Event Begins: Thursday, November 14, 2024 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Disability Equity Office

Spend an hour or a few minutes with the accessibility specialists of ECRT's Disability Equity Office to ask any questions related to reasonable accommodations, the interactive process, general accessibility at U-M, and more! Break-out rooms will be available for those who wish to ask their questions privately. If you need accommodations to participate in this drop-in session, please email the ADA Coordinator at ADAcoordinator@umich.edu.

Ensuring Digital Accessibility in K-12 Schools in a Technology-Driven Era  Center For American Progress

Web accessibility may not be the first thing you think of when designing a website for your small business, but in the long run, few things could prove more important. Just like how a brick-and-mortar store must comply with ADA guidelines to ensure that all individuals can access their facilities regardless of whether they have a disability, business owners, as well as web design and digital agencies, must also ensure that those with disabilities have equal access to web content. Failure to make web accessibility a priority when designing your website could have significant long-term consequences.

complete article

Steve Faulkner recently released a tool for Internet Explorer called the Accessibility Toolbar. It provides one-click access to accessibility validators and has features that go beyond simple accessibility checks.

James Bedding says small steps can be a "nightmare" for wheelchair users in Jersey.

Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the key research foci, methodologies, and theoretical perspectives adopted by researchers when studying E-government accessibility for persons with disabilities (PWDs), particularly in developing countries. The study aims to develop a conceptual framework for designing accessible E-government for PWDs in developing countries. Background: Studies on E-government accessibility for persons with disabilities in developing countries have been minimal. The few studies conducted until now have failed to integrate PWDs, a population already marginalized, into the digital society. Accessibility has been identified by researchers as a major hindrance to PWDs participating in E-government. It is imperative therefore to examine the manner in which researchers investigate and acquire knowledge about this phenomenon. Methodology : The study synthesizes literature from top IS journals following a systematic literature review approach. The data synthesis focuses on identifying key concepts relating to E-government accessibility for PWDs. Contribution: The study contributes to the field of E-government, with a focus on how E-government services can be made accessible to PWDs. The study calls on researchers to reflect on their epistemological and ontological paradigms when examining accessibility of E-government services in developing countries. Findings: The findings show that most researchers focus on the evaluation of E-government websites and predominantly adopt quantitative methods. The study also reveals that the use of technological determinism as a theoretical lens is high among researchers. Recommendations for Practitioners : The study recommends that E-government web developers and policy makers involve PWDs from design to evaluation in the development of E-government applications. Recommendation for Researchers: The study advocates the need to conduct studies on E-government accessibility by employing more qualitative and mixed approaches to gain in-depth and better understanding of the phenomenon. Impact on Society : This study creates greater awareness and points out inadequacies that society needs to address to make E-government more inclusive of and participatory for PWDs. Future Research: Further empirical work is required in order to refine the relevance and applicability of various constructs in EADM so as to arrive at a framework for addressing E-government accessibility for PWDs in developing countries.

Children's Geographies; 02/01/2022
(AN 154441559); ISSN: 14733285
Academic Search Premier

Children's Geographies; 02/01/2024
(AN 175911759); ISSN: 14733285
Academic Search Premier

If you feel like your drive to work has gotten longer recently, it’s not just you. New research shows that the return of traffic has led to fewer jobs being reachable within 30 minutes by car.

TerraPay, a global money movement company,...

To meet its diversity and inclusion goals for competed mission leadership, NASA should invest in STEM career pathways, partner with historically Black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions, and expand training and mentorship opportunities, among other actions.

Over the past decade, society has been evolving. It is constantly rethinking discrimination, with growing social awareness of gender identity, differently-abled individuals and sensory sensitivity. The public restroom is one area that has come under fire during this social evolution.

Amazon is doing well, though a volatile political climate threatens small businesses’ growth.

Envision commits to digital accessibility for investors and reps

Investing Has Never Been So Accessible

Boston Doctor Sudipta Mohanty Innovates Healthcare

You can’t overstate the importance of accessible website design. By the same token, bottom-up philosophies are crucial in modern site-building. A detail-oriented approach makes it easier to serve a more diverse audience along several fronts. Making the most of this opportunity will both extend your reach to new niches and make the web a more equitable place.

Web content is increasingly produced by authors without extensive web design skills - whether by staff using CMSs, VLEs and courseware or by students publishing their coursework online. The challenge of making sure this content is as accessible as possible becomes much more significant, and inevitably a burden on the individual or institution. The quality of the authoring tool in supporting accessible content creation becomes critical - however support for the W3C's Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) by authoring tool vendors seems to be seen as a specific (and usually low priority) customer request rather than a fundamental quality of the tool. For institutions considering selecting a VLE, CMS or other tool that supports web content publication, how can they best express accessibility requirements so that the tool takes its share of responsibility for accessible output? And if existing tools fall short of ATAG conformance, how can the effect of this on the accessibility of content best be managed? The session was facilitated by David Sloan, University of Dundee.

David Sloan, Digital Media Access Group, University of Dundee and Simon Ball, Techdis will think about how we promote contextual accessibility as an institutional standard? How can we encourage web authors to use diverse solutions to optimise accessibility, while making sure that basic principles of accessible design are met?

Legal expert’s review will help make Ontario accessible by 2025TORONTO, ON — Ontario has appointed Mayo Moran, Dean and James Marshall Tory Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, to lead a review of the province’s Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). Since the AODA became law in 2005, Ontario […]

Felienne interviews Andreas Stefik about creating programs that are accessible for blind and visually impaired users. How do they consume and create software?

Resolution 70 - (Rev. Geneva, 2022) - Telecommunication/information and communication technology accessibility for persons with disabilities

FSTP-TACL - Telecommunications Accessibility Checklist

FSTP-ACC-Rural - Use cases of accessibility to multimedia systems in rural and out-of-home environments

Accessibility of telehealth services

About 8% of the State Department’s full-time Foreign Service officers have at least one disability. So does approximately 17% of its civil service workforce.

The post State Dept urges workforce to prioritize disability rights in accessibility playbook first appeared on Federal News Network.

Australia Post and IKEA have today announced a new strategic partnership, entering into a three-year agreement to further expand IKEA’s delivery footprint in Australia.

In this episode, Thomas Domville gives us short looks at some of what's new and notable with Accessibility features in iOS 17.

Topics include:

• New Haptic sensation
• Open Per Voice Settings
• Text Detection
• Point and Speak
• Sound Curtain
• Fast long-press speed option
• Siri (Voices sound natural and expressive)
• Listen to Page
• React with your Hands in FaceTime
• Level Tool for Camera
• Audio Transcription in Messages

In this episode, Thomas Domville gives us an overview of new accessibility features for blind, DeafBlind, and visually impaired users in iOS 18. Topics covered include:

• Live Recognition Comes to the Rotor
• Voices Rotor
• Improvements to Audio Ducking
• VoiceOver Tutorial
• VoiceOver Startup Haptic Feedback
• Delay Before Selection
• New languages for Lithuanian and Kazak
• Using Personal Voice with VoiceOver
• Equalizer and Other New Customization Options for VoiceOver Voices
• Voice Presets for Siri Voices
• A New VoiceOver Gesture for Accessing Siri Text Input
• Braille Screen Input Improvements
• Motion Queues
• New Sound Actions
• Assistive Touch Improvements
• Eye Tracking
• New Background Sounds and Controls
• Music Haptics
• Live Speech Improvements
• Voice Control Improvements
• Vocal Shortcuts
• Hover Typing
• Car Play Improvements: Voice Control, Color Filters, and Sound Recognition
• Magnifier Improvements: Assign Action Button to Magnifier Mode and New Reader Mode
• Improvements to Accessing Reader Mode in Safari

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is generated by AIKO, an automated transcription service. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

An Apple Vis Original What's new in iOS 18 for accessibility?

Hello and welcome.

My name is Thomas Donville, also known as Anonymous, as like every year, a new iOS comes in play and Apple brings out new features for us to enjoy.

So with no exception, this year we got a slew of new features for voiceover users, braille users, and other accessibility features that you might find of interest.

There's a lot in here to pack, so let's go ahead and jump right into it and you can hear for yourself what is new in iOS 18 for accessibility.

Live recognition is now an option within your rotor if you include it.

To include it, you just go to your accessibility and head over to rotors and include the live recognition.

This allows you to access live recognition quickly and easily by simply going to your rotor.

Once enabled, we'll just head over to live recognition within our rotor, where you are able to select one or more of the various detections you would like to be enabled.

As you swipe down or up within the rotor, you get the various detection.

To enable a particular detection, just simply do one finger double tap, double tap again and that'll disable it.

If you dismiss the rotor and keep the detection on, it will now live in with your dynamic island towards the top of your device or you can dismiss it from there as well.

Apple has now enhanced the voice over voice option within rotors, which used to be called language.

This rotor allows you to access the various voices that you have defined within speech under accessibility, but that itself has completely been revamped, which you can find within the voice over in the accessibility.

Double tap on this now.

You now have two section in here, first is your primary voice, which can be in any language, doesn't have to be necessarily English and they can…

In this podcast, Thomas Domville reviews and demonstrates the Voices feature, which allows you to customize multiple VoiceOver voices to suit your needs. You can quickly access these voices using the Rotor Actions or the VoiceOver Quick Settings.

How to Add VoiceOver Voices to the Voices Feature on iOS

1. Open Settings: Start by opening the Settings app with a double tap on your iOS device.
2. Go to Accessibility: Scroll down and double tap on "Accessibility."
3. Select VoiceOver: Under the Vision section, double tap on "VoiceOver."
4. Tap on Speech: In the VoiceOver settings, double tap on "Speech."
5. Add a New Voice: double Tap on "Add Rotor Voice..." to see a list of available voices.
6. Choose a Voice: Browse through the list and select the voice you want to add. You can swipe up on a voice to hear a sample.
7. Download the Voice: After selecting a voice, double tap "Download" to add it to your device.
8. Set Up Rotor Actions: Go back to the VoiceOver settings and double tap on "Rotor." Ensure that "Voices" is selected so you can quickly switch between voices using the Rotor.
9. Quick Settings Access: You can also access the new voices through the VoiceOver Quick Settings by two finger quadruple tap and selecting "Voice."

Now, you can easily switch between your customized VoiceOver voices to enhance your accessibility experience on iOS 18.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is generated by AIKO, an automated transcription service. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Hello and welcome.

My name is Thomas Domville, also known as Anonymouse.

I'm going to be talking about a feature called Voices.

So as you know, we have our primary voice over voice that we use each and every day on our device.

Wouldn't it be great that you are able to access various voices more than just one voice over on the fly?

Yep, you can do that.

It lives right in your rotor, if that's where you would like it to be.

In my case, I have it in my rotor itself.

You can also put that in the voice over quick settings if you wish to.

And I'll be showing you how to add that to your rotor and quick setting if that's something you want to do.

But in my case, whenever I do a podcast, you probably always hear that I use Siri number 4 voice, in short is Noel.

And this is what I use when I do podcasting, but every so often I like to change things up and here's some other voice and that would be Tom and Hans.

So those are my top two voices.

And so in order to access it so quickly and easily, I place the voices in within my rotor.

So let me give you an example of what it sounds like and what it looks like.

So I'm going to access my rotor and I'm going to go to Voices.

Voices, Siri voice 4, default, selected.

So if I swipe up, Tom, primary voice.

I have the Tom primary voice.

Or if I could just swipe up again, Siri voice 4, default.

I'm back to Siri voice number 4.

So this is when I'm talking about how you are able to access voices so easily from your rotor or your quick settings, if that's what you choose to do.

So let me show you how I got that set up.

But before we can do anything, we need to add voices so you can…

This interview was originally conducted for inclusion in our “accessibility” theme. The topic for the month is accessibility. I turned to Nikola Simikic and John Creed in Los Angeles for some perspective on the topic. Nikola is a sound designer and re-recording mixer at Gypsy Sound, and John is a dialogue editor for Gypsy Sound […]

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QR codes are widely used for quick access to websites and information, but they’re also a helpful tool for simplifying tasks on computers. With a QR code generator, users can connect mobile devices to computers, share files, link to online resources, and even enhance security.

The post How QR Codes Enhance Computer Use and Accessibility appeared first on ThinkComputers.org.

The divalent anion sodium symporter (DASS) family (SLC13) plays critical roles in metabolic homeostasis, influencing many processes, including fatty acid synthesis, insulin resistance, and adiposity. DASS transporters catalyze the Na+-driven concentrative uptake of Krebs cycle intermediates and sulfate into cells; disrupting their function can protect against age-related metabolic diseases and can extend lifespan. An inward-facing crystal structure and an outward-facing model of a bacterial DASS family member, VcINDY from Vibrio cholerae, predict an elevator-like transport mechanism involving a large rigid body movement of the substrate-binding site. How substrate binding influences the conformational state of VcINDY is currently unknown. Here, we probe the interaction between substrate binding and protein conformation by monitoring substrate-induced solvent accessibility changes of broadly distributed positions in VcINDY using a site-specific alkylation strategy. Our findings reveal that accessibility to all positions tested is modulated by the presence of substrates, with the majority becoming less accessible in the presence of saturating concentrations of both Na+ and succinate. We also observe separable effects of Na+ and succinate binding at several positions suggesting distinct effects of the two substrates. Furthermore, accessibility changes to a solely succinate-sensitive position suggests that substrate binding is a low-affinity, ordered process. Mapping these accessibility changes onto the structures of VcINDY suggests that Na+ binding drives the transporter into an as-yet-unidentified conformational state, involving rearrangement of the substrate-binding site–associated re-entrant hairpin loops. These findings provide insight into the mechanism of VcINDY, which is currently the only structurally characterized representative of the entire DASS family.

The money, which will be allocated over three years, is expected to make major and minor improvements to schools throughout the city.

Produced by WIRED Brand Lab with Intel | How do we make communication accessible for every kind of person? Lama Nachman, Director of Intel’s Human & AI Research Lab, has dedicated decades to bridging the technological gap between those with and without disabilities. She worked alongside Stephen Hawking to create the Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit (ACAT) which enabled him to communicate and do his work more effectively even with limited mobility due to ALS. Also making a difference at Intel is Adam Munder, co-founder of OmniBridge, a software platform that allows deaf individuals to communicate with the hearing population in real-time. Providing 24/7 access to fast, affordable ASL translation, OmniBridge is ideal for a wide range of settings and when interpreters are unavailable. In supporting Adam and Lama’s work, Intel is dedicated to furthering technologies that amplify human potential and create more equity in the world.

In reading Joe Dolson’s recent piece on the intersection of AI and accessibility, I absolutely appreciated the skepticism that he has for AI in general as well as for the ways that many have been using it. In fact, I’m very skeptical of AI myself, despite my role at Microsoft as an accessibility innovation strategist who helps run the AI for Accessibility grant program. As with any tool, AI can be used in very constructive, inclusive, and accessible ways; and it can also be used in destructive, exclusive, and harmful ones. And there are a ton of uses somewhere in the mediocre middle as well.

I’d like you to consider this a “yes… and” piece to complement Joe’s post. I’m not trying to refute any of what he’s saying but rather provide some visibility to projects and opportunities where AI can make meaningful differences for people with disabilities. To be clear, I’m not saying that there aren’t real risks or pressing issues with AI that need to be addressed—there are, and we’ve needed to address them, like, yesterday—but I want to take a little time to talk about what’s possible in hopes that we’ll get there one day.

Alternative text

Joe’s piece spends a lot of time talking about computer-vision models generating alternative text. He highlights a ton of valid issues with the current state of things. And while computer-vision models continue to improve in the quality and richness of detail in their descriptions, their results aren’t great. As he rightly points out, the current state of image analysis is pretty poor—especially for certain image types—in large part because current AI systems examine images in isolation rather than within the contexts that they’re in (which is a consequence of having separate “foundation” models for text analysis and image analysis). Today’s models aren’t trained to distinguish between images that are contextually relevant (that should probably have descriptions) and those that are purely decorative (which might not need a description) either. Still, I still think there’s potential in this space.

As Joe mentions, human-in-the-loop authoring of alt text should absolutely be a thing. And if AI can pop in to offer a starting point for alt text—even if that starting point might be a prompt saying What is this BS? That’s not right at all… Let me try to offer a starting point—I think that’s a win.

Taking things a step further, if we can specifically train a model to analyze image usage in context, it could help us more quickly identify which images are likely to be decorative and which ones likely require a description. That will help reinforce which contexts call for image descriptions and it’ll improve authors’ efficiency toward making their pages more accessible.

While complex images—like graphs and charts—are challenging to describe in any sort of succinct way (even for humans), the image example shared in the GPT4 announcement points to an interesting opportunity as well. Let’s suppose that you came across a chart whose description was simply the title of the chart and the kind of visualization it was, such as: Pie chart comparing smartphone usage to feature phone usage among US households making under $30,000 a year. (That would be a pretty awful alt text for a chart since that would tend to leave many questions about the data unanswered, but then again, let’s suppose that that was the description that was in place.) If your browser knew that that image was a pie chart (because an onboard model concluded this), imagine a world where users could ask questions like these about the graphic:

• Do more people use smartphones or feature phones?
• How many more?
• Is there a group of people that don’t fall into either of these buckets?
• How many is that?

Setting aside the realities of large language model (LLM) hallucinations—where a model just makes up plausible-sounding “facts”—for a moment, the opportunity to learn more about images and data in this way could be revolutionary for blind and low-vision folks as well as for people with various forms of color blindness, cognitive disabilities, and so on. It could also be useful in educational contexts to help people who can see these charts, as is, to understand the data in the charts.

Taking things a step further: What if you could ask your browser to simplify a complex chart? What if you could ask it to isolate a single line on a line graph? What if you could ask your browser to transpose the colors of the different lines to work better for form of color blindness you have? What if you could ask it to swap colors for patterns? Given these tools’ chat-based interfaces and our existing ability to manipulate images in today’s AI tools, that seems like a possibility.

Now imagine a purpose-built model that could extract the information from that chart and convert it to another format. For example, perhaps it could turn that pie chart (or better yet, a series of pie charts) into more accessible (and useful) formats, like spreadsheets. That would be amazing!

Matching algorithms

Safiya Umoja Noble absolutely hit the nail on the head when she titled her book Algorithms of Oppression. While her book was focused on the ways that search engines reinforce racism, I think that it’s equally true that all computer models have the potential to amplify conflict, bias, and intolerance. Whether it’s Twitter always showing you the latest tweet from a bored billionaire, YouTube sending us into a Q-hole, or Instagram warping our ideas of what natural bodies look like, we know that poorly authored and maintained algorithms are incredibly harmful. A lot of this stems from a lack of diversity among the people who shape and build them. When these platforms are built with inclusively baked in, however, there’s real potential for algorithm development to help people with disabilities.

Take Mentra, for example. They are an employment network for neurodivergent people. They use an algorithm to match job seekers with potential employers based on over 75 data points. On the job-seeker side of things, it considers each candidate’s strengths, their necessary and preferred workplace accommodations, environmental sensitivities, and so on. On the employer side, it considers each work environment, communication factors related to each job, and the like. As a company run by neurodivergent folks, Mentra made the decision to flip the script when it came to typical employment sites. They use their algorithm to propose available candidates to companies, who can then connect with job seekers that they are interested in; reducing the emotional and physical labor on the job-seeker side of things.

When more people with disabilities are involved in the creation of algorithms, that can reduce the chances that these algorithms will inflict harm on their communities. That’s why diverse teams are so important.

Imagine that a social media company’s recommendation engine was tuned to analyze who you’re following and if it was tuned to prioritize follow recommendations for people who talked about similar things but who were different in some key ways from your existing sphere of influence. For example, if you were to follow a bunch of nondisabled white male academics who talk about AI, it could suggest that you follow academics who are disabled or aren’t white or aren’t male who also talk about AI. If you took its recommendations, perhaps you’d get a more holistic and nuanced understanding of what’s happening in the AI field. These same systems should also use their understanding of biases about particular communities—including, for instance, the disability community—to make sure that they aren’t recommending any of their users follow accounts that perpetuate biases against (or, worse, spewing hate toward) those groups.

Other ways that AI can helps people with disabilities

If I weren’t trying to put this together between other tasks, I’m sure that I could go on and on, providing all kinds of examples of how AI could be used to help people with disabilities, but I’m going to make this last section into a bit of a lightning round. In no particular order:

• Voice preservation. You may have seen the VALL-E paper or Apple’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day announcement or you may be familiar with the voice-preservation offerings from Microsoft, Acapela, or others. It’s possible to train an AI model to replicate your voice, which can be a tremendous boon for people who have ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) or motor-neuron disease or other medical conditions that can lead to an inability to talk. This is, of course, the same tech that can also be used to create audio deepfakes, so it’s something that we need to approach responsibly, but the tech has truly transformative potential.
• Voice recognition. Researchers like those in the Speech Accessibility Project are paying people with disabilities for their help in collecting recordings of people with atypical speech. As I type, they are actively recruiting people with Parkinson’s and related conditions, and they have plans to expand this to other conditions as the project progresses. This research will result in more inclusive data sets that will let more people with disabilities use voice assistants, dictation software, and voice-response services as well as control their computers and other devices more easily, using only their voice.
• Text transformation. The current generation of LLMs is quite capable of adjusting existing text content without injecting hallucinations. This is hugely empowering for people with cognitive disabilities who may benefit from text summaries or simplified versions of text or even text that’s prepped for Bionic Reading.

The importance of diverse teams and data

We need to recognize that our differences matter. Our lived experiences are influenced by the intersections of the identities that we exist in. These lived experiences—with all their complexities (and joys and pain)—are valuable inputs to the software, services, and societies that we shape. Our differences need to be represented in the data that we use to train new models, and the folks who contribute that valuable information need to be compensated for sharing it with us. Inclusive data sets yield more robust models that foster more equitable outcomes.

Want a model that doesn’t demean or patronize or objectify people with disabilities? Make sure that you have content about disabilities that’s authored by people with a range of disabilities, and make sure that that’s well represented in the training data.

Want a model that doesn’t use ableist language? You may be able to use existing data sets to build a filter that can intercept and remediate ableist language before it reaches readers. That being said, when it comes to sensitivity reading, AI models won’t be replacing human copy editors anytime soon. 

Want a coding copilot that gives you accessible recommendations from the jump? Train it on code that you know to be accessible.

I have no doubt that AI can and will harm people… today, tomorrow, and well into the future. But I also believe that we can acknowledge that and, with an eye towards accessibility (and, more broadly, inclusion), make thoughtful, considerate, and intentional changes in our approaches to AI that will reduce harm over time as well. Today, tomorrow, and well into the future.

Many thanks to Kartik Sawhney for helping me with the development of this piece, Ashley Bischoff for her invaluable editorial assistance, and, of course, Joe Dolson for the prompt.

The bench found that one of the rules of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Act does not establish enforceable, compulsory standards, but rather, it relies on self-regulation through guidelines

Chris redesigned his blog, using sounds on your website to make it seem fancy, what can't automated accessibility tests test, and what's new in Safari 17.

Voiceover pays us a visit, we talk about what accessibility really means, the difficulty of closing a dialogue element, web components at work, and jQuery 4 is out.

We've got follow up on Cloudflare and Cara from last episode, a question about setting up Prettier and auto linting, a cool tool from a listener on comparing colors, a question about using tooling like Craft or more user friendly apps like Webflow when working with clients, and our takes on accessibility overlays.

The court asked the government to enable the creation of public and private spaces, services and products of an ‘universal design’ which could be accessed by everyone, regardless of their ability, age, or status

Alan Dalton uses this, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, to look back at where we’ve come from, to evaluate where we are, and to look forward to what’s coming next in the future of accessibility guidelines.

Happy United Nations International Day of Persons with Disabilities! The United Nations have chosen “Promoting the participation of persons with disabilities and their leadership: taking action on the 2030 Development Agenda” for this year’s observance. Let’s see how the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines of accessibility past, present, and yet-to-come can help us to follow that goal, and make sure that the websites—and everything else!—that we create can include as many potential users as possible.

Guidelines of Accessibility Past

The W3C published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 on 5th May 1999, when most of us were playing Snake on our Nokia 3210s’ 1.5” monochrome screens…a very long time ago in technology terms. From the start, those guidelines proved enlightening for designers and developers who wanted to avoid excluding users from their websites. For example, we learned how to provide alternatives to audio and images, how to structure information, and how to help users to find the information they needed. However, those guidelines were specific to the web technologies of the time, resulting in limitations such as requiring developers to “use W3C technologies when they are available […]”. Also, those guidelines became outdated; I doubt that you, gentle reader, consult their technical documentation about “directly accessible applets” or “Writing for browsers that do not support FRAME” in your day-to-day work.

Guidelines of Accessibility Present

The W3C published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 on 11th December 2008, when most of us were admiring the iPhone 3G’s innovative “iPhone OS 2.0” software…a long time ago in technology terms. Unlike WCAG 1, these guidelines also applied to non-W3C technologies, such as PDF and Flash. These guidelines used legalese and future-proofed language, with terms such as “time-based media” and “programmatically determined”, and testable success criteria. This made these guidelines more difficult for designers and developers to grasp, but also enabled the guidelines to make their way into international standards (see EN 301 549 — Accessibility requirements suitable for public procurement of ICT products and services in Europe and ISO/IEC 40500:2012 Information technology — W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0) and even international law (see EU Directive 2016/2102 … on the accessibility of the websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies).

More importantly, these guidelines enabled designers and developers to create inclusive websites, at scale. For example, in the past 18 months:

• Intercom made their web Messenger accessible, achieving Level-AA conformance;
• Vimeo made accessibility updates to their video player to achieve Level-AA conformance;
• Stripe designed a new accessible colour system to conform with success criterion 1.4.3 (“Contrast (Minimum)”).

The updated Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 arrived on 5th June last year—almost a 10-year wait for a “.1” update!—and added 17 new success criteria to help bring the guidelines up to date. Those new criteria focused on people using mobile devices and touchscreens, people with low vision, and people with cognitive and learning disabilities.

(If you need to get up to speed with these guidelines, take 36 minutes to read “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines—for People Who Haven’t Read Them” and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1—for People Who Haven’t Read the Update.)

Guidelines of Accessibility Yet to Come

So, what’s next? Well, the W3C hope to release another minor update (WCAG 2.2) in November 2020. However, they also have a Task Force working on produce major new guidelines with wider scope (more people, more technologies) and fewer limitations (easier to understand, easier to use) in November 2022. These next guidelines will have a different name, because they will cover more than “Web” and “Content”. Andrew Kirkpatrick (Adobe’s Head of Accessibility) named the Task Force “Silver” (because the initials of “Accessibility Guidelines” form the symbol of the silver element).

The Silver Task Force want the next major accessibility guidelines to:

• take account of more disabilities;
• apply to more technologies than just the web, including virtual reality, augmented reality, voice assistants, and more;
• consider all the technologies that people use, including authoring tools, browsers, media players, assistive technologies (including screen readers and screen magnifiers), application software, and operating systems.

That’s quite a challenge, and so the more people who can help, the better. The Silver Task Force wanted an alternative to W3C’s Working Groups, which are made up of employees of organisations who are members of the W3C, and invited experts. So, they created a Silver Community Group to allow everyone to contribute towards this crucial work. If you want to join right now, for free, just create a W3C account.

Like all good designers, the Silver Task Force and Silver Community Group began by researching. They examined the problems that people have had when using, conforming to, and maintaining the existing accessibility guidelines, and then summarised that research. From there, the Silver Community Group drafted ambitious design principles and requirements. You can read about what the Silver Community Group are currently working on, and decide whether you would like to get involved now, or at a later stage.

Emphasise expertise over empathy

Remember that today’s theme is “Promoting the participation of persons with disabilities and their leadership: taking action on the 2030 Development Agenda”. (The United Nations’ 2030 Development Agenda is outside the scope of this article, but if you’re looking to be inspired, read Alessia Aquaro’s article on Public Digital’s blog about how digital government can contribute to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.) In line with this theme, if you don’t have a disability and you want to contribute to the Silver Community Group, resist the temptation to try to empathise with people with disabilities. Instead, take 21 minutes during this festive season to enjoy the brilliant Liz Jackson explaining how empathy reifies disability stigmas, and follow her advice.

Choose the right route

I think we can expect the next Accessibility Guidelines to make their way into international standards and international law, just like their predecessors. We can also expect successful companies to apply them at scale. If you contribute to developing those guidelines, you can help to make sure that as many people as possible will be able to access digital information and services, in an era when that access will be crucial to every aspect of people’s lives. As Cennydd Bowles explained in “Building Better Worlds”, “There is no such thing as the future. There are instead a near-infinity of potential futures. The road as-yet-untravelled stretches before us in abundant directions. We get to choose the route. There is no fate but what we make.”

About the author

Alan Dalton worked for Ireland’s National Disability Authority for 9½ years, mostly as Accessibility Development Advisor. That involved working closely with public sector bodies to make websites, services, and information more accessible to all users, including users with disabilities. Before that, he was a consultant and trainer for Software Paths Ltd. in Dublin. In his spare time, he maintains StrongPasswordGenerator.com to help people stay safe online, tweets, and takes photos.

More articles by Alan