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Regaining your accessibility spark

All jobs have up and down cycles. Try these steps to get back on the upswing when you are on a down cycle in your accessibility journey.

Sheri Byrne-Haber, CPACC
UX Collective

Authors note: Because of Medium’s refusal to address its accessibility issues for both authors and readers, I’ve moved my last three years of blogs to Substack. Please sign up there for notices of all new articles. Thank you for your continued readership and support.

It is inevitable that somewhere along an accessibility journey, accessibility professionals hit walls. They run out of steam. They go to that well of energy one more time only to bring up an empty bucket. When (not if) this happens to you, all of the suggestions below have helped me get back on a positive track without becoming toxically positive.

Remind yourself why you do the work

Stop looking at only the trees, and focus for a little while on the forest. This bug, those negative test results, that cross-functional business struggle — that’s the stuff that gets us down. Those events are all accessibility “trees.” It is easy as an accessibility professional to allow your focus to be pulled to the immediate crisis du jour. Let’s face it; there are usually plenty of crises to chose from when you are…

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Responses (3)

What are your thoughts?

As someone who wants to go into Accessibility User Experience design, this was a great article to prepare -- I've noticed some of the same advice being offered for my peers and collegues who advocate against able-ism. Advocating for accessibility can be very taxing, but it's so rewarding!

I needed this today, thanks!

Thanks for the pep talk, Sheri!