Michael Ausbun talks about blindness and ARIA live regions

Michael thinks the most important thing that we fail to do on a daily basis is talking with people with disabilities or talking with the users in general. Transcript Nic Hi. I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite a series of short podcasts where people with disabilities explain their impairments, and what barriers they encounter on the web. Today I'm speaking with Michael Ausbun . Michael is an accessibility specialist who currently works at a university in the States. So welcome aboard Michael, how are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm doing good. Glad to finally get to talk to you about this. We've been bouncing ideas back and forth for several months now. But finally, taking time to do this. Michael, what is your impairment or your disability? Michael Yeah, so I am blind. Blind is the way that I choose to identify. I lost my sight at age six as a result of a condition called hydrocephalus. Basically, the ventricles on my brain were blocked. And it resulted in fluid being built up on the optic nerve, resulting in optic nerve atrophy. Growing up, it was really interesting, because I was told that I needed to identify as visually impaired because I had some residual vision. And for a long time, that was how I did identify. When I turned 18, I really got interested in disability activism and identity politics. And in doing some research, I realized that it was totally respectable to be blind, and that there was nothing wrong with it, a lot of the tropes that I had been led to believe around blindness were incorrect, such as blind people don't contribute to society, all they do is sit at home and live off the dole, etc. And in that process, I learned also that a blind person could continue to live on their terms, and compete on terms of equality with our non disabled peers. And so I'm very happily blind. Nic I think this question of self identity is so important. It's actually critical for disabled folks. Lovely to hear your take on that. Michael Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, when we talk about self determination and living in the world, it's absolutely critical. That, you know, we learn to embrace some kind of identity. You know, other folks might relate to their disability differently than I do, and that's totally fine. But when we look at some of the root cause problems with accessibility, and with employment and things of that nature, and really, inclusion and equity, it oftentimes boils down to the expectations that we hold for disabled folks. And a key part of the expectations, to me seems to be the way in which we identify or you know, what our identity means to us? Hmm, yeah. Nic We've spoken at length about barriers we encounter on the web. And I know that you probably could talk for a week about the different things. What one barrier do you think, is the most annoying for you at the moment. Michael I think at the moment, the biggest barrier is the proliferation, or the increased use in using Aria live regions, specifically Aria alert, to convey meaning to screen reader users. In a lot of cases, I'll be moving through a website that might be a recipe website, or my wife, who's also blind, just recently told me that she was visiting a website for a stamping project that she just started and in a lot of times, our screen reader will be reading through and all of a sudden it will say alert, yada, yada, yada, and most times the message really isn't all that important. You know, it really could wait until after the screen reader is done conveying the information and the relationship between the elements that are on the page. Before I actually need to know what has occurred. Nic What would be the top two or three cases were using aria assertive, or role of alert actually be justified or warranted? Michael I think if it were Something that we're absolutely dire such as a warning, the computer will shut down in 10 se