A word I come back to a lot to describe accessibility operations is enablement. The goal isn't to do accessibility work for people, but to help them help themselves to do accessibility work. #toag-bookclub

What are some things you've done to enable people to do accessibility work? Big or small! #toag-bookclub

No weekly #TOAG-Bookclub post this week! We’ll resume next week.

Here's how I define it in my book: "Accessibility operations is the philosophy and practice of connecting people, technology, and processes to create, maintain, and improve accessibility for products and services." #toag-bookclub

So what does this mean in practice? It can mean a lot of things that depend heavily on how your organization functions. #toag-bookclub

Here's an example: In the book I have a mini case study about a few folks I had been supporting to do research and education work around accessibility for their team. They wanted me to do a workshop for their larger team to educate them as well. #toag-bookclub

They could speak directly to feedback from disabled people on their product. They could get into the weeds of their own processes and workflows. They could create conversation about ways to make their products more inclusive because they knew all the ins and outs of those products. #toag-bookclub

This week's excerpt from The Accessibility Operations Guidebook was inspired by a conversation earlier this week with @segdeha.com about how we see people talking about accessibility operations or a11yops and no one knows what the heck that means. #toag-bookclub

Folks realizing that for themselves and talking to me about taking the time to rest ultimately had a really important impact on my own burnout recovery. It's much easier said than done. #toag-bookclub

It usually means figuring out power structures. It means find comrades and allies in the work (and also identifying antagonists and figuring out how to build around them or despite them). #toag-bookclub

To add a little to this and expand on my blog post, I know people who have stepped away from the field for a while or forever, and that's extremely okay. At no point do I want folks to think I'm endorsing "the grind." Quite the opposite. #toag-bookclub

But a thing that came up again and again as I talked to folks was peoples' realization that it wasn't necessarily accessibility work that was burning them out. It was all the other stuff. The advocacy. The feeling that we have to beg to just do the work. That's what's exhausting. #toag-bookclub

"Like DevOps before it, accessibility ops is focused on automating and systematizing (aka organizing) as much as possible, to leave us time, space, and energy to do the really hard work." #toag-bookclub

It also means leveraging tooling to do things that people aren't good at, and clearly identifying what tasks tooling isn't good at so that people can do those things instead. #toag-bookclub

They developed a lot of deserved pride in their own learning and deepened it further by teaching their colleagues. And their colleagues were super engaged because the learning was so specific to what they were all working on together! #toag-bookclub

"The core of our work is building, managing, and maintaining relationships between people in service of creating a more accessible and equitable world by centering disabled people, anti-ableism, and intersectional equity." #toag-bookclub

The best way I've found to actually do it is to surround yourself with community who support you whether you're working or resting. 🤷 #toag-bookclub

Instead of creating a custom workshop, I worked with them to teach what they'd learned to their teammates instead. They already knew a lot, and I don't think they realized how much until we developed these training sessions together! #toag-bookclub