Today marks the 13th anniversary of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). In celebration of GAAD, I want to highlight the direct impacts on digital inclusion and accessibility that we at the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) have achieved over the past year.
As an organization focused on improving accessibility, we produce a wealth of knowledge content. This includes our Talent Lab accessibility learning modules, our AccessWorld technology magazine and podcast, the peer-reviewed Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness (JVIB), and our published research studies. In addition, we also act to directly impact digital accessibility for people who are blind or have low vision.
Major Victory in Accessibility Public Policy
Recently, we celebrated a significant victory in the realm of public policy. Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) covers the accessibility of state and local government entities, such as city agencies, educational institutions, public transport, and others, for people with disabilities. The Department of Justice recently published a rule for entities covered by Title II of the ADA, setting out specific guidelines on website and mobile application accessibility.
Historically, the ADA has required entities to make their services accessible, but it did not provide specifications regulations and standards for digital accessibility. This new ruling is particularly important because it establishes a specific standard, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA, which Title II entities must meet for their mobile apps and websites. This means there are now concrete rules that must be followed and a set of standards to which organizations can be held accountable regarding accessibility.
AFB played a key role in shaping this rulemaking. In 2023, during the Department of Justice’s comment period on the proposed rulemaking, AFB, along with our allies, submitted extensive comments and built a strong coalition informed by AFB’s research on digital accessibility. We are excited to report that our comments led to specific changes in the exceptions to the rulemaking. The DOJ had proposed to exempt large swaths of educational content from the accessible design requirements, even though we know education is a crucial area that urgently needs to be accessible to people who are blind or have low vision. Citing the findings from our Access and Engagement study on the educational impacts of the pandemic, the Department of Justice decided to drop the exceptions for educational content. This change means that blind students and parents can expect to have significantly greater access to information and coursework at public schools and universities.
This landmark rule will also influence future rulemaking for other groups of entities that play an important role in the lives of people with disabilities. The Department of Health and Human Services has already issued rules that mirror the Title II rules for many healthcare providers, human services providers, and early childhood education programs. We expect to see more activity affecting online access to education and housing in the future. For more information on this rulemaking and our role in it, check out this blog post.
Ongoing Research
We continue to study the impacts of accessibility, or the lack thereof, for people who are blind or have low vision. This research provides essential knowledge and hard data for those seeking to improve digital inclusion and also strengthens our advocacy efforts for policies and legislation.
Most recently, we published our second Barriers to Digital Inclusion study, in which 20 people who are blind or have low vision kept a detailed record of all the accessibility barriers they encountered over a 10-day period. We documented that, on average, these participants experienced 12 accessibility barriers per week, involving tasks ranging from booking travel to shopping for gifts online, and that many tasks took twice as long when websites, apps, and kiosks are inaccessible. While anecdotal knowledge of the state of accessibility is valuable, having hard data and statistics bolsters the knowledge we have from our lived experiences.
Our research team is now investigating how artificial intelligence will affect people with disabilities. The research will explore AI risks such as job displacement, digital exclusion, biases in automated decisions, and concerns over privacy and security. The goal is to establish a baseline understanding of the opportunities and barriers that we can share in advocacy and outreach to industry and policymakers.
Talent Lab and Digital Inclusion Initiatives
Our Digital Inclusion team includes Client Services, which works directly with companies and organizations to improve the accessibility of their products and services. It also encompasses our Talent Lab program, where we instruct future developers on the details of web and software accessibility.
In June, we will welcome our internship program's third cohort, involving post-secondary education students pursuing degrees in computer science or related fields. Additionally, we recently celebrated the graduation of our first class of apprentices, who have now found employment in the industry. Our apprentices, individuals who are blind or have low vision, work with our interns to learn about accessibility, project management, and advocacy.
It is exciting to see how our direct actions have a noticeable impact on digital inclusion, both as someone who cares about AFB's mission and as someone who is blind and directly experiences the effects of improved accessibility.
