The document discusses the urgent need for accessible design in the context of rich internet applications (RIAs), highlighting that exclusion from digital resources leads to significant social consequences. It emphasizes the complexities of advocating for accessibility within a disjointed developer community, where many lack awareness or prioritization of inclusive design. The text calls for effective communication, advocacy, and collaboration to foster a culture of accessibility despite the inherent challenges in changing established conventions and developer motivations.

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