Digital Accessibility and Technology
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This page has curated news on Digital Accessibility and Technology. There are resources from 13 countries and regions, with a total of 65 links.
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Highlights
From International News:
The Greatest beautiful music video showing people using assistive digital technology. (2022, Apple)
Games Are More Visually Accessible Than Ever. “Indie and big-name studios alike are innovating new ways to include blind and low-vision players, from text-to-speech to sound cues.” (2023, Wired)
Accessibility checklist, testing strategies and considerations. From the Washington Post. (2023, Washington Post)
Failings in accessibility processes and procurement. Highlighted in a global report: “Despite widespread senior endorsement of accessibility and inclusion, most organisations still need to adapt their project processes to embed accessibility.” (2022, AbilityNet)
A Digital Cage is Still a Cage “At their most extreme, the use of new and emerging technologies could replicate the worst features of institutional care rather than facilitate independent living and inclusion within the community.” (2022, University of Essex)
From the United States:
Why Americans With Disabilities Use The Internet Less Frequently (2022, BOIA)
Resources by country:
Global
International News
Designing For Neurodiversity Resources Roundup (Aug, DigitalA11Y)
Google Maps Adds Transit Alerts For Broken Elevators, Accessibility Issues (Jul, CNET)
Coding accessibility: Software by the blind, for the blind feature on the NVDA screen reader. (May, GitHub)
Accessibility Training at Microsoft “Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of our updated Accessibility Fundamentals learning path, free for all.” (Apr, Microsoft)
Alt Text Selfies a beautiful collection of self-descriptions. (Alt Text Selfies)
How to improve digital inclusion and accessibility for girls with disabilities. (2023, UNICEF)
More Than Half Of All Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II Players Used The Game's Graphical Accessibility Settings (2023, Game Informer)
6 Reasons Why Accessibility is Maintained, Not Attained (2023, AccessiCart)
Why making video games accessible for disabled players is empowering Sony’s Access Controller is the latest high-profile device built with disabled gamers in mind. (2023, CBC)
Try Venngage to make accessible infographics. It's now easier to create professional quality business visuals anyone can access (2023, Wonder Tools)
Forza Motorsport: the Blind accessibility review. “Forza Motorsport is indeed playable by blind gamers and should be the gold standard for any and all racing games from now on when it comes to accessibility and approachability.” (2023, Victor Dima) See further discussion of blind driving assists from Kotaku and a detailed accessibility review from Sightless Kombat.
Cripping Data Visualizations: Crip Technoscience as a Critical Lens for Designing Digital Access. “This paper investigates the challenge of designing accessible data visualizations through the lens of crip technoscience. We present four speculative design case studies that conceptually explore four qualities of access built on crip wisdom: access as an ongoing process, a frictional practice, an aesthetic experience, and transformation” (Link to pdf, 2023, ASSETS '23)
8 ways Google is making daily tasks more accessible New accessibility updates come to Maps, Search, Chrome and more. (2023, Google)
How friendship between NVDA founders Mick Curran and Jamie Teh is changing lives for thousands of blind people. (2023, ABC News)
Google Meet grows more inclusive with new closed captioning languages. (2023, Android Police)
Japanese Game Studios Are Taking Accessibility to the Next Level. “Developers like Koei Techmo and Tango Gameworks are working to make accessible design a global standard.” (2023, Wired)
Apple previews Live Speech, Personal Voice and more new accessibility features. “New software features for cognitive, speech, and vision accessibility are coming later this year” (2023, Apple)
Games Are More Visually Accessible Than Ever. “Indie and big-name studios alike are innovating new ways to include blind and low-vision players, from text-to-speech to sound cues.” (2023, Wired)
Create inclusive content with the new Accessibility Assistant in Microsoft 365. (2023, Microsoft 365 Blog)
Practicing digital accessibility in the workplace. Access conclusions taken from reading Reddit. (2023, Adobe Blog)
This feature has been disabled: Critical intersections of disability and information studies (2023, First Monday)
Blind news audiences are being left behind in the data visualisation revolution: here's how we fix that. (2023, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism)
Influencing the Trends of Digital Inclusion: An Interview with Jonathan Hassell (2023, Accessibility.com)
Accessibility checklist, testing strategies and considerations. From the Washington Post. (2023, Washington Post)
Individualization is the future of digital accessibility an argument that “universal design is not a universal solution.” (2023, Domingos de Oliveira)
How Indie Studios Are Pioneering Accessible Game Design. (2022, Wired)
Do No Harm Guide: Centering Accessibility in Data Visualization. (2022, Urban Institute)
‘Hey, GitHub!’ will let programmers code with just their voice, together with AI-assisted code suggestions. (2022, The Verge)
Failings in accessibility processes and procurement. Highlighted in a global report: “Despite widespread senior endorsement of accessibility and inclusion, most organisations still need to adapt their project processes to embed accessibility.” (2022, AbilityNet)
The Greatest beautiful music video showing people using assistive digital technology. (2022, Apple)
Discussion of Human-Computer Interaction Accessibility Practice with chronically ill people. (2022, HCI & Design at UW)
How inclusion drives innovation in Windows 11: “he culture of inclusion within the Windows engineering team has helped to foster the development of more inclusive and delightful Windows experiences for everyone.” (2022, Windows)
What’s new in Microsoft 365 accessibility for Summer 2022 (2022, Microsoft)
Accessibility and QR codes: considerations and guidance for creating accessible experiences with QR codes. (2022, Tetralogical)
Celebrate Disability Pride, Uplift Gaming and Disability Communities and Creators with Team Xbox (2022, Xbox)
How to make the most of the Mac’s accessibility features (2022, The Verge)
Tech journalism’s accessibility problem:
“Tech newsrooms (The Verge’s very much included) need informed accessibility coverage. They need articles drawing from firsthand experience. They need to do that without heaping the burden on a small group of disabled writers.” (2022, The Verge)
How to Design for Accessibility with Your iOS App (2022, Intuit Engineering)
By the Blind, For the Blind reflecting in particular on open source software where tools can be full integrated with the operating system. (2022, Devin Prater)
A Digital Cage is Still a Cage “At their most extreme, the use of new and emerging technologies could replicate the worst features of institutional care rather than facilitate independent living and inclusion within the community.” (2022, University of Essex)
May 19th was Global Accessibility Awareness Day focusing on digital accessibility. (2022, GAAD)
The Performative A11yship of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (2022, Adrian Roselli)
Let's Discuss: Mobile World Congress and the mobile disability gap reflections on mobile and digital inclusion (2022, Valuable 500)
How esports and gaming can create more accessibility for gamers who are disabled (2022, Nerd Street)
The Mobile Disability Gap Report 2021. A report on 7 low- and middle-income countries finds that persons with disabilities are significantly less likely to own a smartphone or use mobile internet. “The disability gap typically widens at each stage of the mobile internet journey” (2021, GSMA)
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Africa
Kenya
How Kenya's ICT Accessibility Standards can create more inclusive workplaces (2023, The Standard)
Report Highlights Increased Usage of Mobiles (2022, Global Accessibility News)
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Uganda
Luganda text-to-speech: breaking barriers and promoting accessibility for visually impaired. (Mar, Africa News)
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Asia
Bangladesh
Bangladesh adopts digital accessibility guideline After months of dedicated efforts, ICT Division has officially approved the ‘Digital Service and Web Designing Guideline for Inclusive Accessibility 2022.’ (2023, The Business Post)
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China
Alibaba Platforms Leverage Technology to Support Users With Disabilities “by using high-tech means to improve accessibility on its e-commerce and navigation platforms”. (Jan, Alizila)
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India
WhatsApp leads the way in digital accessibility in India. (2023, Deccan Chronicle)
State of digital accessibility in India (2021, Financial Express)
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Qatar
Mada Center enhancing digital accessibility for persons with disabilities (2023, The Peninsula)
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Europe
Europe
Digital Skills, Accommodation and Technological Assistance for Employment: The employment gap between persons with and without disabilities is about 24 percentage points:
“lack of awareness, provision of assistive technology, reasonable accommodation and development of digital skills contribute to this stark gap.” (Jul, EDF)
The Digital Services Act will create second-class internet users. (2022, EDF)
The European Accessibility Act's June 2022 Deadline "the member states of the European Union must create their own digital accessibility law per the European Accessibility Act" (2022, BOIA)
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Luxembourg
“Technology is a door opener” Interview with Tanja Kleut on digital accessibility, technology and legislation. (2023, Portail de l'accessibilité numérique)
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Norway
Inaccessible Possibilities: experiences of using ICT to engage with services among young persons with disabilities: even though they're seen as digitally native doesn't mean they can use health and social services online. (2021, Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology)
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Ukraine
New standard to make government websites and applications more user-friendly for everyone. (2022, Yahoo! News)
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United Kingdom
It's not all doom and gloom: What the pandemic has taught us about digitally inclusive practices that support people with learning disabilities to access and use technologies. (2022, British Journal of Learning Disabilities)
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North America
United States
To Reduce Disability Bias in Technology, Start With Disability Data. “This paper identifies the various ways in which data sets may exclude, inaccurately count, or be non-representative of disabled people.” (Jul, Center for Democracy & Technology)
Unlocking the Virtual Front Door An Examination of Federal Technology’s Accessibility for People with Disabilities, Older Adults and Veterans (Link to pdf, 2022, Senate Special Committee on Aging)
Anticipate and Adjust: Cultivating Access in Human-Centered Methods. (Summary of a research paper on approaches to accessibility in human-computer interaction research communities., 2022, Kelly Mack)
Fulfilling our commitment to accessibility and inclusion reports from a recent "digital forum" (2022, Microsoft Industry Blogs)
Why Americans With Disabilities Use The Internet Less Frequently (2022, BOIA)
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