Bridges and Ramps: Building Accessible Tools in DevOps

A presentation at Deserted Island DevOps by Arri Blais

Introduction
Now that you met hazel let me tell you a bit about me! I’m Arri [Are-ee] and I like to make UIs Pretty and Accessible at Embark!

Flight Plan
Now that we all know eachother let’s go over our flight plan!
We will start with a dodo’s eye view of disabilities
We will be ready to open the gates and have some visitors to our island and talk about
After we have had some visitors to our island and they like what they see, we can share some DIY recipes and resources!
Then we are going to head on over to resident services and work on some island improvements!
Then we can head over to the town square for some questions!
That looks like a pretty good flight plan time for takeoff!

Disability Types
For our first stop let’s go over some basics
There are four categories of disabilities, these are by no means exhaustive by they are a very good place to start.
We have mobility which has to do with things like walking, motor control and things like that.
Visual: how many colors we can see, and how well we can see them
Hearing: how well we can hear, and how well we process things after hearing them.
Cognitive: differences in how our brains work and tasks that might be harder for some people.
This isn’t all there is to disabilities though, there is another key aspect to go over before we do some island hopping.

Disability Durations
A little participation exercise: if any of you have had or needed an accessibility accommodation in the past please throw a react in the chat!
Awesome! We have a few of you! For those of you who didn’t react, you are about to learn something new!
Disabilities can have different durations!
Permanent is the one that comes to mind most times when we think of disabilities, these are long term and can last for most of or all of a person’s life
But we have two other types as well
Temporary, is things that are shorter term like having a broken are or recovering from surgery. (I have had friends who had vocal polyps removed and they were unable to speak while they recovered.)
Situational, things that happen because of the environment or things we are doing. When you wake up at night and you have to walk in the dark (hopefully avoiding busting your knee on your nightstand). -There are more and different duration categories than this, but I find these are a fairly good starting point!

Disabilities are not Boolean
Finally, disabilities are not boolean, it’s not an either or situation.
There are many screen reader users who have partial vision, or can even see perfectly.
Mobility disabilities do not mean a person is wheelchair bound
Many disabilities are invisible, you cannot tell if someone has one just by looking or even interacting with them.

What do we focus on?
With all that in mind, what do we focus on
Well all disability types can need help in an office setting
Keyboards and other peripherals can be impacted by mobility
Visual disabilities can make it hard to see things on the screen, or items from projectors.
Hearing disabilities will require accommodations in meetings or on voice calls
Cognitive disabilities can mean that things like “wall of text” or loud colors can make comprehension and using tools difficult.

Story Time!
Well, here we are at the deserted Island. I hope everyone had a great flight!
You are are new resident rep, we wanted you here to improve the island appearance. Make everything pretty!
Are you ready to get started?

Lots of work to do
There’s a lot of work to do!
But that’s great! You love building beautiful Islands
Plus everyone on your team is ready to help you and so friendly!

Clean Up!
You get started cleaning up
After some work you invite your friend blathers over to visit
He tell you it looks nice, but asks how easy it is to get bugs across the river.
You realize now that there are large parts of your island that people cannot visit.
Blathers helps you by telling you about Island accessibility and gives you a polevalut to start.
Later you will ask Tom Nook for a ladder when you need to get some flowers off the cliff

Polevaults and Ladders
Polevaults and ladders are like accommodations, they are an excellent and very effective way to get started with accessibility. On your team some examples of polevaults and ladders could be
Extensions, I use Stylish sometimes to correct internal and 3rd party tools that have inaccessible color pallets, I usually like to check against the a11y colorblind empathy test
Seeing how friendly sites are to screenreaders using the accessibility explorer
Or, better yet, Learn how to use a screenreader yourself
If you know someone has a vision impairment ask about accommodations they may need and see if they have a preferred screenreader you can have preinstalled when they get started
Most importantly, start getting other people on your island aware of accessibility, it’s always good to have friends.
When I first started I worked with one of our designers and we are still working together to make the product more accessible!

Looking good so far!
So things are looking good, you have started making accommodations on your team
You have a group of best friends to help you!
And you are even preparing the accommodations ahead of time.
But it’s a lot of work to do this crafting polevaults and ladders takes time.
And in devopps we love to use tools to make things easier and more streamlined. So let’s talk about more permanent solutions or as I like to call them….

Where Should I build them?
So where do we work on our island improvements?
It depends on your team, Building bridges and ramps takes time and resources, so you want to place them where it’s most effective.
See what the needs of your team are, look for the spots that people need to cross the most and build a bridge there!
Hazel, do you have anything to thing to add?
*squeeky voice* “talk to people”
That’s right you can always ask questions!

Some Ideas
Sometimes It’s hard to come up with ideas, here are a few broad ones that you can use when thinking about what “bridges and ramps” to build on your island.
Tools and Tech
Making screenreaders available by default.
Include them with install images.
Have a wide variety of peripheral inputs available (brail readers, trackball mice, large type keyboards.)
Making sure those get shipped with laptops and peripherals if your employees are remote
Process
Preforming accessibility audits on internal and external tools
Accessability should be a key requirement for any new tools you add
Make sure your meetings have captions (By a human)
Environment
Start a trend of writing alt-text for images in slack (and ask your co-workers to do the same)
If you see someone struggling, help them.
Make an environment where asking for accommodations is encouraged

Empathy & Communication
Of course Ideas are great but the best thing you can do is build communication and empathy.
Listen and learn from people with disabilities, they know first hand what the best thing for themselves is.
Sometimes It’s a good idea to put your put your polevault and ladder in storag. I take one day a week where I turn off my monitor and use a screenreader to do my daily work.
You would be amazed at how many things you miss when you can still see the screen.
If your tools are not accessible they are not usable. Accessibility isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a core functionality of your tools.

Let’s Wrap it Up
That was a nice little trip! Let’s refresh a bit what we learned!
Accommodations are a great place to start
Making polevaults and ladders available is a fast way to make your island more accessible.
Once you have some good accommodations in place, and have some more resources and recipes available to you to build out permanent improvements.
Change the culture, remember accessibility is a state of mind
Iterate and improve, you probably won’t get it right the first time but take the feedback and work with it.
And of course, remember that everyone is different Listening and learning is the best skill you can develop. Empathy and communication are the most important stills of all.

Thanks for listening!
That’s it! Thank you all so much for listening!

Question Time!
Now’s the time where you can ask questions, nothing is too basic, I will do my best to help you!
Follow me on Twitter @arriIsHere!

Arri Blais
@arriishere

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Is your DevOps toolkit a deserted island of inaccessible tools? Are you unsure if you have enough bridges and ramps for people to get around your island? In this session, I will give you some guides on how to make your tooling usable and easy for differently-abled people!

Bridges and Ramps: Building Accessible Tools in DevOps

Bridges And Ramps

Introduction

Flight Plan

Disability Types

Disability Durations

Disabilities are not Boolean

What do we focus on?

Story Time!

Lots of work to do

Clean Up!

Polevaults and Ladders

Looking good so far!

Bridges And Ramps

Where Should I build them?

Some Ideas

Tools and Tech

Process

Environment

Empathy & Communication

Let’s Wrap it Up

Thanks for listening!

Question Time!

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