When accessibility destroys the thing being accessed

In My Humble Opinion
1

Looking for frank views and maybe to have my own views deconstructed, challenged and adjusted. I know I’ve been a bonehead on topics like this before…

Short version: What do we do when accommodations to make something accessible (to people who need additional accessibility features) significantly diminishes the thing being accessed, for everyone else?

Real world example: I published an April Fools video - basically a parody of some of my own quirks and mannerisms. It’s a deadpan presentation of a topic that I have covered in complete earnest in the past, but it gradually becomes more and more absurd and disconnected from reality. Most people loved it - that’s nice; a small number of people said it was stupid - they’re not wrong; a smaller number of people said it just wasn’t funny - no problem - de gustibus non est disputandum; a still smaller number of people just chimed in with generic internet hater hate - don’t care - they can go boil their heads.

One or two people wrote to complain about the way the work was presented - to summarise they were not well acquainted with the tradition of April Fools, but furthermore, they wished that I had made it clear in advance that the thing was going to be a joke, and that I had explained what April Fools is about, for people who don’t know it. Variously either explicitly in the complaint, or by reasonable implication, they were asking for accommodation for people on the neurodivergent spectrum. Tone tags or similar.

Except the very nature of this form of humour is that it’s supposed to catch you unawares - a well crafted April Fools joke should (IMO) appear completely mundane and plausible at the outset, and then either suddenly become clearly ridiculous, or maybe never reveal its true nature at all and leave you wondering if it was all real. If you try to present an April Fools joke by prefacing it with “Hey, do you want to hear an April Fools joke?”, you are the April Fool.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s probably just a case that you can’t please everyone. It’s not as though the lack of requested accessibility stopped someone getting CPR or something - the media was a pointless, unnecessary joke. If you don’t get it, for whatever reason, your life is only deprived of the time you wasted watching it.

Except I feel like that is, as a matter of principle, wrong - to say “well, you don’t really need this accessibility” - it doesn’t feel like it should be my decision what someone else doesn’t need.
But at the same time, adding the requested accessibility would ruin the thing for everyone.

So what’s the solution?

2

Beats me. A friend went into a similar situation when he designed a card game. When he sent it to Game Crafter forums for review, somebody said color blind people might not be able to recognize the colors he designated for his suits. Supposedly, 8% of people are color blind, so he was in a dilemma about which colors to choose so he wouldn’t lose 8% of his market.

Not everybody is educated or exposed to the same cultural influence as you. Stand-up comics experience this constantly, so they have to tailor their show to appeal to certain types of audiences as they tour. If your audience is primarily people from one state, make fun of the other state. If you’re black, you can make fun of white people in front of a white audience, but the opposite is definitely not true. I remember telling a dirty joke to a coworker, and he told me “shame on you.” Turns out he was a part time minister.

Without knowing the specifics of whom you offended and their issue of contention, I’d say take advantage of this awkwardness by making it a new anecdote. Instead of laughing at the joke you intended to pull off, people can laugh at your self-inflicted disaster.

3

IMO, “Ignore the whining” is the solution to this narrow issue.

It’s possible for e.g. a hotel to build a few rooms to accommodate their wheelchair-using customers without saddling all their guests with roll-in showers.

It is not possible for you to create an April Fools joke that clearly states ahead of time to the most emotion/humor oblivious that it’s an April Fools joke without destroying it.

Perhaps the least bad “accommodation” is a bit like the plot spoilers we use here in Café Society. If the page containing your video has a spoiler prominently labeled “All unusually literal-minded and/or humour-challenged individuals read this explanation before watching.” you’d have covered yourself.

Except then somebody will object to you “calling out” the differently-abled rather than mainstreaming them. You can’t win with the public.

4

I have no idea what your real world example is. Is it necessary to be so coy about it? I realize you’re trying to distill it down to a more generic question, but give us something more concrete to latch onto so we can then broaden it. Coming in, I thought the topic would be along the lines of physical accessibility, like wheelchair access.

5

I thought @Mangetout was sufficiently specific. I guess he didn’t make it accessible to you.

6

He made a video that was a parody of his other (shopping/cooking) videos for April 1. Some people bitched that not everyone globally knows about April Fools Day, others made references that neurodivergant people might be confused. They said that it should have been clearly tagged/warned as a parody which, of course, defeats the point.

I say “meh” and ignore them. It was obvious moments into the video that it was a lark. If it was a video about first aid or identifying poisons, maybe there’d be a worry about confusion but what’s the danger here? Even without knowing it was April 1, it was obvious that he was taking a laugh at some regular comments/complaints his videos get. I actually didn’t realize “oh yeah, April Fools” until halfway in despite recognizing it as a parody immediately. I assumed he was just having fun.

That said, I also thought this would be about wheelchair ramps on historical/natural sites.

7

Touché

My thoughts exactly. It was obvious. And the title led nicely into the specific example.

8

Well, I had to read it carefully to get it. The crucial part was buried and a bit obtuse.

Especially if you don’t know what “tone tags” are. Also, “accessibility” seems to be used in a non standard way. I don’t think Mangetout’s viewers had any trouble accessing the video.

So, I agree it’s in there. But I forgive jjakucyk for missing it.

9

Apologies if it’s off-topic, but you’ve brought to mind that I love movies where it turns out that this or that character has secretly been played by the actor we’ve been seeing in another role all this time — where I get to either marvel at the performance if it fooled me, or pat myself on the back for spotting it if it didn’t — but I can’t really figure out a way to ask people for recommendations along those lines, because that would destroy the effect.

(Best I’ve been able to come up with is telling my friends a bunch of different things I like in movies, including that element, before asking for on-point recommendations; but I’ve held off, figuring it’d probably still be too much of a head start for it to really work, plus, c’mon, how long would it take me to notice when the other stuff isn’t there?)

10

I didn’t think I was being coy. I make videos on YouTube; usually, although not really ‘serious’, they are factual and earnest. To celebrate April Fools Day, I made a video that was not earnest, and was a parody of my normal style and content.

11

I’d like to clarify - I believe the people complaining were not just doing so recreationally or on behalf of some omitted audience segment - they were describing their own experience of it.

On the ‘accessibility’ thing, I make no apology if anyone expected this to be about wheelchair ramps. Accessibility is not limited to physical/pedestrian access; subtitles and audio descriptions are an accessibility feature; tone tags such as /s and /j (in textual conversations) are an accessibility feature.

Tone tags: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bYXy1jT3m8

12

It’s the nature of an April Fool joke that someone is being made the (gullible) fool. Some people can’t laugh at themselves and may be alienated by it. There’s a reason few businesses engage in such humor.

13

I still say that the “harm” is so minor as to be negligible in this instance. You start a video, watch it until you decide you don’t like it, and move on. It doesn’t strike me as different from if I watch a video that’s a spoof of Twilight and don’t get it because I’m not familiar with the scenes in the film. I didn’t find something funny because I lacked context (and maybe found it confusing) but that’s no reason to start making demands on the creator.

14

I agree with others here. If you think the feedback is helpful, fine. But as you point out, it’s impossible to conduct an April Fools joke that way. Those “one or two people” who were unhappy with their experience probably learned something nonetheless. They certainly weren’t harmed in any way. I think some introspection about this is fine, but I end up where you began: “you don’t really need this accessibility.”

15

Thanks - yeah, I guess I just felt uncomfortable with the conclusion of ‘you don’t really need this’, but maybe the case here is just too trivial for anyone to have legitimate concern.

16

That’s how I read it too. Was trying to think of examples where disability access ruined a monument or something.

So the OP’s AF prank was a flop in some eyes, goes with the territory.

17

What I thought of when I saw the thread title was wilderness areas: providing a paved road and accommodations to visit the wilderness is pretty self-defeating.

18

The humour-challenged are an especially tough audience to develop effective humour for. “Getting” humour is a skill some folks are just ill-equipped to develop.

In this case I’ll argue (again) that “ignore that market segment” is the least bad solution. Especially for someone whose primary living isn’t being a comedian.

I can certainly accept that being humour-challenged must be an un-fun experience, and those folks might wish for a better lot in life. But wishing for and demanding accommodation for are two different things.

19

And this strikes me as a good example of how it’s impossible for everything to be accessible to everybody.

20

Then there’s my disabled nephew who regularly shreds the bike trails on his adaptive trike sometimes there’s access points that he cannot reach because the designers did not imagine disabled bikers would be using off road trails at upper elevations.

He’s an animal!