Selling It’s Harder Than Doing It

For instance, there are a lot of similar principles that are close to being the same but that each have their subtle differences (e.g. progressive enhancement vs. graceful degradation vs. unobtrusive JavaScript).

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I dabbled a bit with web design / development in college—just enough though to give me a taste and get me hooked. I can’t pinpoint the exact root of where / when my curiosity and fascination for *semantic* web design and other concepts like separation of concerns arose, all I know is that the more I learnt the more I hungered for more—I guess the fundamental concepts just made sense to me, it was sound logic, and the more I learnt/dabbled the easier it all became.

I bought all kinds of books on the interconnected subjects of front end development—I still have them all, no less than 50.

[PICTURE OF BOOKS]

The title of this article is "Selling It Is Harder Than Doing It". The reason that is, is that it’s not easy to teach certain concepts that tie into accessible [web] design in a *micro fraction* of the time it takes to learn and fully grasp it.

When I teach web accessibility at work, I’m mostly limited to one technical kickoff meeting per project / team. Beyond that, the teaching happens on a case by case basis, and in a somewhat sporadic manner via technical reviews. The goal with technical reviews, is principally to say "what" the problem is, but not necessarily "how" to solve / fix it. It’s one thing to identify problems (say *what*), and a whole other thing to explain *how* to fix them.

During a technical kickoff meeting, I occupy *at most* 50% of what’s usually an hour meeting. I have to cram years worth of acquired knowledge into <= 30 minutes. And while I think I do a pretty decent job as anyone can in that time, I can only skim the highest level concepts and then go over some factors for success. Beyond the theory, I sometimes go over some practical "how’s", but barely. And when I do get into the how, since it’s only in a pea-sized / sliver amount of time, it usually just creates confusion and convolution. For that reason, I more often than now deliberately avoid going there, the concrete and project contextual *how* is best kept for another conversation.

So "how" do we teach concepts that take years to master? We create / develop resources, and then share them with the participating members and community at large. You stop talking the big talk in meetings, and you instead divert that attention and time towards resource development that can substitute your verbal diarrhea.

Here’s my problem with meetings. They’re fine, but they should be *complimentary*. A meeting, should complement one or more resources. A resource, is just "information" on a given subject.

You can be the most effective orator, and give the most eloquent web accessibility sales pitch time after time—one that gets you a standing ovation with head nods all around and hand clamping emoji reactions. At the end of the day though, people forget. We’re all only human and no matter how compelling and provocative your empathetic stories were, by ~the end of the week most people will have forgotten 50+% of what you said. Even for the stuff they remember, it will be fuzzy and at risk of being partially or even completely inaccurate.

They drank the Kool-Aid and they were sold sure, they were inspired to take action too, now—if only they could remember what exactly it was you so gloriously preached about, and what it entailed to put that Kool-Aid *into practice*.

So yeah, it’s harder to sell 10 000+ hours of acquired knowledge, than it is to just roll up your sleeves and do it. While no there shouldn’t be any surprises about that fact, I guess I’m writing about it because in *my* experience at least, with advising + consulting on web accessibility for ~5+ years and against hundreds of projects ranging in scope and scale, this is something I think deserves a gentle reminder of, and a bearing in mind about.

There’s a saying, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. While I disagree with that, in this case it’s more of a you can’t expect a young pup to execute an old dogs wise tricks without stumbling. So yes, you old timer accessibility wolves—teach the young pups, and do so by developing resources they can leverage *at their disposal*. Give concrete and contextual examples when possible, and then let them run with it.