News

Before last year’s televised Grammys ceremony began, the award show had already garnered viral attention for its use of ASL interpreters on the red carpet.

An accessibility measure rarely presented during the entertainment industry’s major awards shows, the presence of the sign language interpreters was the byproduct of more than a year’s worth of conversations between the Recording Academy and Recording Artists and Music Professionals With Disabilities (RAMPD), a global network of talent and industry members who consult and advise around disability inclusion and accessibility for the music and events industry.

A new class action lawsuit filed against Whirlpool claims its website kitchenaid.com is not accessible to visually impaired and blind people.

More specifically, the lawsuit claims the company has not made its website compatible with screen-reading software that helps visually impaired consumers navigate websites.

No surprise here: Elon Musk has once again made Twitter worse. The CEO’s latest blow to the platform’s functionality removes free access to its API(opens in a new tab), posing an imminent threat for users with disabilities, accessibility advocates, and helpful bots.

On Feb. 1, Twitter announced it would be moving all API access to paid tiers based on usage, another revenue grab as the site continues to lose its advertiser-based income streams. APIs, or web application programming interfaces, let programmers and developers utilize existing information from a secondary source to create programs, data visualizations, and more. Free API services are essential for a lot of the online work done by both activists and academics(opens in a new tab), many of whom use free online data sources for research, interactive sites, and organizing projects.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which leads development of the technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the web remains open, accessible, and interoperable, officially launched as a public-interest nonprofit organization as of Jan. 1. After 28 years of being hosted collectively at MIT and three other international host organizations, the crusaders for web standards have become their own entity.

Many diverse brains make up and contribute to the community collective that is W3C, cultivating and setting global standards for building websites, browsers, and devices. Some of W3C’s greatest hits involve making public standards for the technologies that underlie the web, such as HTML, CSS, and XML, which are so ubiquitous, they’re practically ingrained in the fabric of our daily lives — every time we use a computer or smartphone. The organization has created more than 460 web standards since 1994, gathering minds from software and hardware worlds, research centers, universities, and public administrators.

Websites are viewed as a critical asset for states because they often provide a first, and sometimes only, means of communication between government agencies and residents seeking services. And online services need to be accessible to all constituents. However, agencies with underperforming websites cannot effectively deliver services to constituents that require enhanced digital accessibility.

As some newsroom roles go the way of the dinosaurs, other new jobs are being born. This is the first in an occasional series of Q&As with people who are the first to hold their title in their newsroom.
Foreman makes the case that accessibility in journalism is important for everyone: Making news products more accessible, after all, often means making them more user-friendly and efficient. He hopes to discover and standardize ways of making the Post’s journalism accessible to as many people as possible.

February 1, 2023—Indianapolis, IN—A historic Indiana lawsuit seeking increased ballot accessibility for voters with print disabilities has settled. As a result of the settlement, the state has agreed to acquire a new remote accessible ballot marking tool that will allow these voters to cast their absentee ballots privately and independently. Voters will be able to access and mark their ballots digitally with their own assistive technology thanks to this tool. Once the ballot has been marked, voters will be able to submit it via email. The tool will be available to voters in time for the May 2023 primary election. Read the settlement agreement.

With at least 4.9 billion active internet users worldwide as of 2021, digital accessibility is more important than ever. Over 1 billion people around the world are part of the disabled community, and each one of these individuals deserves equitable access to in-person and online spaces. And as the world population ages, the need for accessible websites will only continue to increase.

Digital accessibility stands out as one of the most addressable and measurable components of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, yet it is still one of the least prioritized.

Inclusive hiring policies should fundamentally be about helping all job seekers and employers find ways to mutually meet each other’s needs. A true commitment to inclusion should extend internally to making sure that facilities, policies and procedures are as accessible as possible.

Over the past decade or so, we’ve seen game accessibility come on leaps and bounds across the industry. Game designers are beginning to realise that by making their games accessible, and doing this from the very beginning of the design process, everyone has a better gameplay experience. Accessibility features in games can take many forms, from colourblind options to customisable subtitles to extensive button remapping. But Nintendo and its first-party games seem to be lagging behind.