Small tip to help some of your blind friends: do not put 10,000 emojis in the middle of a text or a post if you continue to put text after the emojis because I will tell you that I will Straight give up if I have to listen to “face with tears of joy, face with tears of joy, face with tears of joy,” 23 times just to hear the rest of your text or post.
Oh my god, that’s what screen readers say when they read out emojis?? I didn’t realize.. I will change how I write my posts now… My bad…
This is good to know. Pretend there are twenty three light bulb emojis indicating sudden understanding following this text.
So the clap hands emoji post would be extra annoying since you can’t just speed read it, damn!
YES. That is one of my least favorite emojis because it’s LONG. It also says skin tone on some, and while that’s AWESOME, if you put 30 prayer hands, I have to hear “hands clasped in celebration with medium dark skin tone” 30 times in full. And even if I use a braille display, it still writes it out in full because there’s no real way to represent them any other way yet, so until someone invents a Braille display with like 10 lines that isn’t astronomically expensive, there’s no easy way to skip over them.
Now, at least with some screen readers, punctuation is a little different and if there are multiple of the same thing it’ll say like “17 exclamation points” instead of saying them all individually, and I wish that update would be made to screen readers to speak emojis in multiples that way… That would be a good solution.
Is it okay to use emojis sparingly? I don’t ever use a million like that, the most I’d put in a row is probably two different emojis, lol. But I do feel the need to use either emojis or ASCII faces in order to get emotion across in my writing. Which is better for you, a traditional ASCII face like 🙂 or a newfangled emoji like ☺️? Can your screen reader “translate” things like 🙂 into “smiling face” or do you just hear “colon dash right parentheses”?
Oh yeah, of course! If you only use one or two in a row that’s totally fine! Don’t feel like you have to just stop using them. They are fun and lots of people like them.
As for emoji versus traditional typed out faces, it doesn’t really matter. It can’t translate most of those faces except for a general smiley face, but I know what the symbols put together mean, though this may be difficult for somebody who is not very well versed in print reading. Most blind kids get taught to recognize both though.
There’s so much good info on this post! I didn’t know any of this. Thanks for making it!!
But how do screen readers translate GIFS? Does the OP know that the above post is a gif of a shooting star with the words “the more you know” riding it?
Nope. All I know is that that is an image. Screen readers cannot interpret with the pixels on an image mean. The only reason it can tell me an emoji is because the developers of those emojis programmed them in some way that included alt text, though I cannot tell you how because I am not a programmer or a coder.
Thankfully, somebody noticed the irony in that addition and reblogged it with a description.
the reason that emojis have text associated with them is because emojis were designed not to act as pictures but as a language keyboard and since every one is a pictograph there needs to be a closely associated definition.
that’s also why apple, samsung, or any other company can’t copyright “face with tears of joy” just the art that their operating systems use to express thos pictographs. The art of a set of emojis used by a phone company is essentially a font used for a language.
#NowYouKnow
Also, y’all, in iOS 11, I think somebody somehow saw our nice little thread here and fucking fixed the problem of many emojis because I can remember three (3) distinct times in the past few days that I have come across something like “5 face with tears of joy” and at first been like “what the fuck?? What did that say?“ and then used the rotor to navigate by individual word and character to realize what it was and I was like “OMG!!! My desires have been realized!”
So like I think someone at Apple saw this and answered our prayers guys
The thing that gets me about most arguments against accessibility features in video games is that they’re not just grossly ableist, they’re also hypocritical as hell. Video games have always had accessibility features: we just documented them poorly and called them “cheat codes”. Indeed, having a robust library of difficulty-modifying cheats was considered a mark in a game’s favour! The only difference is that a cheat code is theoretically a secret, which allows it to be framed as elite knowledge, even though it’s functionally identical to having an “infinite lives” switch on the options screen.
Here’s a thesis for you: the Konami Code was the first well-publicised accessibility feature.
being bad at video games is a disability now?
I’m going to assume you’re not being disingenuous here and take this as a serious question. In brief, very few people are generically “bad at video games”; in most cases, difficulty engaging with interactive media stems from one or more of a wide range of physiological conditions, including:
visual deficit (including colourbindness; colourblind individuals often have difficulty identifying threats in action games because they don’t stand out from the background for them)
repetitive strain injury in the hands, wrists or forearms (common for anyone who performs manual labour for a living)
arthritis and other degenerative joint conditions (both those due to age and those comorbid with many autoimmune disorders)
dyslexia (a common symptom of even mild dyslexia is the inadvertent mirroring of sensory-motor responses under pressure, e.g., moving your hand left when you meant to move it right – which is a big problem for action games!)
sensory processing disorders (delayed reaction to visual stimulus is a common symptom)
spatial processing disorders (see above)
chronic pain
propensity for motion sickness
This is, of course, only a partial list. Many of these issues are individually rare, but taken together, we’re looking a huge chunk of the population – up to 40%, by some estimates – who have at least one condition that would impact their ability to play the shooters and action-platformers that are held up as the gold standard for hardcore gaming.
hot tip: if your disability makes you bad at a thing, maybe either put in the extra effort to get good at it or just don’t do it instead of demanding people make the thing easier?????
Here’s the a better question: why is it an issue for you? Accessibility features in video games are entirely transparent to those who choose not to use them. Your experience of play isn’t affected by their existence in any way whatsoever unless you deliberately turn them on. Complaining about the mere existence of such features is like claiming that your viewing experience of a movie is being ruined by the fact that the disc has a subtitle feature on it, even though you haven’t actually turned subtitles on.
(And no, don’t try to frame this as video game developers somehow being victimised by unreasonable demands. The vast majority of developers are more than happy to include accessibility features in their games – and quite sensibly, because, you know, they’re businesspeople, and they want to sell things to as wide an audience as possible. The popular backlash against accessibility features is entirely on the player side.)
honestly, yeah you have a point there, i will concede that. the only problem i have with them is if you still get the achievements and shit with all the disability accomodations on, like with that game Celeste that you were talking about earlier, which is basically tantamount to buying one of those hastily-assembled dodgy steam games that exist solely to give whoever buys them a million steam achievements the moment you boot them up. Like, play your own game however you want, but don’t claim you performing a feat in a significantly easier version of the game is worth the same achievement as performing said feat in the standard game.
Well, if we’re going to frame it as a question of fairness, we’ve got to ask: fair in what sense, and to whom? Let’s flip it around: is it fair for you to receive exactly the same credit for performing a particular in-game feat as a disabled player, though they faced greater obstacles in practice than you did? Should we demand that players who’ve lucked out in the genetic lottery and enjoy above-average coordination and reaction times be obliged play with special handicaps in order to keep things fair for the rest of us? Whose level of ability are we judging fairness against?
An open letter to my teachers: captions aren’t “distracting”, they’re a fucking necessity
With the rise of technology in classrooms, it’s pretty much impossible to get through a school day without having to watch an educational video. Here’s the thing though (@ teachers):
Captions are NOT a privilege! You’re not going out of your way or “doing me a favor”. Captions are a necessary support for some students.
(Important note: I am not Deaf or hearing impaired, and Deaf/hearing impaired students are far from the only ones who benefit from captions. Students with sensory issues may need to limit noise at times, and would only be able to watch videos with captions because of that. Students with a variety of learning disabilities may not be able to process auditory information as quickly as they process visual information, like me. And lastly, there are abled students who find they process information better when they read it instead of hear it! Point being, there are any number of reasons why a student might request for you to put captions on a video, but I guarantee you it’s never to cause a disruption.)
In my opinion, it’s pretty bad if you’re not enabling them automatically (putting students on the spot and opening them up to ridicule when they ask for the supports they need is not cool—better to provide the supports in the first place without being asked). But it’s even worse if a student asks for you to turn on the captions, and you don’t listen! And when you make up an excuse like “but captions are distracting!”, that is sending a message to disabled students’ that their needs are less important than the comfort of their abled counterparts.
The only acceptable excuse I can think of for not turning on captions is when the only available ones are auto generated. In which case… Do your job and check before showing the video, and if it doesn’t have captions, then be sure to provide your own captions and/or transcript for the video. And if you’re not going to take the time to do that, don’t show a video in the first place. Furthermore, NEVER assign a podcast/video to listen to for homework unless you know for a fact that there is a transcript or caption option available. A five minute video is a five minute assignment for most abled people. Without captions or transcripts, a five minute video can be a twenty minute assignment for disabled people.
Foreign language teachers: it’s even harder for students to process spoken language when it isn’t their first language, so enable foreign language captions. I understand that enabling English captions defeats the purpose, but at least enable captions in the language of the class.
Teachers, your ableist discomfort surrounding captions is contrary to what you should believe as a teacher. As a teacher, you should want to provide your students with every opportunity to succeed that you are capable of providing to them. Captions take an extra click of a mouse; they are not a burden. If you deny reasonable requests from students that will improve the quality of their learning simply on the basis of your preference, comfort, teaching style, etc., you’re just a bad teacher.
This also applies in workplaces. I am a hard of hearing medical professional and I cannot tell you the number of required videos I have to watch in a year that are completely inaccessible. Hope I don’t need this info.
It absolutely applies to workplaces and other professional environments. It even applies to watching a fun video or going to a movie in theaters with your friends. Captioned movies are hard to come by and only play in theaters a few times a week, and I know that can be hard to schedule around, but they are a necessity.
“I think we like to think [as a country] we’re making progress. But in reality, we still get turned away from buses. We still have nowhere to live.”
As one indication, the NHS didn’t even make an effort to look like they were trying with the Accessible Information Standard until over 20 years after the DDA went into effect.
I see this very differently than the professor who wrote this. She wants to pay her back about how she acted with a disabled student, but I’ve been in the student’s position more times than I would have liked to. Here’s what most likely happened.
The student takes this letter to the professor and asks to meet with her privately. She does it privately because other students have made a big deal about her accommodations before and it’s embarrassing.
The professor seems friendly, so she disclosed exactly what she needs. Then the professor sits the letter aside and questions her about how often this actually happens, and tells her how big a problem it would be if it happened in this course. This is a threat. The professor is now making her uncomfortable asking for help when she needs it. In my experience, when you have a professor act like this, they’ll often shoot you down when you do ask for help later. The student has probably experienced just this.
After the professor blows off her needs, the student sits in the back of the class and never speaks to the professor again. She obviously no longer trusts the professor anymore. She never used her accommodation that semester. That could be because she never had a panic attack, but more likely, she had several and felt threatened that she’d be kept from graduating if she showed any weakness and asked for help. She may have done well in the course, but it was likely at a huge cost to her health in some way.
Because this student felt so alienated, the professor thinks they did a good job. I’ve lived through this dozens of times. The professor failed this student. She had to work much harder than other students without disabilities to go the same distance. It’s not fucking fair.
It sickens me to see a professor acting like this and thinking they’re the hero of all disabled students. I really wish I could say it’s unique, but it’s fucking not. Not even close.
Yeah the tone of this is very much she seems to think most people don’t need as many accomedation as they are given, even though I generally hear a lot more of people getting nowhere near enough help.
Honestly it also kind of stands out she is a psychology professor I bet that’s part of why she is so entitled and egocentric. Despite having no context for the student’s problems she feels qualified to give unsolicited medical advice, which I am willing to bet was probably like, breathing exercises and shit that you could get out of a random woman’s health magazine, and then she goes home feeling like she saved someone with her shitty generic tips and refusal to help.
Also the second student it seems like she and some other teacher randomly decided a student was a mental health risk, with no evidence of any diagnosis or anything even, and people put them on watch over this despite from what I can tell the student NEVER ACTUALLY DOING ANYTHING?
And then she pats herself on the back for butting into someone’s buisness on an unproven hunch which never actually was shown to be nessassary like????
Like she apparently has decided that she knows what is better for random strangers then they or their own doctors do and is enforcing it and acting like it makes her a hero somehow but, what it really makes her is that obnoxious sitcom psychologist that shows up in one episode giving unsolicited life advice while psychoanalysing their behavior that at the end ofbthe episode gets told to never come back and everyone hates them
The quality control on the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Blu-ray release from Classic Media is… lacking, to put it mildly.
“How bad is it,” you ask? Three examples:
Exhibit A:
My wife and I ordered a copy of the 50th anniversary Blu-ray edition of Rudolph from Amazon, since they had it on discount. What we received had a slip cover, sleeve insert, and disc label all reading “50th Anniversary,” with a copyright date of 2014.
Unfortunately, the actual contents of the disc were the original 2010 edition, based on the menu design and the file timestamps. The (already meager) bonus features mentioned on the packaging, which were unique to the anniversary release, were nowhere to be found.
Yes, misprinted discs sometimes happen, even with major studio releases (sometimes with hilarious results). If it had just been that issue, I’d have written this off as a fluke—though to be honest, I have no idea how many other misprinted copies are in circulation, or whether they’d be recalled even if they were reported.
However, even if we’d gotten the correct edition of the disc, the problems don’t end there.
Exhibit B:
The 2010 version of the Blu-ray contains a noticeable audio glitch in the first verse of “Silver and Gold,” where an entire word has gone missing. (“Everyone wishes [skip] silver and gold…”). This line was correct, with the word “for” intact, on earlier releases; however, I can personally confirm that the line is glitched on the 2010 version.
Again, mastering errors happen, even on major studio releases. Still, once they’re discovered, they’re usually acknowledged by the studio once discovered, and often fixed on newer releases. That’s not always the case, though, even on major-label releases (for instance, the most recent Blu-ray of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast retained a mastering error where a scene from the extended version was wrongly used in the theatrical version).
Unfortunately, Rudolph falls firmly into the latter category. Although this audio glitch was mentioned by several reviewers of the original Blu-ray release, according to the comments on this AVSForum thread, it remains unfixed in the re-release.
But even that isn’t the worst sin committed by Classic Media in their Blu-ray releases of this holiday classic.
Exhibit C:
The packaging for the 2014 release very clearly states that the disc includes English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing. Similarly, the actual packaging for the 2010 Blu-ray includes a [CC] logo on the case.
There is no subtitle track whatsoever on the 2010 edition that we received. None. Nada. Nul. (And no, it doesn’t include NTSC closed-captioning data, either—yes, that’s possible to embed in the video stream on a Blu-ray, though largely pointless and rarely done since many players can’t even display it.)
“Maybe they fixed this on the actual 2014 disc,” you’re thinking? Nope. According to the same AVSForum thread linked above, as well as this DVDizzy review (which clearly shows the correct menu layout, and not what’s on the misprinted copy), there aren’t any subtitles to be found on that release, either, despite the box’s claim to the contrary.
Rudolph has aired on TV with closed captions since at least the early ’90s (and possibly even earlier; I’m only going off my own memory of watching it). The original DVD releases of it from Sony also included subtitles. Even VHS releases of it were captioned.
Seriously, Classic Media, how did you manage to screw up something that’s been present on so many previous releases of this film, get the details wrong on the packaging to add insult to injury, and then keep the erroneous packaging in circulation for 4 years (or 8, if we’re also including the original Blu-ray release)?!?
Verdict: guilty as charged.
Update:
Just received the Anniversary Edition of Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town from the same publisher.
At least this time, the disc is the version that it claims to be (with an “anniversary edition” menu screen, and files having a timestamp of 2015).
Unfortunately, just like Rudolph, the specs printed on the case are complete fabrications. The alleged subtitle track, once again, does not exist.
But deaf people aren’t the only audience that Classic Media has slighted this time around—how about a significant portion of the Canadian market? The packaging mentions the availability a French dub, but don’t get your hopes up, Francophones; the actual disc only offers English and Spanish tracks.
Reminded again with that last reblog and my tag commentary, it’s really no wonder that there were zero wheelchair users (and not many other obviously disabled students) the whole time I went through Toxic School System.
Sure, it was a relatively small system, with maybe 100-120 students per class year when I was there. But, as an indication, out of 600-odd people in the middle/HS complex at any given time? I remember one blind person and one with Down Syndrome, besides the handful of recognized LD/“emotionally disturbed” kids stuck in their segregated special ed classes for at least part of the day.
(Including one of my cousins. My mom wouldn’t let them park me in there in elementary school, which may have been motivated by weird-ass denial but I am still pretty glad. Everything I saw and heard was that bad.)
Anybody who could at all–and cared–took their kids to the neighboring county, which actually tried for some accessibility and useful services even before the ADA. I ended up transferring there for reasons I didn’t think were related at the time, and was struck even then by how many disabled kids I had not been encountering in school before.
While AFAIK, people who can’t get up the stairs may still be out of luck at Toxic College Town HS. That was the case years after the ADA went into effect. (But where’s the problem if you’ve already run off all the students with longer-term mobility problems, right? 😩)
When a system just dgaf about blatantly obvious barriers like that, well…
The dos and don’ts of designing for accessibility are general guidelines, best design practices for making services accessible in government. Currently, there are six different posters in the series that cater to users from these areas: low vision, D/deaf and hard of hearing, dyslexia, motor disabilities, users on the autistic spectrum and users of screen readers.
[…] Another aim of the posters is that they’re meant to be general guidance as opposed to being overly prescriptive. Using bright contrast was advised for some (such as those with low vision) although some users on the autistic spectrum would prefer differently. Where advice seems contradictory, it’s always worth testing your designs with users to find the right balance, making compromises that best suit the users’ needs.
I’ve been wanting something like this to reference! Boosting for the others that like to dabble in code/design.
This is some of the most lucidly written accessibility advice I’ve seen. Making accessible web pages should be the default, not an add-on. It’s really not that hard to do, especially when you think about it from the start – and it benefits everyone.
(Obligatory note that there are exceptions to some of these guidelines, e.g., “bunching” some interactions together is an important way to cue which interactions are related to each other, but that’s why these are guidelines, not absolute rules.)
young web designer: thank you oh my god no one has been able to explain this quite as well and this is just good shit
So, did anybody
notice the irony of posting about accessible design by using pictures
without a description? Designers can be disabled as well! Not everybody is gonna realize that they can
follow the link and scroll all the way to the bottom to get the text. So without further ado, an image description.
[Image description
from OP: 6 posters with two columns in each, giving instructions
about accessible design for various groups. The posters were designed
by Karwai Pun and her team at Home Office Digital. The text of the
posters follows:
Designing for users on the autistic spectrum
Do
use simple colours
write in plain English
use simple sentences and bullets
make buttons descriptive – for
example, Attach files
build simple and consistent layouts
Don’t
use bright contrasting colours
use figures of speech and idioms
create a wall of text
make buttons vague and
unpredictable – for example, Click here
build complex and cluttered layouts
Designing for users of screen readers
Do
describe images and provide
transcripts for video
follow a linear, logical layout
structure content using HTML5
build for keyboard use only
write descriptive links and heading – for example, Contact us
Don’t
only show information in an image
or video
spread content all over a page
rely on text size and placement
for structure
force mouse or screen use
write uninformative links and heading – for example, Click
here
Designing for users with low vision
Do
use good contrasts and a readable
font size
publish all information on web
pages (HTML)
use a combination of colour,
shapes and text
follow a linear, logical layout
-and ensure text flows and is visible when text is magnified to 200%
put buttons and notifications in context
Don’t
use low colour contrasts and small
font size
bury information in downloads
only use colour to convey meaning
spread content all over a page
-and force user to scroll horizontally when text is magnified to
200%
separate actions from their context
Designing for users with physical or motor
disabilities
Do
make large clickable actions
give form fields space
design for keyboard or speech only
use
design with mobile and touch
screen in mind
provide shortcuts
Don’t
demand precision
bunch interactions together
make dynamic content that requires
a lot of mouse movement
have short time out windows
tire users with lots of typing and scrolling
Designing for users who are D/deaf or hard of
hearing
Do
write in plain English
use subtitles or provide
transcripts for video
use a linear, logical layout
break up content with
sub-headings, images and videos
let users ask for their preferred communication support when
booking appointments
Don’t
use complicated words or figures
of speech
put content in audio or video only
make complex layouts and menus
make users read long blocks of
content
don’t make telephone the only means of contact for users
Designing for users with dyslexia
Do
use images and diagrams to support
text
align text to the left and keep a
consistent layout
consider producing materials in
other formats (for example, audio and video)
keep content short, clear and
simple
let users change the contrast between background and text
Don’t
use large blocks of heavy text
underline words, use italics or
write capitals
force users to remember things
from previous pages – give reminders and prompts
rely on accurate spelling – use
autocorrect or provide suggestions
So, did anybody
notice the irony of posting about accessible design by using pictures
without a description? (end quote)
I did! Thank you for writing this up!
Also, for the general discussion: Now, go through these lists, and see how many “Do’s” and “Don’t’s” overlap.
Some needs are conflicting (unless you put them under a single guideline of: “provide a choice of formats”), but most are shared across multiple disability needs.
That’s a big whopping clue that accessible design is good design, period (and not just when it comes to Web pages, either).
Thank you for the transcript! My processing issues cos autism, dyslexic traits and ADHD made reading the original image difficult (ironically.) The text is too small and the background is too bright – another point for making things accessible.
[Image: tweet by Titanium Cranium (@FelicityTC) including three screenshots of a Harry potter book in three different formats on Amazon. Text:
“Harry Potter on Amazon –
Print: $6.39
Audio: $44.99
Braille: $100.00
#CripTax”]
So, let me explain this a bit.
The defenders of CripTax prices will say that those prices cover the cost of production. This is, without a doubt, true. I work at a university where we often have to take written materials and convert them into braille – it takes a LOT of people hours, special software, and a braille embosser.
But those defenders of higher prices are reversing the argument to justify fleecing disabled readers.
What do I mean by that?
Braille is not magic. It is done by taking plain text and feeding it through fairly affordable translation software, creating a document that can easily be printed in braille.
All that time and effort and special software? IS NOT FOR THE BRAILLE.
It is to take the document provided by the publisher (usually in PDF format, the same file they send to the printers) and turn it into plain, unadorned text, by hand. Text has to be “stripped” (OCR/text recognition); images have to be described; footnotes have to be embedded; special pullouts and other formatting shifted or removed.
Printing in braille is cheap; reverse engineering a finished text to print it in braille IS NOT.
Same with those audio books. After a book is completed and, often, after it has already been published, the publisher arranges to have the book recorded by a professional voice actor/reader, which usually also involves a recording producer, if not a recording studio, which all stacks up to $$, no two ways about it.
However: that cost? IS RARELY FACTORED INTO THE BUDGET OF PRINTING A BOOK.
Oh, it might be, if the author is JK Rowling and it is well known that readers will want audio versions right away. But most of the time, nope, the audio book is produced only after the hard copy book has become a decent seller, and so it’s an extra cost which is claimed must be covered by making the audio version extra expensive to buy. (Even then it’s somewhat ridiculous, since honestly, creating an audio book is, in the end, cheaper than printing, factoring in the cost of paper.)
If publishers factored audio book production into the assumed costs of publishing a book, they would have very little reason to price it higher.
If publishers factored in creating a “plain text” file – including having editors/authors describe images – that could be used to print braille copies or to be used with refreshable braille readers (electronic pinboards, basically), then there would be zero reason to price those books higher.
tl;dr: Yes, it’s a #criptax, and the excuse that “those formats are more expensive to produce so they have to be priced higher” is only true if you completely throw out the premise that publishers have an obligation to account for disabled readers when they are actually budgeting for and publishing the book.
I’m really glad you brought this up, because this is exactly the sort of argument thatpeople try to use to justify inaccessibility in all kinds of areas. When we tell a company that their website or appliance or piece of technology isn’t accessible, they frequently tell us that they are sorry to hear that but that the accessibility is too expensive and time-consuming to add in now. There is also a provision in the law that allows companies to not bother including accessibility in their products if the cost of building in the accessibility is more than 5% of the total cost to build the whole product in the US.
That seems reasonable on the surface, doesn’t it? Except here’s the thing—the accessibility should have been a part of the original plans to begin with and designed in from the very beginning and should have been considered a necessary element and just another ordinary part of the cost of producing the product, not some extra feature that can be opted out of if it’s too expensive. The problem is that these companies do not understand the fact that if you cannot afford to build the product with the accessibility included, then you cannot afford to build the product and that is that. It’s exactly the same as not being able to afford to make the product with all elements up to safety and health codes and standards. If you can’t afford to meet the legal standards, then you can’t afford to make the product, and it’s that simple. Accessibility is not an exception to this and it should not be considered as such. It should be just as much an ordinary required part of the design process as any other element, not an extra, shiny, fancy feature that you can just choose not to bother with if it costs a little bit of money.
Accessibility should be part of the standard design process just as much as safety codes and health standards and other legal regulations. The ADA has existed for 20 years so companies have had ample time to catch up and learn to plan for accessibility from the beginning as a part of the standard required design process. If you can’t afford to create the product fully up to code, standards, and accessibility laws, then you simply can’t afford to make the product. No excuses, no exceptions.
I have often said that, very often, the high cost of disability accessibility is not actually for the accessibility itself. The actual high cost is often due to the lack of foresight and planning for accessibility from the design stage onwards.
Let me explain what I mean with an example. Take accessibility in a building. Usually making a building accessible means you need things like braille signage, ramps to entrances, wide doorways that leave plenty of room for a wheelchair to pass through, and so forth. If you design a new building from scratch to incorporate all of these design elements from the beginning, literally before the building is a hole in the ground, then the total cost of integrating accessible features into the building is less than one percent of the total cost of constructing that building.
On the other hand, if you don’t bother to account for the need for disability access and just build the building first, and then go, “oops, we didn’t design for accessibility”, then you will need to literally tear down parts of the building and reconstruct it from scratch. If this is your primary approach to accessibility, then of course the cost of accessibility may seem expensive. But it’s not actually the ramp or the wide door ways that are expensive. What is expensive is all the extra cost and effort of completely undoing parts of what you had already created wrongly so that you can recreate it correctly. In other words, the actual expense is the lack of planning ahead for accessibility.
This is the first I learned how books could be more cheaply accessible if this was planned for ahead of time. But it’s the same principle at work. Unfortunately, most people don’t understand all this and blame disabled people for wanting accessibility instead of blaming designers, architects, inventors and book publishers, and so forth, as well as the people responsible for contracting them, for having failed to consider the needs of disabled people when there was still time to integrate accessibility during the design and initial construction phase, when it could have been done cheaply.
What we need is for more designers, architects, inventors, book publishers, policy makers, program managers, and so forth to learn about the principles of universal design.
Unfortunately, most people don’t understand all this and blame disabled people for wanting accessibility instead of blaming designers, architects, inventors and book publishers, and so forth, as well as the people responsible for contracting them, for having failed to consider the needs of disabled people when there was still time to integrate accessibility during the design and initial construction phase, when it could have been done cheaply.
reiterating for emphasis.
My mom is a textbook braillest.
She has the software, fixes the formatting, takes the textbook and makes it translatable into braille.
Most of her work ends up becoming rush jobs, because schools always forget about their blind students and the materials that they need.
They start semesters without the right textbooks, are provided the materials late, can’t take the tests at the same times, because schools and teachers usually lack the foresight to provide the materials in advance.
Yes, yes yes yes. I’m so glad you know about this because this is like problem number one for blind students. Schools still don’t seem to get that this is a thing they really do have to do… It’s constant and so common that it should really blow your mind, yet nobody learns from it. And even after they get you your stuff, they still don’t seem to get that you need to come back the next year or the next semester for more, and they act as though they will never have another blind student again and that this is just a one time thing that they can brush off and ignore. It’s such an epidemic and we have been trying to fight for years.
Reblogging for added commentary from @inlustris and @actuallyblind
[Image is a poster explaining briefly the origin and meaning of green, yellow, and red interaction signal badges, referred to above as Color Communication Badges.]
if youre not autistic or suffer from an actual disorder, dont use these. its not cute.
er… you know a lot of autistic people go to conventions, right? And people with social anxiety disorders and panic disorders? Shit if I could get away with using this at work I would.
I would like to introduce myself. I refer to myself as Sam Thomas, though my legal name and how a lot of people know me is Matthew. I am officially diagnosed autistic.
If you have any question as to the truth of this, I would like to direct your attention to this YouTube video that ASAN produced promoting the above-mentioned conference. I appear as the first person in the video and you can find more images of my face on my blog.
At this conference, not only did we use these communication badges pictured above, but we actually had the opportunity to meet Jim Sinclair, the inventor of these badges.
During the part of the conference in which Jim Sinclair gave us a history of Autism Network International (ANI)—which they were a co-founder of—they talked to us about the establishment of this particular piece of assistive technology. Basically, it was a simple idea that seemed to fit a need and quickly became very popular among many autistic spaces for it’s practicality and ease of use.
The conference it originated from is called Autreat and is held annually by ANI. This is an autism conference that accepts Autistics and Cousins (ACs)—that is, anyone diagnosed or otherwise self-identifying with any disorder autistic or similar that may share a number of autistic traits.
There was a need. The need was met. This is how we can safely assume most technology either emerges or becomes popular.
We also talked about something called Universal Design and the Curb-Cutter Effect. The Curb-Cutter Effect is when something to fit a specific need is found to create convenience in a broader area than intended. Curb cuts allowing for wheelchair accessibility to sidewalks proved to also be convenient to anyone who may have trouble with steps or even simply a mother with a baby stroller or maybe a child with a wagon. This is a desirable outcome with disability rights advocacy as creating convenience for non-disabled people often makes the assistive technology easier to advocate for.
In this sense, these colored communication badges could serve that Curb-Cutter effect. Not only would this be perfectly acceptable for non-disabled people to use for convenience, but would also help to increase their effectiveness and convenience for those of us who need them. Here are a few examples:
Increased popularity makes the colored communication badges more easily recognizable to the general public, making them as effective outside the above-mentioned autism conferences as inside.
Increase in demand would create increase in supply and availability, likely making these available to pretty much anyone and even being included with, say, the name tags you are required to wear at most cons.
In addition to these helping people recognize the communication state of the wearer, the wearer will be able to recognize whom they can feel more comfortable to approach.
Increased popularity would make these badges more acceptable for public use and less alienating to those who would wear them frequently.
This is not something that we are completely incapable of surviving without; this is something that was convenient and made our lives a lot easier. If that can be easily shared with the general public, then what purpose does it serve not to share it?
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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