Keynote speech: Jutta Treviranus, Inclusive Design Research Centre (IDRC) at Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD)

1. Changing the World - on a tiny budget
Jutta Treviranus
Director, Inclusive Design Research Centre
& Inclusive Design Institute
OCAD University
Toronto, Canada

2. The imperative....
• Being online is no longer optional
• To study, work, vote, buy things, receive healthcare,
socialize, express our opinion, volunteer, travel,
manage our finances, receive government services,
enjoy culture.....
• Rich Internet Applications are becoming the norm
for anything interactive
• Exclusion will lead to dire social consequences for
society
• Inaccessible interfaces will exclude a growing
number of users

3. The seemingly insurmountable mission...
• a tiny global community
• very limited resources
• technically complex agenda that not yet fully defined
• addressing thousands of moving targets
• some in areas we are restricted from
• across a huge disjointed terrain

4. The very risky wager....
• RIAs are created by an ever-increasing number of developers
• Using a changing and growing set of tools
• Implementing ever-evolving designs
• We need to:
• reach every developer
• affect every development tool
• respond to every advance in design

5. Even worse...
• Many developers use closed proprietary development environments
• Many create applications using mash-ups that draw components from
disjointed sources
• Most know nothing about accessible design
• Some don’t care
• All have competing priorities

6. How to win friends and influence people...
• Isn’t this the age old accessibility story?
• Advocacy and education at the highest levels
• If we don’t have power let’s befriend people who do
• Not as easy as decreeing that there shall be ramps
• Hard to communicate what RIAs are and what is
needed to make them accessible
• With complicated provenance of most applications
we cannot depend on power hierarchies

7. The cost of appealing to human kindness...
• But our mission is noble and our need is great
• If we appeal to developers they must respond with
charity and kindness
• Most people ignore the appeals
• Untenable power imbalance without lasting change
• With charity comes debt
• Appeals become irksome
• We become pariahs to be avoided

8. The Problem with Blunt and Rigid Instruments
• Laws and policies?
• Laws work when the changes are clear, simple,
well understood, consistent and stable
• Long time to enact and a long time to change
• Require easily testable and consistent criteria not
dependent on subjective judgment or contextual
exceptions
• No room for subtlety or diverse approaches
• No room for experimentation

9. The problem with black and white and one-size-
fits-all
• disability is not a binary
• greater relevant diversity in people grouped as “disabled” than
in those grouped as “non-disabled”
• fewer degrees of freedom to conform to assigned grouping
• design compromises made for one person to help another
• need to move from one-size-fits-all to one-size-fits-one

10. Why people don’t do what is good for them...
• Changes would benefit everyone
• Will help with device independence, mobile delivery, reuse,
updating, maintenance and general usability
• Good for developers and providers of applications
• Developers should implement changes for their own good, the
good of their employers and their customers
• Human nature to work toward own self interest
• But....
• brushing teeth, documentation....

11. Precarious Values
• No one would disagree that they are important but ...
• when other matters compete for our attention they are the last to be
considered
• disproportionate vulnerability to procrastinations
• frequently fall off the table all together

12. Cacophony is no way to communicate
• Must reach agreement on strategy
• Cannot give contradictory messages
• No room for competition or egos

13. Levers and Food Chains
• Development tools and toolkits
• One lego block at a time
• Beginning of the food chain
• The lesson of iodine and flouride

14. Concrete and Good Habits
• Conventions become more stubborn and impervious
to change as they cure or age
• Their effect propagates like rabbits or bed bugs
becoming more difficult to eradicate
• Actions must be timely and close to the beginning
• We must establish positive habits

15. Hitch-hiking and the Virtuous Virus
• Other, more popular causes going the same direction
• Infecting and infusing accessibility
• Virtually invisible
• Indivisible from host

16. The art of persuasion, the art of seduction, the
science of judo
• repackaging accessibility
• shedding the myth that accessible design is:
• Drab
• “Dumbed down”
• More costly
• More time consuming
• appropriating the power of the opponent

17. Two year olds, teenagers, Tom Sawyer, networks
and feeling needed
• well if you are doing it...
• wasn’t it my idea?
• the privilege of doing the right thing
• virtuous networks and personal engagement
• bottom up rather than top down

18. Biting, chewing, swallowing and managing
expectations
• Establishing boundaries, defining scope?
• Exclusion
• Changing landscape
• Organic growth from a solid core?

19. Pouncing where the mouse has been...
• Always playing catch up
• Need to predict and drive the innovation

20. Change the world?
• We don’t have the muscle
• We don’t have the numbers
• We don’t have the money
• We have the heart
• We have the community
• We must have the cohesion
• We must have the smarts