A few weeks ago, my dog Scooby passed away. It wasn't an easy time for me. Every time I came home, the house was empty. There was no tail up in the air to greet me, no barking, no happiness. The silence was deafening.
I couldn't take it any more and we went to the shelter and adopted a puppy. He's 5 months old and of course he's a goofball. He's also not house trained, doesn't listen to anything we tell him and he has a mind of his own when it comes to food and play.
We have to train him and for training, consistency is important. The same commands should yield the same responses and he should get the same reactions from us.
More important than consistency is patience. He's driving us crazy and we have to believe that at some point he will learn. And for that, we need to be patient and wear him out.
In accessibility, patience is more than a nice to have. It's a necessity. We'll need plenty of it to do battle on multiple fronts.
With our peers, we need to recognise that not everyone is on the same level. Some may grasp accessibility concepts quickly and others will need more time and guidance.
Stakeholders focused on deadlines and budgets will not immediately see the value in accessibility. They however are key to long-term organisation change.
There are those that haven't heard of accessibility before. That's okay. Take that as a learning opportunity for you and for them. Calmly explain concepts, give them resources and offer them support.
Then there are those that test our patience. Those who simply don't care. It's easy to become frustrated. I have. On more than one occasion. Have patience and try to understand where their resistance is coming from. That's what you need to fight, not the people holding those beliefs, if you want to gradually change their hearts and minds.
Don't get me wrong. When I say patience, I don't mean waiting around twiddling your thumbs. Patience in accessibility is anything but passive. Think of it as active persistence.
It'll be a long journey with our dog Cosmo.
And it'll be a long journey for us with web accessibility.
We just need to be patient and trust that clarity will emerge.