What are some barriers to participation in standards processes by PWD and disability organizations?

Table of contents

Application

• John Willis was nominated by Jutta plus one other member. Jutta was the lead editor of the working group at the time, there was an presumption that the chair is a partner to the editor so it was not unusual for the editor to ask for a particular chair. Jutta sent John’s bio to the subcommittee chair - suspected this process was not competitive. (JW, ISO - Chair)

Setting expectations

• Brought his own experiences and expectations on board (such as working with an international group of people, educating people on an inclusive way of doing things) (JW, ISO - Chair)
• Didn’t realize the extent of interpersonal conflict there would be: there would be serious disagreements within the working group, people may not be suitable or appropriate to be on the group, people not open to change (JW, ISO - Chair)
• Came to realize later that most of the work is reviewing language in a written document and suggesting modifications - 80% is editorial work (JW, ISO - Chair)

Onboarding

• Very little operational support for onboarding. ISO uses a lot of user guides, but there’s no onboarding for the cultural norms and the practical day to day issues, and how you work with people. It’s assumed you walk in knowing how to do that. Lack of institutional support. (JW, ISO - Chair)

Culture

• There are people who are academics, coming in with their own work and with the attitude of “I know the answer, why are you not listening to me?: - can be hard to work with and take if someone has accessibility issues (JW, ISO - Chair)

• There are often a type of person who is used to saying what they want to say, and being listened to as opposed to facilitating and consensus-building (JW, ISO - Chair)

  Facilitating meetings

  • Chair is expected to facilitate, rather than it be a shared responsibility among all the members. Often the members are experts at what they do but they don’t have a lot of expertise in collaboration, facilitation, and consensus-building. Very traditional viewpoint of facilitation of the chair doing it all, which can be not inclusive since it puts all the effort on one person - harder if that person is blind or HoH (JW, ISO - Chair)

  Highly formal and rigid

  • John was asked to make 7 slides for a detailed annual report on the committee at an annual in-person event. These 7 slides were templates, didn’t realize that they couldn’t be altered. He was also away from his typical AT setup. (JW, ISO - Chair)
  • Have to stand in front of a committee and be completely accurate and precise - if a working group member corrected him, it would be a big deal (JW, ISO - Chair)

  Closed process

  • ISO can be adament that there’s no public open process (JW, ISO - Chair)

Documents

• Editing word docs can be very dense and have a lot ofc technical details. It’s very traditional, doesn’t use digital tools and not chunking things out (JW, ISO - Chair)
• There can be a lot of editing with the chair role - not a problem with his AT but could be a problem for others (JW, ISO - Chair)
• Absorbing 100+ pages of technical content (JW, ISO - Chair)