Level-Up Your Accessibility

Every-so-often something happens in my personal life that’s worth sharing. Back in 2020, for example, I enrolled in a novel writing course and wrote a 20-chapter story. I’d later discuss how overambitious I was in a reflection post, but it set the stage for relearning concepts I’d taken for granted. As if my education isn’t finished, I’ve now enrolled in an accessible media course through The Disability Channel. The course isn’t over, it won’t be for another month, but I’ve learned a lot. In fact, I feel it’s worth discussing my thoughts and the skills that I’ve picked up from it.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: I was hesitant to enrol. My courier job actually recommended it to me, but the entry criteria had plenty of “yes, but” strings attached. Perhaps the biggest one was a two-phase screening process, which I thought was excessive. Still, I made the cut anyway. Yay!

One of the first lessons I learned was re-acclimating my body clock. I’m not a morning person, and getting up for 10:00 AM lectures on Zoom three times a week was a big ask. It didn’t help that I suffer from dysania every morning, so I’d lounge in bed half-conscious for roughly an hour. This was like being in university again, except by choice, and I needed to adjust. And I did…eventually.

Next I needed to learn MyCanvas for lecture links. Then I needed to learn Canva for designing. It all progressed from there, with me constantly having to adjust to new software and web platforms. As someone who struggles with that, it was as headache-inducing as it was tricky. (It took a few months to grasp Blogger, after all!) Fortunately, I had instructors who recognized that not everyone knew these platforms, so they had lots of patience.

It hasn’t all been heavy-duty. I’ve learned how text styles can and can’t be accessible. Many people don’t know this, but Fonts have personalities, and they range in accessibility. Some, like Wing-Dings, aren’t accessible at all, being nothing more than images meant for pranking people. Others, like Calibri, are pretty easy to read, thanks to how streamlined they are. And then there are Fonts like Times New Roman, which I used quite frequently in high school, yet slowly abandoned because it’s a serif Font and, therefore, hard on the eyes. All of this might seem pedantic, but for someone who relies on a screen reader this is huge!

Speaking of which, screen readers. I had no clue what those were beforehand. I didn’t even know how popular they were for people who not only had visual impairments, but also attention and comprehension issues. Screen readers use voice modulation to read what’s been written, and they’re both finicky and accurate simultaneously. They can’t read serif Fonts all that well, but they pick up the tiniest details that most people don’t notice. It’s for this reason that we were encouraged to use camel case lettering (Hashtags with lettering that’s properly capitalized) and alt-text descriptions for images. It’s too bad that Blogger’s alt-text feature’s so complicated, though…

There’s another concept I learned a lot about in this class, one that helped answer a longstanding complaint I’d had about world-building in my writing. I’d never understood how to strike a balance of describing content without being extraneous, as I always believed more was better. That details like skin tones (such as tanned skin) were rejected in my writing groups, all-the-while “implied” points like furniture and scenery were “lacking”, bothered me. What was I doing wrong?

It turns out that it’s a juggling act of informing the uninformed while not overwhelming them. You want to strive for that 50/50 balance of explaining while not being too obvious. You might need to describe the fabric of a couch, for example, but not go overboard about the finer details. Because most people don’t care about that, and it’ll bore them. Such is the balance of alt-text descriptions, something I learned when an assignment required me to write alt-text for a black-and-white photo. Being verbose has always been one of my shortcomings, so it was hard!

Another difficult assignment involved marketing a made-up product. I chose a manual sensor that locks doors when in contact with objects, which brought back memories of once getting my finger caught in a door as a 5 year-old. I had to work off of a predetermined template that my instructor had made, and it was tough! Between using a SWOT Analysis and customizing my demographic, I spent three days on my idea alone! Never mind the writing part, which was as time-consuming as any piece for The Whitly-Verse!

Perhaps my most-frustrating assignment to-date was a two-part project centred around a public domain commercial. I first had to write captions in Word, then upload the commercial to YouTube with them attached. Anyone who’s familiar with the uploading AI can tell you how imperfect it can be for syncing sound. The first time I uploaded the commercial, the timing of the text with the sound was off. When fooling around made everything worse, I deleted the file and uploaded it again…only to discover that I couldn’t access it immediately because YouTube was taking its time processing it. I finally figured it out, but it was a big headache!

It wasn’t all bad! I learned how to dim backgrounds so that my text on images was accessible. This came in handy with a fake ad I made for Sukkot. You’d think Tim Hortons would’ve jumped on the opportunity to market pomegranate tea to their Jewish clientele, especially since so many drink their coffee, but nope! I did it for them! (Except not really, as I don’t work in their marketing.)

I also had an assignment where I’d analyzed the accessibility of a location I’m familiar with. I chose my synagogue, which’d undergone massive renovations almost a decade ago to comply with AODA standards. I had a blast writing that, but I had to cut out words to meet the expectations. It was difficult. But since I already edit my pieces for The Whitly-Verse, it wasn’t too much additional work.

Finally, I have to mention group projects. Whether it was creating an imaginary marketing campaign as a group during class, or collaborating on Blog posts for The Disability Channel, coordinating with others was tough. I’m used to going solo on projects and taking the lead with others, so having to step back was hard. It meant sucking up my pride and being a team player, which is important to learn. It was also the ultimate test of patience.

Would I recommend this class? Absolutely! It’s not like writing a novel, which requires making hard sacrifices. Because accessibility’s smart business! It also helps with getting engagement, something I need given that Blogger’s algorithm hasn’t been kind to me lately. It might be “extra work”, but it’s worth it. Especially since you don’t know what you’d be missing out on.

Now then, about Blogger’s refusal to allow for alt-text on its images…