From Friction Apathy to Friction Fixing

Friction fixing in the digital accessibility and disability advocacy space

Almost everyone who has tried to fix friction at some point has been met with a shrug, either literal or metaphorical. That’s just how it is. We can’t change that. It’s too much work. Even dedicated friction fixers can get worn down and apathetic. It can become awfully tempting to throw up your hands and throw in the towel.

In a recent conversation with the Friction Fixers team, Sheri Byrne-Haber described how she has overcome the tendency to shrug in the face of friction. Sheri has spent decades fighting friction apathy in the digital accessibility and disability advocacy space. As a wheelchair user and parent to a deaf daughter, she intuitively and experientially understands just how much friction people with disabilities can face. Her insights on friction are relevant in the accessibility space and beyond, for, in her words, “If you fix friction for people with disabilities, you fix a lot of friction problems.”

In one of her past roles, Sheri Bryne-Haber worked on an accessibility team at a tech company. In this role, she advocated for design and branding changes that would accommodate employees with colorblindness -- in her estimation, about 6% of the company’s workforce. Although she had some conversations with leadership about mixing red and green, she initially couldn’t find a way to make changes stick. Yet she finally fixed the friction when she went right to top leadership and took a direct and quantitative approach: “2100 of our engineers are colorblind. None of them have complained, but that’s because of how ubiquitous the discrimination is.” The company culture underwent a relatively small but nonetheless transformative shift: new branding guidelines came out and other minor improvements to company materials were made. The company even introduced a colorblindness month, where those who needed the accommodation received EnChroma glasses. Changes like these took this company from a failing grade to the highest score on the Disability Equality Index.

Sheri overcame friction apathy to make work smoother and better for a significant cohort of employees. Three important themes emerge from this story: 

Remember small changes can have a big impact

According to Sheri, overcoming friction apathy begins with realizing that “[friction fixing] is actually quite manageable. When you raise it to the right people’s attention -- you’re doing this, you may not know that you’re doing this, here’s how to fix it -- more often than not they’re going to fix it, because the changes are minor, and the impact is significant. They just didn’t know what the impact was.” In her story of reducing friction for colorblind employees, Sheri clearly laid out the scope of the issue and the benefit of making a change. It may not be possible to reduce all friction for everyone in an organization at once, but in Sheri’s case, a small, successful change seems to have had a snowball effect.

Tailor the message to the recipient

The success of the colorblindness change depended first and foremost on Sheri’s ability to get the leadership of her company on board. In her words, “it’s about figuring out what argument will work with the decision maker.” Sheri knew that quantifying the impact of color accessibility and speaking directly and bluntly would appeal to her leader’s values and communication style, so she crafted her delivery accordingly. Part of her “friction forensics” concerned not just what the friction was and how to fix it, but the culture of her particular organization and how to effectively communicate. This kind of contextual awareness applies whether one is speaking to a decision maker or whether one is the decision maker communicating a decision back out to the organization.

Be creative and have fun 

Even when scoped small and communicated well, friction fixes can be exhausting, demoralizing, or even boring. Sheri observed the importance of prioritizing creativity and fun in countering apathy: “The quickest way to turn people off on accessibility is to say, we have to do it because the ADA says so and it’s work. Making it fun is an essential component to quick adoption.” Bringing in the EnChroma glasses brought joy and excitement to the accessibility initiative on both an individual and community level. Repetition of friction-fixing messaging and practice is essential to sustained change; creatively switching up the format or presentation consistently reengages both new and old members of an organization.

Friction fixing is hard, yet perhaps not quite as hard as we sometimes tell ourselves. How might you creatively and joyfully communicate simple yet transformative changes in your organization? Or maybe you already do -- please share your stories with us!

About Sheri:  Sheri Byrne-Haber is a prominent global subject matter expert in disability and neurodiversity inclusion and accessibility.  She is best known for launching digital accessibility programs at Fortune 200 companies, including McDonald’s, Albertsons, and VMware, and consulting on accessibility with the Federal government.  With degrees in computer science, law, and business combined with identifying as a disabled person, Sheri has a complete 360-degree view of all the issues impacting disability inclusion and accessibility.

Sheri is the author of a popular LinkedIn blog called “Access*Ability” and was named “2020 Author of the Year” by Medium’s largest publication, the UX Collective.  She was also named a 2022 LinkedIn Top Voice for Social Impact.  Her blog, which has received over 500,000 views, summarizes legal cases and issues facing people implementing accessibility programs.  Sheri is a frequent panelist and speaker at accessibility, UI/UX, and HR conferences and is an active member of several accessibility committees and non-profits, helping drive and communicate the evolution of accessibility standards.  Her book, entitled “Giving a Damn about Accessibility,” is available for free at accessibility.uxdesign.cc