Tag: ADA

Happy 25th, ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act!

Karen Mardahl on

So what is the ADA, or Americans with Disabilities Act? (Read on, even if you are not in the United States.)

A great place to find an answer was in an article from the July 2015 Disability Connection Newsletter:
"10 Things to Know about the Americans with Disabilities Act". The first item answers the “what is it” question.

That information came from a tweet by the former Disability.Gov twitter account.

Any U.S.-based technical communicators reading this blog post really should know at least three of the items on this list.

  1. The answer to “what is it” in item 1
  2. Employers' obligations in item 4 – because they may affect you personally one day, and because you can help to ensure that your workplace supports the ADA
  3. YOUR rights under the ADA (self-explanatory?!) – see item 3

As @AccessibleJoe tweeted, the ADA was a “response to appalling problem: widespread, systemic, inhumane discrimination against people with disabilities.” He linked to the Washington Post article by Robert L. Burgdorf Jr., co-author of the ADA. There really are some horror stories in the years before the ADA!

You can travel 25 years back in time and re-experience the signing of the ADA into law: George H.W. Bush signs the Americans with Disabilities Act, July 26th, 1990 (22:02 minutes).

Twenty-five years later you can watch President Obama deliver remarks in the East Room of the White House celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. July 20, 2015 (14:44 minutes) – it's captioned and transcribed. He honors some of the people who helped make the ADA happen. Take a 15-minute break to hear about some of the politicians and activists who made this huge change. May we be worthy enough to follow in their footsteps (or wheel tracks) in making accessibility a human right everywhere on the planet!

You see, the ADA might be for the U.S., but it has inspired legislation around the world.

The ADA has spurred numerous countries to enact legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability. These countries have looked to the ADA as an inspiration and a model in crafting their own legislative proposals.

Proof? A quick Google search gave me two resources:

Gostin's paper reveals the biggest impact the ADA has had on the world: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The CRPD was modelled on the ADA! Read the full text of the convention translated into several spoken languages and signed languages.

In closing, I’d like to suggest that you follow @Disability.gov on Twitter to stay updated on disability-related news that might be relevant for your job – and for you. Their home was Disability.gov, a U.S. Federal government website for "information on disability programs and services nationwide". There’s also [shut down by President Trump, January 2013] @ADANational and The Americans With Disabilities Act National Network providing information, guidance, and training on the ADA.

Note:  New

Disability.gov was a United States Government inter-agency web portal that provided access to comprehensive information about disability-related programs and services from 2002-2016. The site contained thousands of trusted resources, updated daily, from the federal government, educational institutions, non-profit organizations and state and local governments.

Disability.gov offered information for the more than 50 million Americans with disabilities. It was also a reliable resource for parents of children with disabilities, employers, workforce and human resource professionals, veterans, military families, caregivers and other community members. The site offered resources on ten key subjects: benefits, civil rights, community life, education, emergency preparedness, employment, health, housing, technology and transportation.

Disability.gov and its associated social media accounts were sunset in December 2016 and are no longer available. Disability.gov currently redirects to a page of disability related-resources available from the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP). Federal resources on disability and employment can be found on the website of the Campaign for Disability Employment (CDE) at What can You Do?

Wikipedia

Weekend Gazette – Link Collection for April 25

Karen Mardahl on

We present to you a menu of tidbits collected in recent days that are too short for blog posts and sometimes too long for a tweet (when we want to add clarifying comments). Headings provide a light grouping to help you skim the offerings. Bon appétit!

Sock it to 'em, John!

Technical communicators, please sit up and take notice of this section. It is important.

John Foliot has written an amazing letter to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary. That Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties held a hearing recently. The topic of that hearing was "Achieving the Promise of the Americans with Disabilities Act in the Digital Age – Current Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities". All fine and dandy. Transcripts are made because it's government by the people and for the people, as you know.

However, these documents were inaccessible, so it became "for some of the people". Ugh! What did John do? He made accessible versions of them. He demonstrated how the work should have been done in the first place! I'd lead a round of applause, but I am nursing my aching head from when I banged my head against the desk upon learning of this gaffe. Is there no one in the U.S. government offices who knows how to make accessible documents? I dare bet – unfortunately – that no government in the world can claim to be perfect. I will be very happy if someone can prove me wrong.

John, thank you for showing the folks in Washington how accessible documents are made. Maybe they need a workshop on that? There are skilled people in the Washington, D.C. area who can arrange that. The government staff can also attend the next unconference held by @AccessibilityDC, where they can learn a thing or two.

ADA Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities

If you are finished laughing and crying hysterically about the gaffe with inaccessible documents in the previous section, go back and read the information from that hearing. All the details of who spoke and where the transcripts are can be found in John's letter. This is U.S.-centric, but there is inspiration here for everyone. If you promise access for all in a digital age, you must constantly monitor what is happening in the world outside your office. The issues, challenges, and opportunities are dynamic, and governments should be in the frontlines, not sagging dreadfully behind everyone else.

So far, it looks like the website wranglers at whitehouse.gov are staying on their toes. Read this White House blog post about Whitehouse.gov releasing open source code. One of the three key features of that code is – you guessed it – accessibility. They're doing it right – working on accessibility, and not shoving it to the background for a rainy day.

PS ADA, in case you forgot, stands for the Americans with Disabilities Act, and yes, that is a site designed by a graduate from the Jakob Nielsen school of design (that is, accessible sites are inherently ugly).

Cool Tech

The Speaks4me system is the brainchild of a father whose young son, Callum, could not speak due to severe autism and learning difficulties. It has potential for stroke survivors, too. For more information, see the BBC report about Speaks4me Son's autism leads to innovation, by Geoff Adams-Spink, BBC Age & Disability correspondent.  Updated

The price tag looks high, but that is because it is a software and hardware package. A software-only version is being worked on now, and a mobile version lies in the future. Aside from the benefits for the users of this system, it must be downright cool to help develop such a system. Think of all the challenges in working out a great user interface, and its usability and accessibility.

Some of you are familiar with eye-tracking as a way of testing the usability of your website. Well, there might be a powerful assistive technology solution in eye-tracking. Think Stephen Hawking.

"Free" is a popular price tag, especially when it comes to technology. That's why this list of free screen readers appears in this section of this post. Don't skip this tip just because you have no vision problems. These are great for testing the accessibility of your material. The price tag should impress your boss! No excuses left for not testing!  Updated

Quotable Quotes

This was a nice quote from@whitneyq worth repeating here:

Failing to make voting systems accessible has the same effect as generating one that maliciously destroys votes for one subpopulation.

The Last Word

This story is too sweet to pass up. (The broken wing makes me think of the butterfly with a broken wing in our own logo.)

Storks, Malena and Rodan
Rodan and Malena, Storks reunited in Slavonski Brod, Croatia.
Malena, the stork, is grounded by a broken wing and can no longer migrate south for the winter. She survives the cold winter in Croatia thanks to human care – and her true love coming back every Spring. The exact chronology of events differs slightly in the English and Danish resources I read. Malena was shot in 1993. They say her mate, Rodan, has been returning to her for five years, yet they have managed to raise 32 chicks. Anyway, enjoy the story of true stork love  Updated.

Link Contributors

This post was glued together with links or inspiration from many people. They are listed with their Twitter names.

@DaveBanesAccess
@dboudreau
@ezufelt
@johnfoliot
@SandiWassmer
@webaxe