E70 – Interview with Chris DeMars – Part 1

Chris is a front-end developer based in Detroit, MI. He tells us, among other things, that learning about accessibility is an ongoing process. Transcript Nic:    Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 70. 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 speaking with Chris DeMars. Thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility, Chris. How are ya? Chris:     I’m doing good, Nic. Thanks for having me. Nic:    You’re very welcome. Hey, I like to let guests introduce themselves so in a brief introduction, who is Chris DeMars? Chris:    Oh, who am I? Well, I am a front-end developer. I’m from Detroit, Michigan. I work for a company called Tuft & Needle. I am also a Google developer expert in web technologies, Microsoft MVP in Developer Technologies and I love community, love speaking all around in the world in Web Accessibility and other front end fun stuff. Nic:     That sounds like it’s keeping you busy. Do you speak to a lot of conferences? Or just the occasional one? Chris:     Oh I did 22 events last year. Not including meet-ups so probably 30 talks altogether. Including one workshop. So, yeah. I’ve been around a little bit. Nic:     You have been. How do you find conferences are receiving your talks about accessibility? Chris:     You know, I’ve gotten amazing feedback from both organizers as well as attendees. Because you know you don’t see a whole lot of people submitting accessibility talks to a lot of conferences unless it’s like that type of niche. But I mean, I’ve been at events where I’ve given the only accessibility talk and I’ve been at events where I… there might be 3 or 4 accessibility talks. So it really just kind of matters the area, the region, what kind of speakers are being selected. Stuff like that. Nic:     Let’s circle back around that in a little bit. To get really started tell us one thing that most people would not know about you. Chris:    Lets’ see here. Let’s see...Um, I have a gold tooth. Does that count? Nic:    Sure thing. Most people would not know about that so that’s certainly an interesting bit of trivia. So we are talking about Web Accessibility, right? How do you define Web Accessibility? Chris:    You know, I get that question a lot. And I kind of talk about it, touch on it a lot in the talks I give. There is a quote out there I think it’s from the W3 and it says “Web Accessibility is for people that can use the web” for people that can use the web. Or for people with disabilities so they can use the Web. And I don’t really like that quote. To me, Web Accessibility is for everyone. Everybody should be able to have an amazing accessible user experience regardless of disability. That’s what-what that means to me. And I always have like a “Why?” behind it which we can go into that later if you want but there’s always a “Why?” in the method behind the madness but it’s definitely for everybody. You know what I mean. That’s… we’ve gotten to a point where people use the Web almost every single day so we have to make it accessible for them. Nic:    Yea. I can’t say that I disagree with you but playing devil's advocate here… I’ve heard quite a bit of push back from some people with disabilities and some accessibility advocates that this attitude kind of erases the disability experience and the reason for accessibility in the first place. What would you say to that? Chris:     Oh. It’s a tough one. Because I mean, it is an open Web, right? And if..we’re supposed to be making it inclusive. Inclusive means taking everybody into consideration. Regardless of disability. I mean, I say it all the time like not everybody has to have a disability to make it accessible. Specifically for me at the moment I do