Technology

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, requires that electronic and information technology developed with federal funding be accessible to people with disabilities. This includes training materials developed with federal funds that are disseminated to users via the internet. Currently, I direct the National Clearinghouse on Rehabilitation Training Materials (NCRTM). This contract offers technical assistance to individuals and organizations who submit resources to the NCRTM.

November is National Family Caregivers Month. While caregiving can be a very rewarding experience, caregivers are at risk of fatigue, increased stress, and other negative health consequences. One way to help reduce the stressors faced by caregivers is to learn about and employ helpful tools and resources.

In a recent industry show-and-tell, Paul Schroeder of the American Foundation of the Blind gave us all a good chuckle when he said “I didn’t realize 508 referred to the number of weeks it would take to get the standards updated!”

If the ADA were a person, it should be graduating college by now and looking for a job. However, workplace equality for people with disabilities is where the least progress has been made in the last quarter century, according to an informal poll of webinar attendees during “24 Years of the ADA: Progress, Pitfalls and Possibilities” hosted by Cornell University and the Northeast ADA Center on July 9, 2014. Where has the most progress been made?

The country is aging and so is the workforce. According to the 2012 Census, there were over four million full-time workers age 65 and older. The aging process can bring with it a gradual decrease in vision, hearing, and physical abilities. Jobs that were once easy for a 30 or 40-year-old to perform can become challenging for a 60 or 70-year-old. For example, in our work, some veterans have told us that war wounds sustained in the 1960s and 1970s are only now starting to take their toll, inducing new mobility and dexterity limitations.

Want to know how to make a website accessible? Google the answers. Want a mainstream phone with built-in speech output for using it without vision? Go to an electronics store. Want to know how to make an ATM accessible? Put your headphone jack in pretty much any ATM. Want to know how to change your organization so that accessibility becomes an integral part of everyone's job? Um...  As time goes by more and more of the technological challenges around accessibility are being solved, written about, and widely implemented.