Accessibility Memes

There aren’t any. So I made some, and borrowed one I really liked.

Sheri Byrne-Haber, CPACC
4 min readJun 19, 2020

--

Game of Thrones Ned Stark saying “one does not simply create memes about accessibility”
https://imgflip.com/i/459gpg

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. Also, I will be updating older articles (like this one) and the updates will only be published on Substack. Thank you for your continued readership and support.

When I took a management class at VMware about nine months ago, part of the course was analyzing our “Via Institute on Character” results. Recently, Via Institute reached out to me and asked if I would retake the analysis for a research paper they were doing on differences in answers caused at least in part by COVID.

My results the first time showed my strongest character traits were:

  • Honesty
  • Love of Learning
  • Curiosity
  • Bravery
  • Kindness

I didn’t argue with any of these (though I feel Curiosity and Love of Learning are a bit of an overlap) The second time around after three months of COVID isolation my results were

  • Humor
  • Curiosity
  • Creativity
  • Honesty
  • Bravery

Still curious. Still brave. Still honest (but maybe not quite as honest). But sense of humor vaulted from nowhere to the top of the list. It really does take a sense of humor to get through a pandemic successfully, especially when you are one of the people that won’t be able to go out safely again until there is a vaccine.

When I was putting together my most recent presentation deck, I struggled (as I always do) with trying to make accessibility seem exciting to folks without a personal connection to the topic. But I couldn’t find very little pre-packaged material on accessibility that was humorous. So I used the creativity that I have also apparently picked up along the way and created some.

My accessibility dream is to reject any check-in that breaks an automatic test

--

--

Sheri Byrne-Haber, CPACC

LinkedIn Top Voice for Social Impact 2022. UX Collective Author of the Year 2020. Disability Inclusion SME. Sr Staff Accessibility Architect @ VMware.