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Accessibility follow-up
Four days later, my previous post on accessibility continues to generate a lot of discussion. That’s a good thing. Unfortunately (and really, unsurprisingly), some of the more zealous members of the accessibility community found a way to manipulate my comments into things I didn’t actually say. Thankfully, some of the more level-headed accessibility mavens understood what I was getting at.
So, as a follow-up, I just want to reiterate my original points, remove the extraneous ranting, and see if I can’t make myself perfectly clear. Please do read on…
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Has accessibility been taken too far?
There’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while but have a been hesitant to post, for fear of it being taken the wrong way, and fear of me being labeled as insensitive. But I’ve finally decided to just put it out there. I’ll be careful with my wording and try my best not to offend, but I can’t promise anything.
I’m concerned about the state of accessibility in our industry. I’m concerned that the web is being limited creatively by a growing crop of accessibility and usability zealots that, in my personal opinion, over-complicate the matter.
Has accessibility been taken too far?
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Bonds: Doper or just Dopey?
We all knew it was coming, and today is the day. Today, Major League Baseball, the league that can’t seem do anything right, deals with the darkest cloud ever held over its gargantuan head. Steroids are for real, there’s proof, and the league’s best slugger of all time, Barry Bonds, has used them.The stories coming out over the past two days are an embarrassment, a disgrace, and downright pathetic — but they’re not a shock. We all knew it was coming, so I’m not going to perseverate on it.
This is what I’m interested in: Bonds says he “didn’t know” that “The Cream” and “The Clear” were steroids. He claims his trainer told them they were a nutritional supplement and a pain reliever, respectively. It seems, though, that Bonds would have to be stupid to not suspect something was up, what with the way his body transformed. So is his story Believable?
I, for one, think it is.
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I thought the”webmaster”days were done.
Recently, Drew McLellan, a London-based web developer and member of WSaP, was interviewed by zlog. Towards the end of his interview, he hit upon something that has been on my mind lately. Drew said:
It’s so much tougher starting out today than it was even five years ago. When I started out with the web, we had HTML 2, CGI and Photoshop, and that was about it. No JavaScript, no CSS, no XML or XSL and certainly nothing more complex that a ‘formmail’ perl script on the server side. The barrier for entry — even professionally— was pretty low, and an afternoon’s skim reading of an HTML guide was about all you needed to start building sites. If you were a ‘web master’ you did the design, the markup, and took care of the server.
Most of you know this isn’t the case any longer. Today, we have designers, developers, systems administrators, etc. However, my recent job search has left me wondering if most employers know this. At times, I’m finding absurd qualifications and requirements for open positions. The big design firms are well aware of what’s happened in the industry, but I can’t always say the same for the non-technical company that wants to do things in-house.
Take a look at this list of requirements for a “Graphic Designer/Web Developer”, which I just pulled off monster.com:
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe ImageReady
- Adobe Illustrator
- Macromedia Flash MX (with Action Script)
- Macromedia Dreamweaver MX
- Macromedia Fireworks MX
- FTP Software
- All web browsers in use today
- HTML (hand-coded)
- XHTML (hand-coded)
- CSS (hand-coded)
- DHTML (hand-coded)
- JavaScript
- Java
- PERL
- ColdFusion
- ASP
- VBScript
- SQL
- PHP
- JSP
- Apache/Tomcat
- Internet Information Server
- SSL
- Oracle
They also ramble on about how you need a degree in the visual arts and you must have 5-7 years of graphic design experience in an in-house or agency setting.
Yeah, right.
Seriously…they want you to be a designer, animator, illustrator, programmer, system administrator, and DBA. And what’s more, they’re willing to pay $35,000 - $40,000 a year! Hang on while I do some cartwheels.
Granted, a lot of us can do all of these things. I’ve done my share of systems administration and scripting, and I know plenty of you could pull off most of these requirements as well. But should we? And do we want to?
Personally, my passion is design. I got into this industry as a computer geek, but these days I’m a lot more interested in media, communication, UI, and advertising than I am in programming and administration. I’ll be glad to help out where I can with the super technical stuff, but I can’t pretend to be an expert in every possible area.
I find a similar phenomenon with my friends and family. I meet someone, and they ask me what I do. I say, “oh, I’m a graphic and web designer.” They get all giddy and say, “Great! Then you can fix my computer!” Or, “Oh, my company is looking for a network administrator — you should apply!”
It’s not their fault they don’t get it — they shouldn’t be expected to. But a company looking for an employee is a different situation entirely. They should know that most people are specialists these days. They should understand that no one person can possibly have the skills, time, and energy to do the work of five different positions.
In the zlog interview, Drew goes on to say, “Today, web professionals tend to be specialists. The medium has expanded so much that very few can be expert at all those tasks. However, you do still need a working knowledge of all sides of the job and need to know exactly where the boundaries lie between you and the people you’re working with.”
This is very true. I feel that one of my strengths is that I do have some experience with and a basic understanding of almost everything on that ridiculously long list up top. That being said, I’m an expert in only a handful of them.
So as a potential candidate for this position, the posting leaves me with a million questions: Do I qualify for this position? How can I tell? Does the company even know what they’re really looking for? Do they realize that this should be a job for four or five people, not one? Are they just trying to cover all the bases? If I get the job, am I going to be overloaded and end up hating it?
I just wonder if most employers understand that the industry has changed, that’s all.
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Hold ‘Em Poker Table: How-To
A few people responded to my last entry asking for more information on how we built my new Hold ‘Em table, so I thought I’d just post a quick how-to right here on the site. Hopefully it’ll serve a few people well.
Special welcome: A very special welcome to all of you coming from homepokertourney.com. I hope you find the instructions here useful and informative. If you’re not coming from homepokertourney.com, you should definitely find your way over there. The site is chock-full of great tips on running your own home tournaments. It’s an absolute must-read.
Additional note: This article was published in the June/July 2005 isuee of Bluff magazine. Thanks to Bluff for taking interest in my article!
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Jeff Croft
I’m a digital product designer and developer in Seattle, WA. I currently work with nGen Works, and recently co-founded Lendle, a Kindle book sharing service.
Some of my clients include Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Copious, The New York Review of Books, The Lawrence Journal-World, and the University of Washington.
I’ve authored two books on web and interactive design and spoken at dozens of conferences around the world.
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