[Athen] Deque Amaze

[Karl Groves]

Oh man, if we could make accessibility flashy then the battle would be
won for us! Accessibility always seems to be playing catch up when it
comes to the new hot thing. When jQueryUI came out, it wasn't until
1.9 that the core widgets had the necessary ARIA.  Foundation by Zurb
only recently started caring about accessibility.  AngularJS required
the development of a special module (ngAria) after the fact because
accessibility was ignored at first.  The list goes on.  :-(

Like you said, if we can get the developers to think of accessibility
as cool, that'd be a huge win.

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 9:19 AM, Teresa Haven <Teresa.Haven at nau.edu> wrote:

> Thanks, Karl -- you make my point exactly. :)

>

> And one of the points I like to make with developers is that they are constantly trying out new frameworks, new techniques, building other new skills anyway -- learning and integrating accessible practices into their toolkits should be no different. I think they are finally starting to get it.

>

> Cheers,

> Teresa

>

> -----Original Message-----

> From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Karl Groves

> Sent: Friday, December 18, 2015 7:06 AM

> To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>

> Subject: Re: [Athen] Deque Amaze

>

> In full disclaimer: I'm co-founder of Tenon and we make a product that is in a competitive space with Deque's Worldspace product.  I've also never used and don't know anyone who has used Amaze.  So I'm both biased and ignorant. ;-)  That being said, I try to be as objective as possible below.

>

> The idea of being able to automagically fix accessibility issues without interfering with existing code is pretty compelling. In a situation where the accessibility issues are egregious and the organization is under considerable outside pressure (i.e. a visit by the DOJ) then something like Amaze can offer a quick fix.

>

> There are a few things to consider:

>

> First, Deque aren't the only ones who do such a thing. I know that both Simply Accessible and The Paciello Group do similar work, they

> just haven't "productized" it.   This leads to:

>

> Second, this is really just applying JavaScript to the existing UI to fix the existing accessibility issues.  In other words, any skilled JS developer with good accessibility knowledge can do the same thing.

> Chances are, Amaze is probably backed by a good library of built-in utility functions that help make the work easier and more robust.

> Deque's Dylan Barrell, in particular, is one of the top 5 JS developers I've ever met, but fundamentally Amaze is still just JS. As a consequence, any inordinately high price is probably unwarranted.

>

> Third, Amaze (or any other similar such fix) needs to be regarded as temporary, for one important reason: if the underlying UI code changes it will break the "fix". Again, I suspect that Amaze has been developed to do the best it can to anticipate such a thing, but it seems scary to think that the more substantially you change the

> existing UI, the more likely that the "fix" will break.   To my

> knowledge Simply Accessible does a lot of this type of custom "overlay" work and they state clearly to their customers that it is meant to be temporary.

>

> Last, as others have said, this fixes the symptom without treating the

> disease.   Ultimately this comes down to a business decision. Time

> spent fixing bugs costs money and also impacts the availability of resources that could otherwise be put onto other work. External pressures, such as deadlines for other projects or legally mandated deadlines may make something like this a good option. But the existing inaccessible interface code that this "fixes" will still be there.

> Worse still, the development practices and other libraries/ frameworks, etc. that caused the problem will still be there.

>

> So, no matter what you choose WRT using Amaze or something like it, you should also come up with a plan to actually remediate the underlying issues and train your developers in accessibility so that they don't continue creating the same type of inaccessible code that caused the problem(s) in the first place.

>

> On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 8:26 AM, Teresa Haven <Teresa.Haven at nau.edu> wrote:

>> I had a feeling this was the case. I will let folks know they still

>> need to learn to do it right in the first place instead of looking for

>> shortcuts - the same thing we are often trying to teach our students.

>>

>> Thanks,

>>

>> Teresa

>>

>> On Dec 18, 2015, at 6:59 AM, Bossley, Pete <bossley.5 at osu.edu> wrote:

>>

>> Essentially this is javascript injection to make something accessible.

>> It would be a last resort kind of move and as mentioned by another

>> poster is probably expensive. And, still much effort from a development standpoint.

>> Really useful in the context of a 3rd party system that you can’t

>> modify yourself but that you need to make it accessible nonetheless

>> and you can’t get a vendor to work with you on it.

>>

>>

>>

>>

>>

>> From: athen-list

>> [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of

>> Teresa Haven

>> Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2015 12:37 PM

>> To: Access Technology Higher Education Network

>> (athen-list at u.washington.edu) <athen-list at u.washington.edu>

>> Subject: [Athen] Deque Amaze

>>

>>

>>

>> Does anyone have any direct experience with Deque Amaze? Several of

>> our developers have received advertising about the product and love

>> the idea of something else “taking care of” accessibility for them –

>> and of course it sounds “too good to be true” to me because there’s

>> not much real detail on their website. Any info you can share would be appreciated.

>>

>>

>>

>> Best,

>>

>> Teresa

>>

>>

>>

>> Teresa Haven, Ph.D.

>>

>> Accessibility Analyst, Northern Arizona University

>>

>>

>>

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>

>

>

> --

> Karl Groves

> www.karlgroves.com

> @karlgroves

> http://www.linkedin.com/in/karlgroves

> Phone: +1 410.541.6829

>

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-- 
Karl Groves
www.karlgroves.com
@karlgroves
http://www.linkedin.com/in/karlgroves
Phone: +1 410.541.6829

www.tenon.io

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