It was late at night, and over cookies and tea, we were preparing for a presentation at OzeWAI 2011 about Dealing  with the 7 Attitudes to Accessibility. It was a tough topic – culture change is hard. It’s not an overnight process, there’s no magic wand, and regardless of whatever idea you’re introducing, it all boils down to people and how they react to that idea.

As always, we found the answer was in asking the right questions: Who are you dealing with, why do they think that way, and what can you do about it?  Immediately a flood of stories, hilarious situations and tactics burst forth – and with that, the Attitude Adjusters card pack was born.

Inspired by our own experiences and beautifully illustrated by our wonderful friend Supriya Perera, the Attitude Adjusters are reminders of what techniques you can keep up your sleeve (yes, yes… pun intended) when dealing with that peculiar challenge of having to convince people to do something they don’t necessarily want to do. We see it all the time – overworked and downtrodden teams working hard to promote the accessibility cause in their organisation and grimacing as they get beaten back with simple statements of “too busy”, “can’t do that”, or even “but we don’t have any blind users!” We’ve been them, worked alongside them, and we recognise that haunted look easily. When constantly facing this kind of opposition, it’s hard not to get exhausted.

Well! Nothing prepared us for the community’s overwhelming response – to date you have given us ideas about more characters to include, more situations to discuss and even complete sets of rules on how to turn this into a full-on strategy game! We’re loving the ideas and the enthusiasm that is flowing through. We were heartened to find that everyone saw a bit of themselves in these cards, and recognised the situations and techniques so easily. More importantly that the cards could be useful to you.

We’ll be making a downloadable version available soon, so keep checking this site and one day there will be a download link somewhere on this page. We’ll be adding a number of blogs on the topics to discuss the challenges of cultural change and accessibility (we’ll be updating the links below as we go):

• Instruct the Ignorant
• Appeal to the Apathetic
• Deal with Denial
• Begin the Bargaining
• Encourage the Educated & Aware
• Commend Commitment
• Cheer on the Champions

We hope you enjoy them as much as we did creating them!