Best Video On Accessibility Ever

Most of the disability-related stuff I find on my Facebook news feed comes from disability activists and bloggers. No slight on them intended, but the best thing I’ve run across in months seems to be an entirely random find. It’s a video that I found by chance from a totally unrelated music video. It caught my eye because I recognized the Super Mario Brothers graphics from my early, short-lived video game career. So I clicked on it to see what it was about, and discovered this brilliant, persuasive, delightful video promoting accessibility. It’s by an Israeli firm called Yedioth Ahronoth, which is categorized on Facebook as a Media/News/Publishing company, with no apparent connection with disability.

אם לסופר-מריו היה כיסא גלגלים: צפו בסרטון המבריק שיצרה חבורת תכל'ס כדי להגביר את המודעות לנגישות

Posted by ‎ידיעות אחרונות Yedioth Ahronoth‎ on Tuesday, December 29, 2015

There’s so much to admire here. Let me mention just two particular points.

1. Mario uses a wheelchair sometimes, and crutches sometimes. That reinforces an important “next level” aspect of disability awareness … that disabled people aren’t just wheelchair users, and accessibility is important for people who walk, but have other kinds of disabilities.

2. The video says it’s time for accessibility, because “It’s not the ‘80s anymore!” Obviously, this is a play on the fact that the video is reminiscent of a late ’80s video game, while at the same time drives home the point that accessibility isn’t a new idea, and that our standards for wheat’s considered acceptable accessibility should be higher than they were back in the day, when many of us were kids or teenagers … or not even born yet.

And the message is so smoothly, happily delivered. It’s righteous, but not angry, empowering, but not syrupy. Just fantastic.