The Severity Gap in Accessibility
Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). This is a day where those of us who work in accessibility attempt to draw even more attention to the impact and value of removing barriers for people with disabilities. But, as Sheri Byrne-Haber (Head of Accessibility for VMware) said earlier this week “GAAD is not a marketing event. GAAD is a day where you should be asking yourself can I do something to make the content/product I am putting out there more accessible”. So, in the spirit of that, today I’d like to explore what I’ve started calling “The Severity Gap in Accessibility”.
I’ve spent almost 20 years working in software development and technology. Every single company I’ve ever worked for has policies around how to address those “severity 1” or “severity 2” issues that occur in the systems we develop. Often times that means “drop everything and get it fixed”. At a high level, severity 1 issues are usually limited to those issues that fundamentally prevent customers from using your system — meaning it’s crashed and is down and no one has access to it. It’s a big deal, you’re losing business. You must get it fixed. Severity 2 issues, are usually one step removed from that. Perhaps the system isn’t entirely down, but some serious defect has been reported that is severely hampering functionality or eroding the trust you have with customers. Resolving the issue, figuring out why…
