Gian Wild: It's unfortunate the level of discrimination that I have seen, and it's the same in the
U.S. as it is in Australia. It's one of the last bastions of discrimination. People are
happy to talk about racial discrimination, they're happy to talk about gender discrimination,
or sexuality discrimination, or sexual orientation discrimination, but disability discrimination—no
one's really talking about that. That's why I think social media is so important,
because it gives people with disabilities the opportunity to interact with others without
disclosing that they have a disability. And that might not seem like a big deal, but when
you've been discriminated your entire life because you're blind, or you're in a wheelchair,
or you're quadriplegic, and you can just talk to people without them even knowing, it makes
a massive difference. Which is one reason why I want social media to be accessible...and it's not.
Elise Keith: The key underlying assumption you have
to have is that these are people who access the internet [laughs]. And as people
who access the internet, they have the skills and the tools to read content on the internet.
You know, they can go to a website and read a blog article. Your job is just to make sure
that you've got your basics covered, that you actually—if it's a paragraph, you make
it a paragraph, and if it's a heading, add an H1 or H2 or whatever. You don't have to
get that fancy. And in fact, the fancier you get, the more difficult it's going to be to test, and maintain, and
make its way through all of these layers, so, get your basics right. Basic, basic, basic!
Sina Bahram: The good news for me is, I've never had a conversation with developers that—after
which, they left the conversation and said, "I was right, it's really difficult. Wow,
totally not going to do accessibility." Instead, the response that is most common, I've heard
it hundreds of times, is, "Oh wait, is that it?" And then you have a conversation, "Well,
that's most of it. We have to consider a few things, and get things to a certain state,
here's the standard, but yeah—that's basically it." So by dispelling this fear that it's
going to be this huge process and this complete throwaway of everything that they've done—because
remember, they're proud of the thing that they've created. You want to make sure that
you're helping them to make that thing better, not just calling their baby ugly.
Marcy Sutton: Each conference talk I do, and each thing I write, I get so many people who either,
they're saying, "Yes, thank you for coming and talking about this," or they're saying
"I'd never even considered that before," and when I get feedback like that, that's how
you make change happen. You go and win people over who are doing the work, and then they will go and make a difference.
John Keith: I can only speak for myself. I can't imagine
sleeping well at night, going, "Yeah, I really made a lot of money on the backs of people
who have accessibility needs, I'm so happy for myself." I'd feel a lot better if I say,
"We really helped a lot of people by going the extra mile." [laughs] You know? And it
turns out the extra mile wasn't that hard. It just required us to actually point ourselves
in that direction and keep going. [chuckles]