Blogging against Disablism – the meaning of silence

Blogging Against Disablism Day

Kevin Carey (Chair, RNIB, Chair, humanity, Head eInclusion Consultancy, ATcare) gave a fantastic presentation this week at the first BIS hosted e-Accessibility Forum. It was a clear and succinct overview of how to ensure disabled people can be part of Digital Britain. It focused on market forces and legal aspects and had a focused approach to future proofing standards. It seemed to me the work of a genius, a person who surpasses probably everyone in the UK, if not Europe, in his depth and breadth of subject knowledge. (Please email me if you want a copy of the documents)

Apart from a few questions and comments on details I would say it was largely met by silence by those hosting the meeting. There was no response to say “we take what you say very seriously and here is how we are embedding it into our thinking”. It felt like box ticking (yes we “listened” to the blind guy who is an expert, wasn’t it a nice “thought provoking” piece, now let’s move on to tinkering at the edges of this agenda). I made an impassioned plea to build our action planning with Kevin’s thinking at the heart of it – more silence. These are civil servants with a job to do. I’ve been around that before, the job is to not do, except what is already happening, which is failing. And of course they are good people. Tired and pissed off though he must be, Kevin has this paper higher up the food chain and he is making progress (power to your elbow!).

Silence is one malevolent element of oppressive behavior. It is insidious and murderous. To an able bodied person, our silence can feel numb, meaning well, being polite. I apologize. I apologize for when I do this. It must be the creeping behavior that fills all the gaps around the blatant stuff, making one big package that could drive a person nuts.

When, as an able bodied person, you can meet your silence and be aware of it, you find that it contains deep, deep separation which is heart breaking. It is the removal of the core of our humanity. Its making us ill, its making sicken for that something in our lives which is crushing in its absence. How can we talk about things not being “possible” or “affordable” when they are everything that we need, when it is about meeting our hearts longing?

Who is responsible for what?!

I’m in the middle of frustration, with that powerless feeling of waiting and hoping for help (a familiar old feeling- I did some Fortran programming about 15 years ago and wasn’t very good!)

I’m trying to install a “theme” (background for this blog) which is accessible and came across : green-beast.com/beastblog “If you’re looking for a powerful, dynamic WordPress blog theme that’s accessible, usable, solidly-built to high standards, and attractive, you’ve come to the right place”.

Citizens Online think about the 13 million UK adults who aren’t online. They are generally older and / or people with low skills, low income, less educated. We are also thinking about offliners who are injured, ill or disabled and those who are online but struggling with e-accessibility.

If I can’t figure this out how can we expect these groups to join the growing numbers of social media users? If they do join, are they inevitably going to add to the inaccessible or less accessible content that is out there?

Beyond my immediate questions of why isn’t this installation process working on my computer… I’m wondering who is really responsible for e-accessibility in our networked world?

There are the standards agreed at international level, there are the national laws like DDA in the UK, there is pressure on big companies, there is guidance for web developers and government and NGO’s trying to spread that.

A new contact asked me the following:

“Do you have a target in terms of ‘bare minimums’ and ‘acceptable levels’, maybe in a simple ‘easy’ guide for would-be web developers? I’d be interested in getting our group to help put this together”

thanks for the offer!

I think some of that exists but I wonder if a next good step is to define the list of Internet stakeholders and be clear about who is responsible for what.

So what should I, as a novice to social media know and undertake to do? My one (pathetic) piece of info here is to put at Alt tag on my photos. What else should I know? Should I have to go through a palaver to get an Accessible theme? Shouldn’t that be something WordPress have sorted?