E65 – Interview with Marcy Sutton – Part 2

Marcy tells us that her greatest frustration is that for all of the energy that we put into this all the time it feels like we’re stagnant in terms of accessibility actually getting done. And that it’s hard not to get derailed by that. Transcript Nic:    Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 65. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. This week I’m continuing my conversation with Marcy Sutton. If you have not listened to last weeks episode it was really fantastic. Marcy was telling us a few things that I think are quite important, including the importance of listening to the developer's needs. It’s not just about the needs of people with disabilities but in order to serve those needs, we need to make sure developers needs are met. So that was wonderful. Welcome back, Marcy. Marcy:    Thanks for having me. Nic:    Yeah... We finished last week talking about… your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility and you were talking about the impact you’re having on people that go forth and start implementing accessibility. What would be the flip side to that? What’s your greatest frustration? Marcy:    I would say my greatest frustration is that for all of the energy that we put into this all the time it feels like we’re stagnant in terms of accessibility actually getting done. And it’s hard not to get derailed by that. I have a blog called accessibility wins, for example, that I haven’t found a good example in ages. And part of that is I think that I took some time off and just needed to step away but also it’s hard not to get distracted by...somebody will be like, “check out this site” and I go look at it and I run Axe on it and it’s full of accessibility problems  that even Axe is finding. The low hanging fruit stuff that’s supposed to be easy. And so I think my greatest challenge is overcoming that and just trying to keep the positive, upbeat, forward momentum going knowing that you put 100% into that and we’re moving the needle at such a slow rate. And sometimes we go backward. And,  yeah, take WordPress for example. I look at the way that projects go sometimes and it’s very… I’d say that the reality of it… we can just be happy and try to put a positive spin on things but when you really look deeply at the reality of it people with disabilities have barriers on the web all the time. So it’s hard not to feel like, I’m doing all of this for what? I mean, I know why. It’s because it gets me out of bed in the morning to move that needle even that tiniest little bit. But when you kind of look, a more pessimistic view of it is that it’s going pretty slowly. Nic:    Yeah. So how do you keep the positive spin? How do you stay enthusiastic about the work when you’re meeting those moments of frustration? Marcy:    I just try to think about something else. Like, go take my mind off of it. Go ride my bicycle or go take my dog outside or… just try and get some other energy so when I come back to it I’m refreshed. I look at what other people do in the industry like blog posts that people write that they’re excited about and just try to get jazzed again about new technologies. ‘Cos there’s always new technologies and there's always accessibility expertise needed. And that seems to electrify me. So. I’m usually reading about something new and I kind of… all of the frustrations sort of just melt away because I’m excited about doing research on some shiny new technology knowing that what you write about it or what you share about it might impact somebody who is reading about that in the future. So I think that we all can contribute our expertise and passion to these new technologies and new design trends and all that kind of stuff. There’s always something new and I think that kind of help