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April 13, 2005
When Project Managers 'Get' Accessibility
Had an interesting phone conversation today with my project manager from a previous project.
The project we worked on together was for an intranet for a government department. The client had, after our company won the project, turned around and demanded that the intranet we were developing comply with the W3C's Web Accessibility Guidelines, and that it pass an accessibility test performed by the Royal Society for the Blind. The PM tried to argue it was out of scope because the contract was already signed, but the client wouldn't budge. He didn't know what accessibility meant, or why it was important. And he freaked out a bit.
Somehow my name got passed around (I've been putting my hand up for this kind of work) and I got to do the conversion of templates from a table-based layout to CSS, as well as make other modifications to the markup and style sheets for blind/visually impaired users.
I only had a couple of days but I managed to make the necessary changes and as a result the client was very happy. And it made the project manager look good.
Now that this particular PM has seen the value in promoting accessible web pages, he is going in to the proposals with the accessibility flag waving furiously. It's gone from being unnecessary overhead to a market differentiator.
This is all good of course. What made me laugh was the final part of our conversation, which went something like:
Me: If you want a hand with any of the details in the way the proposal is worded, just send it through.
PM: Nah, I'll be right mate. I have a standard piece of bullshit that I'll use.
Me: Yeah?
PM: Yeah, I'm fairly competent at throwing the bullshit around.
Me: (chuckles) I have to admit I have gotten that impression from you!
It's good to know that we were able to explain things on the previous project well enough that he is now able to describe the benefits of web standards in his own words. He might call it bullshit, I call it common sense. Posted by mattymcg at April 13, 2005 09:42 PM
I have a visual impairment that limits my ability to distinguish color. Aside from the boldness of your hyperlinks (which aren't the only bold elements on this page), I had no way of knowing what was a link and what wasn't. Maybe providing another visual cue [underline] would be helpful to determine hyperlinked text from non-hyperlinked text. By the way, this comment is somewhat contrived so as to illustrate the irony in your post. :) Cheers.
Posted by: Simon at April 14, 2005 01:06 PMFair point Simon, this design was created well before I educated myself on accessibility issues like the one you've raised. How does the expression go? The plumber's tap is always dripping...
Posted by: mattymcg at April 15, 2005 07:29 AM