Congress awarded students with disabilities extra protections in recent years. Now, the U.S. Department of Education is stepping up its efforts to ensure that schools are following the new rules.

In a letter sent this week to school districts and state education leaders, officials at the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights (DOE-OCR) took pains to spell out the obligations schools have under the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADA).

Though the ADA update took effect three years ago, the correspondence suggests that many schools may not be abiding by it. In light of this, federal officials are offering technical guidance and say that they will be upping their enforcement efforts.

Read the rest of the AlphaOne announcement

Read the Dear Colleague Letter from DOE-OCR

The U.S. Access Board recently held a public hearing on a revised draft of updated requirements for information and communication technology (ICT) covered by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act.

The Board will hold a second hearing March 1 at the CSUN Conference in San Diego. The hearing will be open to the general public and will not be limited to those registered for the conference.

Full story…

The Board conducted a public hearing January 11 on a revised draft of updated requirements for information and communication technology (ICT) covered by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act. Over a dozen people provided comments at the hearing, including representatives from advocacy groups, industry, and government.

Many speakers expressed support for structural changes made by the Board to streamline the rule and simplify requirements. They also endorsed the incorporation of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG) by direct reference to eliminate redundancy and promote greater harmonization. Some called attention to specific sections of the draft that should be clarified as a result of the rule’s reorganization or the replacement of requirements with the WCAG reference.

Commenters voiced concern over the timeframe to complete this update, particularly in view of the increasing speed of technological change and innovation. They urged the Board to explore options for a more timely process to refresh the ICT requirements on a continuing or rolling basis to keep pace with the ever-changing and newly emerging technologies of a dynamic market. Delays in keeping the requirements regularly updated, it was argued, impede industry compliance and hamper the incorporation of accessibility into new products.

Participants urged the Board to revise the rule to cover certain technologies or barriers to access. These recommendations addressed self-service machines and kiosks, which are becoming more prevalent, the growing market of gesture-based interfaces, such as touch screens, the emerging trend in digital or biometric identification as an alternative to password protection, hand held devices and access for people with limited dexterity, refreshable braille, and access for people with cognitive disabilities. In addition, recommendations were made to improve coverage of products with closed functionality, communication device software, web authoring tools, and technologies involving multiple languages, such as those used in foreign language instruction or translation.

Some speakers called attention to failures in the implementation of section 508 resulting in access issues for members of the public and federal employees with disabilities. Comments pointed to the importance of supplementary technical assistance materials, including answers to frequently asked questions, to improve implementation and compliance. It was also recommended that efforts be made to make the functional performance criteria of the rule testable to help validate compliance.

A transcript of the hearing will be posted to the rulemaking docket on the www.regulations.gov website in coming weeks. The Board will hold a second hearing March 1 at the CSUN Conference in San Diego. The hearing will be open to the general public and will not be limited to those registered for the conference.

Further information on this rulemaking is available on the Board’s website.

The hearing will take place at the Board’s meeting space at 1331 F Street, NW, Suite 800, in downtown Washington, D.C.  Registration is not required, but those who wish to provide comments are encouraged to contact Kathy Johnson at johnson@access-board.gov, (202) 272-0041 (voice), or (202) 272-0065 (TTY).  Those unable to attend in person can make arrangements with Ms. Johnson to provide comments by phone.  The Board will also provide a dial-in option (limited capacity) for listening to testimony and online real-time transcription of the proceedings 

Public Hearing on the Draft Update of ICT Requirements
January 11, 9:00 to 12:00
Access Board Meeting Room
1331 F Street, NW, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20004

Call-in option (listening only):
Dial:  (517) 308-9247 or (888) 469-2078 (toll-free)
Passcode: 4144
Note:  Contact Kathy Johnson in advance if you wish to make comments by phone

Real-time transcription:
http://www.streamtext.net/player?event=ACCESSBOARD01-11-2012

A second hearing will be held March 1 in San Diego at the annual CSUN conference.  The hearing will be open to the general public and will not be limited to those registered for the conference.

In the correspondence that followed, my colleague noted that the mobile version of Facebook was “usable” with screen readers but we both agreed that there were a number of things that you could not do on Facebook using the mobile interface or even the iPad/iPod Facebook app.

I wish I had read a December 8th posting from Marco’s Accessibility Blog because he had done all of the work for me, detailing extensively the issues related to the two big social networking sites as well as several more – some of which I’d never heard of before. Marco’s “Social Networking and Accessibility: A rather sad picture” blog does give a pretty comprehensive, sad and up-to-date (he revised the blog several days later with new information) picture of the topic so I highly recommend reading it in its entirety. I like the fact they he did not stop with screen reader AT but also mentioned issues for folks with mobility issues and the requirement to use a mouse/pointing device to access content and perform functions with many of these services.

So, if you are looking here for a good, reliable and accurate review of the major social networking services and their lack of accessibility, head on over to Marco’s and check it out. I will be adding him to my blogroll.

Happy New Year – Let’s hope there are new and good things in store for accessible web design in 2012.

The draft rule jointly refreshes the Board’s Section 508 standards and its Section 255 guidelines which address access to computer hardware and software, websites, media players, electronic documents, telephones and cell phones, PDAs and other ICT products.  The Board is updating these requirements according to recommendations from an advisory body it chartered, the Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee.

The Board released a previous draft of the rule in March 2010 and received almost 400 comments from the public, including industry, disability groups, consumers, government entities, research and trade organizations, accessibility consultants, and others.  In response to this input, the Board has simplified and streamlined the document for greater usability.  The revised draft further harmonizes the rule with other guidelines and standards and eliminates redundancy by referencing the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG).  In addition, revisions have been made to clarify the relationship between performance and technical criteria, coverage of electronic content, and clearer requirements for ICT with closed functionality.

The released draft includes a discussion that explains these and other changes and highlights other topics where public comment is sought.  The deadline for comments is March 7.  During the comment period, the Board will hold public hearings in Washington, D.C. on January 11 and at the annual CSUN Conference in San Diego on March 1.  The Board will follow-up with a proposed rule based on the input received that will provide an additional round of comment before the rule is finalized.

The draft rule and related information are available on the Board’s website. This information is also posted on the www.regulations.gov website which allows visitors to submit or view comments.  For further information, contact Tim Creagan at creagan@access-board.gov, (202) 272-0016 (v), or (202) 272-0074 (TTY).

Public Hearings on the Draft ICT Rule January 11, 9:00 – Noon
Access Board Conference Center
1331 F Street, NW, Suite 800
Washington, DC

March 1, 1:00 – 3:00
27th Annual CSUN conference
Manchester Grand Hyatt
One Market Place
San Diego, CA

This item also published on Maine CITE News.

The New York Times (NYT) recently published an article about the use of “apps” for children with pervasive developmental disorders like autism. They note:

Anecdotally, teachers, parents and therapists describe the profound difference that apps for Apple and Android products have made in helping autistic children develop skills. IPad programs have provided a means of communicating for some children with autism who cannot speak or have language delays. Other apps help children learn to handle social situations that can be stressful, like crowds at malls. And many programs can help develop fine-motor skills, which promote functions like writing or manipulating small objects.

Several lists of apps are provided and readers are encouraged to add more to the list by making a comment.

Read the entire article: Finding Good Apps for Children With Autism

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Photo credit: Licensed by Creative Commons by Notions Capital

Note: January 30, 2012: Siteimprove.com has just launched a new website. I will update my links in this article as soon as I can find the old article.

I found a link to this report by Siteimprove.com in the Accessibility group on LinkedIn this morning regarding a recent review made of the websites of 25 public universities in the United States. The study covers five major aspects of each website including which content management systems were used, how many broken links (per CMS) were discovered, misspellings, common accessibility issues, and the use of platform independent document formats. I was immediately drawn to the statistics on “misspellings” and was not surprised to see that there were an average of 107 misspelling per website. The most common misspellings were: “Oportunities, Technolgy, Accessability, Chemisty, Acquistion, Coodinator, Sustainabilty.”

I decided to do this brief blog on the topic noting in particular the misspelling of the word “accessibility.” It was about then that I noticed that in MY previous blog entry I had misspelled the word “Assistive.”

In all fairness, the spell-checker in my browser does not know how to spell “assistive” either.

C’est la vie.

Read the whole report…

PS: I fixed the other blog entry and am looking for more typos…

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Photo credit: Licensed through Creative Commons by akachela

While much of Sarah’s presentation covered accessibility features I was already fairly familiar with (i.e., VoiceOver, screen flashing for deaf/hard-of-hearing folks, and sticky keys for folks with mobility impairments), she started off demonstrating the new AssistiveTouch feature. It was a lot to absorb.

I had almost forgotten about AssistiveTouch until yesterday when I discovered New York Times tech dude David Pogue’s article from November 10th where he described the new AssistiveTouch features in greater (and great) detail.

Rather than having me comment any further, please head over to Pogue’s Post entitled Apple’s AssistiveTouch Helps the Disabled Use a Smartphone

When I had the opportunity to meet with one of the focus groups, most of the other faculty were rather traditional types who had graced the campus for many years and appeared to enjoy their roles as “sage on the stage.” There was quite a bit of skepticism about distance learning and even though I had a positive reputation for teaching in the traditional modality at that university, the majority of faculty didn’t really seem to value what I was doing.

When it came my time to talk, I chattered away about my views and how as an institution we needed to get out there and expand out “presence” on the Internet and World Wide Web, that we needed to build more server capacity and in particular, not invest in the large scale college library expansion program that was in the works. I remember the look of disdain on the faces of my colleague, but I pressed forward. I can remember one asking me if I really believed that there would come a time when traditional students would actually take distance learning classes in lieu of the campus-based, terrestrial offerings that then were the norm.

The gentleman who was leading the focus group appeared to welcome my vision and even though I suspect he was not suppose to shape the discussion, he gave me lots of clear messages that he thought my vision was indeed the correct one.

The library project did go forward, but on a much smaller scale. Fortunately, the director of the library was also a very smart guy and he and his staff had already seen the writing on the walls. In fact, he eventually became the vice president in charge of information technology at the university and shepherded through a rather dramatic number of technology advances in the next decade.

With this backdrop, I read the recent news story about the pending closure of the medical library at Johns Hopkins University. While this is a loss of tradition, it is clearly, as the title mentions, a sign of the times. The author makes this clever observation:

People don’t go to Johns Hopkins for appendectomies. They go there with rare and difficult conditions to seek help from the top medical minds in the world. If I’m at Hopkins as a patient and not to visit old friends and colleagues, I don’t want my team of physicians and residents to be searching through the stacks for possible answers or keys to my treatment. I want them to pull out their iPads and have instant access to the information they need to make me better.

Read the whole article “Sign of the times: Johns Hopkins shutters its medical library.”

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Photo credit: Image licensed through Creative Commons by Brett Jordan