Accessibility In Print
Our assignment this week was to listen to a podcast entitled Web Accessibility for Everyone. Jeannie Yandel interviewed Wendy Chishom, co-author of Universal Design, and a computer programmer and developer.
In the interview Wendy tells a story about when she was in college and was asked by one of your professors to tutor a blind student in a statistics class. Her first thought was “how in the world am I going to do that”. Then she had to start thinking creatively and came up with several ideas like using legos to teach the concepts. It was during this time that Wendy started thinking about disabilities and how we could overcome the obstacles that prevented them from having the same accessibility than those without disabilities have. I liked one of her quotes; “its not the wheel chair that makes the building inaccessible it’s the stairs”
Wendy and others wrote new universal accessibility guidelines for web developers. In 1999 the WWW adopted those guidelines as an international standard for web design.
Some problems still exist. The Metro bus line, CNN, YouTube as well as others are still not fully functional for people with disabilities. There was one idea I really liked; Wendy mentions that people with disabilities need to be involved in the beginning stages of development. That is such a smart move, who else would know exactly what was needed. I however do not think this is the answer to world peace!
According to National Center on Disability and Access to Education website most of the work in accessibility has been done in the area of visual disabilities. However, according to the US Census 14.3 million Americans age 15 and over have mental disabilities; Alzheimer’s, senility, dementia and learning disabilities. Accessibilities for users with cognitive disabilities can be far greater challenge than for those with other types of disabilities. There still needs to be a lot of work in this area.
Several websites that I found talked about these issues and what they were doing to be proactive. Adobe’s site listed all the considerations they have put into each program to minimize issues with certain disabilities. Another website is Graphic Artists Guild. They have made available for Graphic Artist who are designing materials twelve downloadable symbols to advertise accessibility to employees, customers, audiences, and anyone else who needs access to anything you are designing. The guild makes it easier to create something without having to look all over for symbols.
As designers we need to stay up to date on all the changes and try to impanelment as many into our designs as possible
http://www.graphicartistsguild.org/resources/disability-access-symbols/
http://www.ncdae.org/tools/cognitive/
http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/
