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The Web #Accessibility Slack community attracts an unfortunate share of asks that go something like:
"I have an interview/have been tasked with giving a presentation/have been promoted to a role and need to become an expert in accessibility by tomorrow, but I know nothing. Can you please send me free resources?"
And like... it's up to every community member whether or not to respond to these, and I'm all for encouragement. But does accessibility really need people who aren't willing to pay for materials, have unrealistic expectations of how much there is to learn, and may have even lied their way into a position they clearly don't want?
I think not, personally.
@jscholes I think one of two things could be true for them. Either they are receiving this requests from management and management doesn't know better, or they did in fact lie their way into the position. I would get more information before jumping to conclusions but I also definitely share your frustration in general. I guess at the end of the day, it's better for us if more people are encouraged to learn, and being an unresponsive or outright hostile community would make accessibility feel less approachable, which would end up being bad for somebody other than that person.
@simon @jscholes Did a thing at the BBC in Manchester a few years ago. Went around the room introducing.
Someone: 'I'm XYZ and I'm an accessibility Champion.'
I don't know what that is supposed to mean, but in my book it means you champion accessibility. It means you know as much as you possibly can know about accessibility solutions from screen-readers to Braille displays, from magnification to best-practice for web-design and beyond.
When this person came to see what I was doing there and how I could help, they knew... Nothing about anything.
'A screen-reader' they said? 'How does that work? Do you talk to the computer and it reads it back to you?'
I didn't say allowed 'What the actual hell are you doing in this job with that title' but you know for damn certain I thought it very loudly indeed...
@FreakyFwoof @simon @jscholes Oh, good grief, if someone is to have that title, they should know what that entails, especially, if they really didn't know what our software and or hardware does.
@FreakyFwoof @simon @jscholes it's been my experience that big companies who have champions basically find staff who want to do good and then don't pay them for working on accessibility.
@cachondo In my experience that doesn't just count for accessibility. For example, at work when we adopted o365 as it was back then, each department had, office champions. Who would go to the sessions that could involve say, learning how teams works, and then it was expected that they'd be able to help coleagues with issues, so the service desk could spend less time assisting with user training. @FreakyFwoof @simon @jscholes
@FreakyFwoof @simon @jscholes Ugh! champions and Evangilists need to go somewhere else. I mean, if you have the chops, fine. But still, those titles annoy me to no end.