Video meetings: Glimpses into the barriers 1

Since starting to work from home in mid-March, I have spent what has felt like the majority  of my working time on video calls of one kind or another. They have ranged from one-to-one phone calls (but with video), through the most common three or four to fifteen people, to much larger meetings. I’ve talked here previously about some of the more general dynamics and impacts of video meetings for me – for example the fact of being on constant close-up view, and yet not able to see the other participants, how exhausting it is etc. This and the next couple of posts, will be my attempt to explain what it is like in practical terms being in a video meeting using a screen reader.

 

I am going to be deliberately very detailed, because with accessibility issues, the devil is absolutely in the detail. The detail is what offers the possibility for solutions and  improvement, it is the thing that software/app designers need to hear as feedback about inadequacies in the accessibility of their platforms. The detail gives the possibility of solutions, but also despair when there are none.

 

Generalisations are important - I have mainly used them here – as they can convey the sense, the feelings that are evoked by coming up against barriers to participation, but they tend not to be descriptive enough to really tell people what they need to know to do anything about them.

 

I often imagine people’s eye’s rolling or glazing over (or whatever people do with their eyes to convey boredom) when I talk about the detail of inaccessibility, most people don’t want to hear it. People and organisations can be very committed to improving accessibility, but if they don’t know what it means in practice, the chance of improvement is limited. They can deal with challenging the inequality, but the detail is too much. I imagine that some disabled people (me included) are judged for ‘getting caught up in the detail’, for ‘going on about access issues’. It is of great concern if people are more interested in the impact of inaccessibility than the detail of what it is because it means that they are not listening to the things that they can do something about.

 

While of course I appreciate the solidarity and empathy, if those who express it don’t actually understand (other than in general fairly vague terms) what the barriers look like in practice, even they are going to be able to do little about it and things aren’t going to change.

 

So while I was going to put a note to suggest that those readers who aren’t into detail shouldn’t read these posts because it will bore and irritate them, I will cope with it but nonetheless want you to hear this. I’ll split it up over the next couple of posts to make it more palatable.

 

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