenfree I for one am extremely online
- 8. @oluoluoxenfree People can access information like never before
- 9. @oluoluoxenfree Arduous tasks can be done in an instant
- 10. @oluoluoxenfree THE POWER OF THE SUN IN THE PALM OF MY HANDSIN THE PALM OF MY HANDS THE POWER OF THE SUN
- 11. @oluoluoxenfree
- 12. @oluoluoxenfree Opening up the lines of communication has meant opening up to harassment
- 14. @oluoluoxenfree
- 15. @oluoluoxenfree Filtering LGBT content hurts the community
- 16. @oluoluoxenfree People build incredible things without thinking who gets left out
- 17. @oluoluoxenfree What do Beyonce and Dominoes pizza have in common?
- 19. @oluoluoxenfree Everyone needs to be able to access their money
- 20. @oluoluoxenfree Info on the web is often biased or non-existent
- 21. @oluoluoxenfree Info on the web is often behind insurmountable paywalls
- 22. @oluoluoxenfree “People with disabilities are the original life hackers because our motivation is so high. If we don’t hack we often go without.” – Liz Jackson: Designing for Inclusivity
- 24. @oluoluoxenfree Around half of all people in the world can’t access the internet.
- 25. @oluoluoxenfree 1 in 5 disabled adults here in the UK do not use the internet in 2018
- 26. @oluoluoxenfree Men are more likely to use the internet than women in the UK
- 27. @oluoluoxenfree Digital exclusion can happen even when you have an internet connection.
- 31. @oluoluoxenfree “Humans are not edge cases” – Suz Hinton (@noopkat)
- 38. @oluoluoxenfree “But I’m not a developer”
- 39. @oluoluoxenfree Anyone in any workplace can advocate for disabled people
- 40. @oluoluoxenfree You can do basic checks once you know what to look for
- 42. @oluoluoxenfree And of course you can help with making the internet a safer place, and a source of more diverse information
- 43. @oluoluoxenfree Wokeness isn’t an endpoint. Wokeness is just a beginning.
Editor's Notes
- This is my talk!
- Software engineer at the bbc I’m non-binary and use they/them pronouns Front end dev for the most part, with a great interest in web accessibility that I've explored more in my current role Please tweet at me if you feel like it, my handle is @oluoluoxenfree
- I can’t imagine what it would be like if i was born before the internet would have a significant impact on my life. It’s changed the face of the planet in so many different spheres. Let me count the ways...
- Allowed for communication over borders and boundaries I can tweet here in London and someone on the literal other side of the planet can talk back to me instantly Allows people to organise globally and meet internationally
- Have so many friends and allies I’ve never met in my day to day life Got my first job through networking i only found out about online got onto my bootcamp through twitter ads basically, aka i’m the only person twitter and facebook ads seem to work on
- delivers on the promise of the web to be open to all, built by all Other than all the obvious companies that spring to mind THe human utility Code newbie open source: 28 million public repositories on Github
- NVDA is a screenreader written by blind developers, completely free and open source A screen reader is a kind of assisstive technology that makes your computer read everything on the screen to you Screen readers aren’t just useful to people with visual impairments People with learning disabilities Iliterate people There are other kinds of assistive tech, from refreshable braille displays to screen magnifiers
- when you want to know something, you can just find it out wikipedia Open accesss to millions of academic papers you can learn anything without having to fork over loads of cash, or go into a classroom MOOCs - massive online open courses
- It's so much simpler to do complicated tasks Online forms saves on having to transfer things from paper to a database, work can be shared between groups on a project without having to actually met convene, you can find services local to you without having to spend a day searching yourself. We keep making it easier and easier to see large volumes of data in one place gov.uk online shopping
- Smartphones in particular have widened access to so many more people. We carry powerful computers around in pockets like it’s nothing. A lot of people take it for granted, even though it’s not accessible to everyone. Like water almost
- With great power comes great responsibility Lowered the barrier to entry in a good way - all the former points! - but it’s a double edged sword… more spreading of misinformation and tyranny Reducing friction goes both ways!
- Anyone who’s even slightly online has heard of trolling Trolling is making hurtful unsolicited and/or provoked comments with the intent of causing distress A form of harassment It affects the marginalised the most, but everyone is affected. Can vary from harmful to deadly (swatting in America in particular is very dangerous, where the police are called to an address under false pretences, and with the hope of provoking a violent response from the police due to perceived danger, made up by the caller)
- Diane Abbott received almost half (45.14%) of all abusive tweets in the run up to the last general Election Excluding her, black and Asian women MPs in Westminster got 35% more abusive tweets than white women MPs The abuse directed at her amounted to 10 times as much as was received by any other female MP, according to an Amnesty study. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/05/diane-abbott-more-abused-than-any-other-mps-during-election
- Charity that supports transgender children and their parents Mermaids CEO Susie Green – herself the parent of a transgender child – has been targeted with abuse and threats. https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/03/14/head-of-transgender-childrens-charity-mermaids-targeted-with-vile-abuse-and-threats/ Rise in abusive and threatening comments led to their twitter account having to block up to 20 people a day https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/27/police-investigate-online-abuse-charity-transgender-children-mermaids Lots of misinformation and some outright lies spread by a few newspapers and sites online
- Information and support online is vital for LGBT people, from escaping dangerous situations and accessing support to finding community In schools, words relating to LGBT issues are often blocked https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/helping-the-lgbt-community-access-the-internet/ On Youtube, videos relating to LGBT issues are demonitised, age restricted or even removed https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/4/17424472/youtube-lgbt-demonetization-ads-algorithm Doesn’t have to do with sexually explicit material!
- Gifs coming up!
- Sued under the American disability act Contains provisions to force the companies involved to change their websites Beyonce's case is still in progress but dominoes lost their suite, both cases were about blind people being unable to access their sites and complete purchases. In other words, they won't take their money, which is ridiculous.
- On the other side of the coin, the banks HSBC, Metro Bank and HSBC made it hard for blind and visually impaired users to to access all their services online. When HSBC was told they had made it difficult for a blind user to access bank statements, they replied ‘don’t worry, we’ll send you a video’. Equality act means that these people could sue also. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43968736 Effectively stealing - can’t use your own money
- Wikipedia editors are overwhelmingly (90% male in 2018) men, leading to much fewer women and topics interesting to them being highlighted on wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia In 2018, the Noble prize winner for Physics, Donna Strickland, didn’t have a wikipedia page as she was deemed not important enough a few months prior. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/03/donna-strickland-nobel-physics-prize-wikipedia-denied The vast majority of content written about Africa on Wikipedia was written by Europeans and Americans. If you are using Google to search for local information in Belgium, Canada or Australia, you will be directed to mostly locally produced content. But if you’re in Sierra Leone, Pakistan or Indonesia, almost all of the content is produced by outsiders. Bengali wikipedia: nearly 70k (65,968) articles Speakers: 280 million! Dutch wikipedia articles: nearly 2 million (1,963,136) articles Speakers: 28 million! --- All of sub-Saharan Africa combined is 46 countries and had 10% of the world’s internet users in 2017 Despite this it had registered only 0.7% of the world’s domain names and done 0.5% of the world’s github commits or revisions France alone produced 5.7 times more GitHub commits and 3.4 times more domain registrations than all the sub-Saharan countries. Most of the above from this article, updated the numbers for the bengali/dutch bit with more recent numbers (combined first and second language speakers of the language): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/05/internet-white-western-google-wikipedia-skewed
- JSTOR is a site that contains papers written largely by researchers at academic institutions, and available in full only to students of a university or library, who are charged a fee. Aaron Swartz was a technologist, coder and ethical hacktivist who thought it was unfair that papers funded by the state and the graduated students sat behind a private paywall. Aaron Swartz attempted to download a large chunk of JSTOR in late 2010 to early 2011, a few weeks, before he was caught and charged by authorities. He tragically died by suicide during the court proceedings, and could have faced a prison sentence of up to 35 years and a $1 million dollar fine. Moves to widen access to older papers in the public domain (those uploaded before 1923 in the US and before 1870 in other countries) were sped up (if we believe JSTOR that they were in the works!) directly because of this controversy and other related protests. As of 2017, JSTOR does not have plans to extend it to other public domain content, stating that "We do not believe that just because something is in the public domain, it can always be provided for free". The public owns them though, ridiculous. (Info from the Aaron Swartz and JSTOR wikipedia pages) Wasn’t able to find a recent average cost per article but they seem to often be $15 each. Subscription to JSTOR isn’t possible for a private individual, and you only get 6 free articles a month. This means that people doing citizen science or even simply trying to research something to enrich themselves are locked out of knowledge. Who knows the number of advances that have been blocked by this?
- Liz Jackson: Designing for Inclusivity – 99U: https://99u.adobe.com/videos/55965/liz-jackson-designing-for-inclusivity NVDA mentioned earlier was the first free screnreader. They are often prohibitively expensive, with one at the time of writing costing up to $1200. Even with innovation coming from within the disabled community, there’s more that everyone else can do. 97 percent of the top million websites surveyed by WebAIM had WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2 errors. Most common WCAG failures: Low Contrast Missing alternative text Empty links Missing form labels Missing document language Empty buttons While failures are prevalent, the types of common errors are relatively few. Simply addressing these few types of issues would have a significant positive impact on web accessibility. https://webaim.org/projects/million/#wcag
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/10/universal-internet-access-unlikely-until-2050-experts-say-lack-skills-investment-slow-growth 51.2% online Data gap UN target for affordable is 2% of monthly income for 1GB data, which is only affordable for the 20% richest South Africans, for example
- https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/itandinternetindustry/bulletins/internetusers/2018 The percentage of disabled adults not using the internet is going down but in 2018, it was 23.3%. Only 6.0% of those without a disability don’t use the internet. Lower rates of internet usage among the older age groups may in part reflect the fact that they are more affected by access issues associated with age, such as poor eyesight (PDF, 1.48MB). In 2018, 5% of those not using the internet also reported that their disability prevented them from doing so
- https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/itandinternetindustry/bulletins/internetusers/2018 The number of internet non-users is declining, but in 2018, 58% (3.1 million) of these were women. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/householdcharacteristics/homeinternetandsocialmediausage/articles/exploringtheuksdigitaldivide/2019-03-04 There is also a disparity between men and women in digital skills. Of those having zero basic digital skills in 2018, 61% were women
- Digital exclusion is when someone is unable or unwilling to access information and services online. One framework for describing these skills lists five: managing information: using a search engine to look for information, finding a website visited before or downloading or saving a photo found online. communicating: sending a personal message via email or online messaging service or carefully making comments and sharing information online. transacting: buying items or services from a website or buying and installing apps on a device. problem solving: verifying sources of information online or solving a problem with a device or digital service using online help. creating: completing online application forms including personal details or creating something new from existing online images, music or video. The number of people in the UK lacking basic digital skills is decreasing, but in 2018, 8% of people in the UK (4.3 million people) were estimated to have zero basic digital skills (are unable to do any of the activities described in the five basic digital skills). A further 12% (6.4 million adults) were estimated to only have limited abilities online (missing at least one of the basic digital skills). Although there is a pattern of declining numbers of people lacking digital skills over time, in 2015, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) estimated that 7.9 million people will still lack digital skills in 2025. There is also a disparity between men and women in digital skills. Of those having zero basic digital skills in 2018, 61% were women (PDF, 3.16MB). Also the data issue I mentioned earlier
- The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) have identified five areas in which individuals who acquire basic digital skills are able to benefit (PDF, 1.73MB): earnings benefits: increased earnings of between 3% and 10% by increasing digital skills. employability benefits: this reflects the improved chances of finding work for someone who is unemployed and an increased likelihood that someone who is inactive will look for work. retail transaction benefits: shopping online has been found to be 13% cheaper on average than shopping in-store. communication benefits: basic digital skills can enable people to connect and communicate with family, friends and the community 14% more frequently. time savings: these relate to the time saved by accessing government services and banking online rather than in person, estimated to be about 30 minutes per transaction In 2016 it was estimated that within the next 10 to 20 years, 90% of jobs will require some sort of digital skills. 40% of online respondents indicated that being online helps them feel less alone, a benefit that is felt even more strongly among disabled people online, who are 27% more likely to express this view than non-disabled people According to Digital Index 2018, households earning over £40,000 per year are 47% more likely to have full "basic digital skills". As household income increases, so do the levels of basic digital skills. In 2018, 12% of those aged between 11 and 18 years (700,000) reported having no internet access at home from a computer or tablet (PDF, 3.16MB), while a further 60,000 reported having no home internet access at all. Of those in this age group, 68% who did have home internet access reported that they would find it difficult to complete school work without it, suggesting that there may be educational implications for those without internet access. The proportion of adults in poorer households who do not go online is almost double the UK average (22% vs. 12%). https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/113222/Adults-Media-Use-and-Attitudes-Report-2018.pdf Digital inclusion has been increasing in recent years but some people remain digitally excluded. This is particularly the case among certain groups, including older people and disabled people. Imagine you live at the intersections of many of the issues I’ve highlighted, and how that would affect your life.
- We can make things better and fairer, even if it won’t be over night. Can’t fix digital exclusion only by making better, more accessible websites, but it’s a start, and there are things we can do when harassment and exclusion is happening.
- There are lots of things people who work with the web can do to help ensure no one is left out when it comes to accessibility. Here’s a whistle stop tour of the things you can do as a developer.
- Suz Hinton: https://twitter.com/noopkat When we decide that something is an edge case - describe what an edge case is? - we are deciding who to exclude from our services. While it may not always be possible to make your service work perfectly for every device and every need, it should definitely be the aim to create usable experiences for all. From this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKIQkgPVXH4
- Use the most semantic HTML element for the job When you reach for a div, first check if there’s a better element to do the job. What will the element do? How will the user interact with it? Are you using class names like nav, header, or main? There are HTML5 elements for those sections! https://24ways.org/2017/accessibility-through-semantic-html/
- Tab through pages, try navigating without a mouse! Does everything work as you expect? Use a screenreader like voice over or nvda Try screen magnifiers and colour inverting software
- https://marcysutton.github.io/a11y-automated-testing/#/
- As much as possible, real people using your website or app is best. Test with users with disabilities
- Create your sprints and roadmaps with time for accessibility bugs and improvements in mind. Accessibility swarms are a thing at the BBC - are they a thing everywhere? Swarms are when you have a muti-disciplinary team go through a new feature together, with all the core assistive technologies. Bugs are then recorded and prioiritised, and release can be blocked by any very important ones.
- Alex’s talk summed this up best, for those of you that missed it, never forget that yours and others differences bring valuable things to the table
- Don’t worry if you’re not a developer, there are still things you can do...
- If your internal admin tools aren’t accessible to disabled people, you’re breaking the law in the same way as you would be if someone disabled was rejected from a job because they couldn’t access the buiding Public sector jobs have a clear directive from September 2020 https://www.gov.uk/guidance/accessibility-requirements-for-public-sector-websites-and-apps#accessibility-standards Other helpful laws?
- Describe how to tab through a site? Screen readers, screen magnifiers and other ways to invert and change colour available for free for cursory checks Accessibility insights can run an automatic audit, as can a few other tools Happy to chat after, this is but one way!
- Always add captions to anything with an image that adds meaning (or a punchline). Automatic youtube captions Twitter Services for transcription Microsoft service Powerpoint automatic captions
- http://www.crashoverridenetwork.com/resources.html https://whoseknowledge.org/
- One last thing ‘Wokeness’ as a concept isn’t great; it makes it sound as if being a good person is a switch you flip on and off, woke or asleep. It’s a constant learning process for us all. Wokeness isn’t a destination, it’s a journey, as cringey as that may sound Derek Featherstone - accessibility is a process, inclusive design is the goal, an event apart