Category Archives: Building the culture of accessibility

Jim Tobias of Inclusive Technologies participated in an Office on Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) webcast on August 16, 2012. It was a chance to discuss how emerging technologies like the cloud and mobile apps will address accessibility. Under Secretary Kathy Martinez, Vint Cerf of Google, and Jim kicked around some interesting ideas about the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure and getting information out to more people who could benefit from accessible solutions.

There’s a new Spider-Man movie out (no, I won’t link to it — if you haven’t already been slimed by the promos, you probably don’t live close enough to a theatre anyway). And like seemingly every work of fiction since the Bible (no comments, please), the bad guy just has to be someone with a disability. In the current case, the real trouble begins when the character attempts to do something about his missing arm. So the message is … leave half-well enough alone? Stay tuned for the accessible technology remakes: wheelchairs become Transformers that swallow their riders whole; Chucky as an AAC device that whispers and kills; JAWS terrorizes web surfers.

We’ve put together a new music video about web accessibility, called “POUR Me a Website”. Take a look and leave a comment here or on YouTube.

Here’s an example of how to approach accessibility: with enthusiasm and professionalism. This ESPN video of how they do captioning takes a regulatory requirement and makes it part of the everyday excitement of producing live video content for a huge, demanding audience.