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Dissecting the web accessibility meeting tale

3 minutes read

Remember the horror story from last week about an accessibility meeting gone horribly wrong?

Let's dissect it a little bit and see why it failed.

I've read and re-read that email myself and I recognised so many patterns. Meetings that were destined to be doomed before they even started. Meetings that completely fell apart half way through. And meetings that took a turn for the worst just when my hopes were up.

Here are some of the problems I've identified in that story:

  • It had no agenda or a vague agenda that gave no real direction.
  • It started late and ran over.
  • There were too many people on the call who didn't need to be there but were invited "just in case."
  • People showed up without having reviewed materials.
  • The same topics got repeated. Again. And again. And AGAIN.
  • Too much small talk and not enough action.
  • The loudest voices dominated while the real experts were silent.
  • People zoned out.
  • You had that one manager who loved the sound of their own voice.
  • It seemed to be "monitoring progress" without allocating time to actually make progress.
  • It was about issues and not about preventing them.
  • Too technical for some attendees, too basic for others.
  • It had no clear decision-maker, so discussions went on in circles without resolution.
  • Someone brought up "just one more thing" as the meeting wass supposed to end.
  • No assigned action items or owners by the end - just vague "we should look into this."
  • The meeting could have been an email or a simple document.

Looking back, there were a few things the story missed, things that are way to real to leave out:

  • Technical problems eating up the first few minutes ("Can you hear me now?")
  • Someone hijacking the meeting to discuss their pet project that's completely unrelated.
  • Accessibility being treated as a checkbox rather than a genuine priority.
  • No follow-up from previous meetings' action items.
  • Having the meeting at an inconvenient time (like 4:30 PM on Friday).
  • Discussing things that only affect 1-2 people while everyone else waits.
  • Meetings where the only tangible result is the decision to meet again.

That. Is. A. Lot.

Should we just swear off meetings altogether?

No, I don't think that's a solution. Accessibility is a complicated-enough subject. We don't need to make it more so by only collaborating asynchronously.

I hope to come up with some hard and fast rules to avoid BS meetings. I might turn it into a checklist at the end.

Stick around.

Did you enjoy this bite-sized message?

I send out short emails like this every day to help you gain a fresh perspective on accessibility and understand it without the jargon, so you can build more robust products that everyone can use, including people with disabilities.

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