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Open Source Accessibility Brainstorming Session - Top Themes

Choose Preferences on Mentimeter

  1. Lack of Awareness and Knowledge

    Derived from 15 responses out of 69 [1]
    Room 306 A
    Facilitator: Greg Kraus

    The most frequently cited challenge is the fundamental lack of awareness about accessibility needs and the knowledge required to implement them. This includes awareness of what accessibility problems exist, who needs accessible solutions, legal requirements, available resources, and best practices. Many developers think about security and other fundamentals but not accessibility.

    Participants (9)

    • Ashley S.
    • FONTASTIC
    • Goodwitch
    • Javi
    • Kenneth Akers (VT)
    • mahesh
    • Mandy Meindersma
    • Porcaro25
    • Ravikumar Chanrashekar
    lack-awareness-knowledge on Slack Open theme 1 in new page

  2. Organizational and Leadership Challenges

    Derived from 9 responses out of 69 [2]
    Room 306 B
    Facilitator: Helen Hou-Sandi

    Significant barriers exist at the organizational level, including lack of leadership buy-in, absence of ownership or governance, and systematic issues like layoffs of accessibility teams. Without organizational support and clear ownership, accessibility initiatives struggle to gain traction and sustainability.

    Participants (8)

    • Andrew p
    • Arjun
    • Bruno Mars
    • Ed
    • Jojo
    • mfoley
    • My_name
    • Saurabh
    organizational-leadership-challenges on Slack Open theme 2 in new page

  3. Testing and Tooling Difficulties

    Derived from 8 responses out of 69 [3]
    Room 306 C
    Facilitator: Adrian Jenkins

    Accessibility testing remains challenging due to labor-intensive processes, expensive tooling, and the difficulty of testing without personal experience using assistive technologies. There's also over-reliance on automated tools that cannot solve all accessibility problems.

    Participants (9)

    • 67
    • 88
    • Andrew, Andy, andyfeller
    • aroo
    • Goutham
    • Jonathan Champ
    • Mariam
    • SamPlaysKeys
    • Walt Gurley
    testing-tooling-difficulties on Slack Open theme 3 in new page

  4. Information and Documentation Gaps

    Derived from 7 responses out of 69 [4]
    Room 306 A
    Facilitator: Carie Fisher

    Information about accessibility is too distributed, poorly organized, and often lacks standardization. There's no single place to learn comprehensively, and documentation is frequently inadequate or missing entirely. This makes it difficult for developers to find reliable, up-to-date guidance.

    Participants (8)

    • (Rebecca - tidy-dev)
    • Al S
    • Andrew Leland
    • ASR
    • CorgiDev
    • kurdt
    • Murtheboss
    • Rhino
    information-documentation-gaps on Slack Open theme 4 in new page

  5. Community Communication and Collaboration

    Derived from 6 responses out of 69 [5]
    Room 306 B
    Facilitator: Dennis Lembree

    There are significant gaps in communication between developers and people who actually need accessibility tools. The lack of inclusive participation from people with disabilities in development processes means validation and real-world testing is insufficient.

    Participants (8)

    • @KyleKeane
    • Alice
    • Amit Mandliya (4. Lack of awareness)
    • christian
    • Esther S
    • JAM
    • Wisdom's Student
    • Woody
    community-communication-collaboration on Slack Open theme 5 in new page

  6. Development Process Integration

    Derived from 5 responses out of 69 [6]
    Room 306 C
    Facilitator: Eric Bailey

    Accessibility is often treated as an afterthought rather than being integrated into the development process from the beginning. The general productivity pipeline in open source doesn't guarantee consideration of accessibility issues until too late in the project lifecycle.

    Participants (9)

    • 2
    • Aron
    • Bryan W
    • eric-gh
    • Graham T.
    • Jessica Hinkle
    • Patrick Hyatt
    • r2d2
    • Thanu
    development-process-integration on Slack Open theme 6 in new page

Source References

[1] ↑
  1. "Lack of awareness of how to develop a11y code"
  2. "Lack of awareness that there is a problem."
  3. "Myths and attitudes that OSS does not need accessibility, or can get to it later"
  4. "- Lack of awareness; most people think to program for other fundamentals like security, but not Accessibility. - lack of awareness closely followed by lack of knowledge and expertise"
  5. "Lack of knowledge: Who needs it within the organization What are the legal requirements What are the resources available"
  6. "Limited understanding and awareness of accessibility needs."
  7. "Time and knowledge of accessibility"
  8. "Education for developers and users on how to keep content and code accessible."
  9. "A lack of awareness of specific accessibility needs means that efforts are often driven by people without a full understanding of the challenges they are trying to address."
  10. "Lake of awareness, lake of accessibility tooling"
  11. "Lack of training in accessibility standards and practices so it is an after-thought or requires special team"
  12. "Misconceptions about accessibility or about disabilities."
  13. "Not all understand what accessibility means"
  14. "Lack of knowledge of how to apply WCAG to UI development."
  15. "Open-source communities need better resources and training to understand what accessibility means in the context of their project."
[2] ↑
  1. "Lack of leadership buy-in"
  2. "Our a11y team was laid off so now it is forgotten about"
  3. "Ableist maintainers"
  4. "Usually not a requirement or sought after."
  5. "Siloed information Lack of standardized information on where things are Orchestration, Organization Lack of awareness No leadership/ownership You have to find your own answers/no governance"
  6. "Thinking that accessibility is optional, or something that is good to have but not necessary."
  7. "Lack of value"
  8. "Corporate willingness to spend the money"
  9. "Under employment for qualified accessibility professionals"
[3] ↑
  1. "Limited inclusive design, lack of accessibility testing, poor documentation for assistive tools"
  2. "A11y testing is still too hard and labor intensive"
  3. "Lack of checks or tests before new features are released"
  4. "Accessibility tooling can be expensive or tough to learn"
  5. "I wish git hub had an automatic a11y test by default"
  6. "Over reliance, or an assumption that automated accessibility tools will solve all the problems."
  7. "Difficulty testing for accessibility. Example: it is hard to test for screen reader compatibility if you are not comfortable using a screen reader yourself."
  8. "User testing"
[4] ↑
  1. "Lack of centralization of up-to-date and accurate knowledge"
  2. "Awareness of what is available and where to find it."
  3. "Information/knowledge is too distributed. There doesn't seem to be a single place to go that covers the various domains that someone can just pick up and learn."
  4. "Often no cohesive big picture. Difficult for bottom up thinker to understand the full terrain."
  5. "Where to find a11y open-source projects How to start doing open-source a11y"
  6. "Awareness of tools/resources that are widely used and considered "standard""
  7. "Lack of documentation about accessibility, or lack there of , for open source projects."
[5] ↑
  1. "Clear and accessible methods to submit issues or how to get access to submit to repos. Sometimes the instructions for this, even if on an accessible platform, are quite complicated and confusing."
  2. "I would say having less people with disabilities involved while working on the accessibility issues. Getting more of such people involved in the process helps validate the changes easily."
  3. "Are open source creators listening and acting on feedback pointing out a11y barriers"
  4. "Hard / painful to obtain insights from users on what is needed."
  5. "Lack of communication between developers and people who need the a11y tools. If we brought in someone who uses a11y tools and showed them how horrible our sites were, then devs might care"
  6. "Naming convention or terminology differences between contributors and consumers."
[6] ↑
  1. "The trade-off between standards and innovation that sometimes requires breaking patterns and debating from norms"
  2. "Generally the productivity pipeline in OSS does not guarantee thinking about accessibility issues until way too late in a project lifecycle unless the devs that start the project are a11y minded"
  3. "Lack of consideration for cognitive disabilities and a lack of inclusion of individuals living with disabilities in throughout the SDLC."
  4. "The fact that it relies mostly on just good enough mentality for legal compliance"
  5. "Lack of well defined goals for technology rather than focusing on interface design"