Interview with Bob Regan, Senior PM of Accessibility, Macromedia

Bob Regan is Senior Product Manager of Accessibility at Macromedia, responsible for ensuring compliance with Accessibiliy and Disability legislation in Dreamweaver, Flash and all other Macromedia Products. DMXzone's Bruce Lawson caught up with him in London last night (Sept 4th 2003) and asked him about his job, the forthcoming MX 2004 family of products, and Gollum.

Has accessibility interest increasing been just a by-product of the growing interest and adoption of web standards, or is it 'synergy'?

I think the adoption of standards has done a lot to fuel awareness of accessibility. I don't think the two fields are synonymous but there is tremendous synergy there. This intermingling has grown over time. There is simply no way for us to keep up with the specifics of each individual assistive technology; instead, we need to attend to the standards and then coordinate with our counterparts in the assistive technology community to be sure we are using the same standards. 

Which organisations does MM work with on accessibility?

There are a number of organizations we work with on a regular basis. First, there is the National Center for Accessible Media. They provide day to day support for us. Within the disability community, we spend significant time with the National Federation of the Blind in the US. They have been terrific in providing feedback and suggestion on tools.

In the UK we have good relationships with the Employers Forum for People with Disabilities and the RNIB. We also work closely Vision Australia, Lighthouse International, Self Help for the Hard of Hearing, Telecommunications for the Deaf, Inc, National Organization on Disability, International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet, Equal Access to Software and Information (EASI) and other groups in the disability community.

Within the technology sector, we work quite closely with Microsoft, GW Micro, IBM, and then smaller vendors like the Bartimaeus group that have helped us tremendously with solving interoperability issues. We also have close relationships within the standards community. I have a lot of conversations with colleagues at the W3 about the role and direction of accessibility in our products.

The world of accessibility seems very political with lots of different interpretations of the rules. For jobbing developers who want to be the right side of the law and inclusive, but don't have time for philosophical (theological?) debates, which rules should the non-U.S. site be following? 508? WAI?

Start with W3C WAI priority 1 checkpoints. If you are using plug-in content such as Flash, be sure you are meeting Section 508 1194.21 standards. From there, try to implement as much of the WAI priority 2 checkpoints as you can.

Which nation do you believe to have the most far-sighted web accessibility legislation?

I don't think nearly enough attention or credit is given to Canada. The Canadian standard for government sites, "Common Look and Feel" predates Section 508 and relies on a priority 2 based standard. This requires the use of CSS for accessibility. More than two years later, my impression is that adoption rates of this standard have been fairly good.

How geeky are you? (1-amish, 10-star trek convention organiser)

Hmmm.. I guess I would put myself at around a 7.31 (does that make me more of a geek?). I was a double major in Mathematics and French Literature as an undergraduate if that tells you anything about my dual nature technical and arts person.

There's been a bit of a resurgence in the idea that accessible does not equal visually boring. Which sites have you seen recently that exemplify this?

Well, as I mentioned before, Jeffery Zeldman has done a great job with this issue. I love his work. I would also point to the recently redesigned site for the National Organization on Disability. They recently redid their site and I think set the standard in the disability community. One of my favorite projects is a group called Knowbility.

They hold regular contests for accessibility around the US and soon in Europe as well (we hope). They spend a month training professional designers to build accessible sites, and then give them a single Saturday afternoon to build a site, typically for a non-profit. The most accessible site wins a prize and everyone has a great time. Some of the work from these events has been pretty amazing.

Arguably, you're one of the most important people in Accessibility today, as you control what goes in the tools that millions of people use to make millions of websites. Discuss.

No way can I take anything even resembling that degree of credit. Accessibility is a unique field. Without our colleagues in the disability community, the design community, product developers, standards groups, none of this works. Honestly, the progress made in the last two years at Macromedia is such a collective effort of folks both inside and outside of the company, I am really just glad to have been involved with it.