Digital Disability and Accessibility

Introduction

• Focus is on the evolving landscape of disability rights and accessibility within digital communication tech and internet-driven media.
• Digital technology transcends national boundaries, leading to international regulations positively affecting digital technology accessibility.
• Digital media accessibility is extending its reach, reshaping how traditional national laws are interpreted via transnational media networks.

Digital Disability

• Digital environments transform the impacts of impairments.
• Online, those with perception, dexterity, or cognition impairments may face considerable challenges due to inaccessible design, leading to digital disability.
• Digital tech offers potential because digital info can be tailored to a person’s accessible format, such as images, sound, or haptic feedback.
• Lack of accessibility online is a design choice, often due to ignorance rather than malice, differing from naturally occurring barriers in the physical world.

Digital Accessibility

• Accessibility rarely arises naturally from industries seeking out the customer base presented by people with disabilities.
• Accessibility typically stems from laws, regulations, disability rights organizations, and activists.
• Disability rights legislation often takes an anti-subordination approach, requiring individuals to prove they belong to the group the legislation protects.
• The same fight for accessibility must be repeated across jurisdictions because laws and regulations are made and enforced at a national or sub-national level.
• Four elements slow the adoption of accessible design in digital media production: reluctance to embrace commercial opportunity, problems with applicable and enforceable laws and regulations, and limited geographic reach.
• The World Wide Web Consortium and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRDP) promote accessibility at an international level.
• Accessibility changes come not only from regulations and court rulings but also from the activities of activists and civil society organizations.
• Internet-enabled global media companies enable accessibility norms established in one major market to impact the whole global network, upgrading accessibility for all.
• The internet also enables global crowdsourcing of accessible digital media options for local consumption.

Netflix and Audio Description

• Netflix committed to providing closed captions to almost all content since 2014, following a 2012 court ruling.
• A similar class action was rejected because the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that as Netflix was online, it did not occupy any physical place.
• Protests around the accessibility of Netflix programming, especially regarding audio description, were catalyzed by the 2015 Daredevil TV series.
• Netflix began providing audio description in April 2015, starting with Daredevil.
• Netflix has since taken a leading role in providing and distributing audio description, aiming to reach more customers through this accessibility.
• People shared info online before 2014 about how to hack into the Netflix system to add captions.
• Open-source tools, such as the Amara captioning system, aid in caption preparation for YouTube videos.
• Audio description can be created through YouDescribe, where people can request and provide audio descriptions for YouTube videos.
• Netflix and Google won the Helen Keller Achievement Award in 2017 for their contributions to improving the quality of life for people with vision loss.

Social Media

• YouTube, Facebook, and others, are improving accessibility.
• Previous social media platforms presented issues with inaccessibility.
• Facebook underwent an accessibility overhaul in 2009, working with the American Foundation for the Blind.
• Activists and activist organizations have driven these improvements, leveraging the legal framework available within the United States.
• Large Chinese language social media networks have notable problems with accessibility.
• These Chinese platforms are starting to address accessibility as they seek to expand their global networks.

Smartphones

• Concerns were raised about the accessibility of the flat glass screen when Apple launched its iPhone in 2007.
• In 2007, the Hearing Loss Association of America filed a lawsuit claiming the iPhone was not compatible with hearing aids.
• Apple's OS 3.0 update in June 2009 included accessibility features for hearing and vision-impaired users, like voiceover, zoom, and contrast controls.
• Both Apple's iOS and Google's Android have since developed a wide range of accessibility features.
• Both systems provide and enforce accessibility requirements on the Apps added to the phones.

MOOCs and eLearning

• Legal action was taken against US-based universities for adopting an inaccessible version of Amazon’s Kindle, leading to a ruling that emerging technologies used by American universities needed to be accessible to all students
• MOOCs launched with accessibility features, particularly through edX and Coursera when they became widely adopted in 2011.
• This framework impacted the global industry, with competitors adopting the same commitment to accessibility.

Conclusion

• Even in high-income countries, people with disabilities are less likely to have access to the internet or information technology.
• Digital media accessibility continues to evolve, creating new barriers.
• There are still many traditional media providers in different jurisdictions that have no compunction to improve their levels of accessibility.
• The continued success of the disability rights movement in the United States is crucial to the continued success of these global benefits.
• Developments have increased opportunities for people with disabilities to participate in society and popular culture through accessible digital media.