5 Ways To Avoid An Accessibility Fail
Article Link: www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/07/31/5-ways-to-avoid-an-accessi...

Are inaccessible buildings really all that much of a problem, next to some of the other problems disabled people face? No ... and yes. For comparison:

Only about 19% of people with disabilities in the U.S. have a job.

The poverty rate for Americans with disabilities is about double the rate for non-disabled people, and the gap has narrowed only slightly over the last ten years.

One-third to one-half of people killed by police in recent years have had some kind of disability.

Preliminary data from April 2020 suggested that about 27% of the total deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S. were people with disabilities in long-term congregate care.

We don't know yet how many disabled people have died from Covid-19 in part because of discriminatory treatment policies that explicitly disadvantage disabled people. But we know about some specific losses, like Michael Hickson, a Black man with traumatic brain injury who was denied treatment for Covid-19, over the strong objections of his wife.

Alongside these and other dire conditions and dangers, not having a complete choice of restaurants or being blocked by steps from shopping in a vintage record store may seem trivial. And in terms of sheer suffering and immediate consequences, maybe they are less important. But lack of complete accessibility affects far more than recreational shopping and dining, and is still one of the key barriers that hold disabled people back in modern American life.

To start with, for disabled people inaccessibility is discrimination. This is one of the core insights of the disability rights movement. With disability, it's not enough to want or intend to do right. Your feelings about disabled people aren't much help. You have to do actual things to ensure disabled people have equal access and opportunity. Sometimes, you have to change familiar practices. You may have to do more for a disabled person in order to treat them equally. And you may have to make physical changes to your buildings and facilities in order to ensure your door really is open to disabled people, both literally and figuratively.

One isolated instance of poor access may not be that harmful by itself. But restrictions on disabled people's mobility and choices are cumulative. And they infect every part of our lives. The problem isn't not being able to go into one restaurant on one day. It's all of the spaces we've been excluded from purely by their physical design, and by owners and managers who are unwilling or uninterested in fixing the problem. It's never really knowing what will and won't be accessible to your particular type of disability. It's having to revise and re-revise your daily plans at a moment's notice. It's watching the dominoes of your carefully arranged plans and coping techniques topple one after another, triggered by a single step, or a door that's an inch too narrow. It's all of these things happening week after week, month after month, year after year.

It's also knowing that compared to all of the life and death problems disabled people face, accessibility is usually much easier to fix, yet so much of it isn't. 30 years after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, any person, business, organization, or government department offering services to the public should at least know whether their facilities and programs are accessible -- which means knowing exactly how they are and are not accessible.

Barriers are bad enough. But most disabled people will tell you that one thing worse than inaccessibility itself is the unique and exquisite torture of being misled or misinformed about accessibility, of expecting accessibility and being assured of it, and then finding it lacking. Let's call it "The Accessibility Fail."

The "Accessibility Fail" is even easier to avoid than poor accessibility itself. It is entirely caused by negligence and inattention, often in tandem with genuine, but paper-thin good intentions. You want to be accessible. You're a good person. Your organization is good. And accessibility is good. So, your place and program must be accessible. We're accessible! Aren't we?

But are you? Here are five ways to avoid the uniquely painful "Accessibility Fail":

1. Don't say your place is accessible when it really isn't.

• No steps doesn't necessarily mean your place is accessible. There's more to it than that. There's parking, the pathway to your door, mobility inside your facility, and whether your information and activities are accessible to people with a wide spectrum of disabilities.

• Knowing what is and isn't accessible is important, because disabled people who ask about it rely on your answer being accurate and complete.

• Make a list, or prepare a script to accurately describe what is and isn't accessible. That way you or your employees are always ready to give accurate, practical information on what a disabled person can actually expect, so they can make sensible choices and plans. A good place to start is the ADA Checklist for Existing Facilities.

2. Don't provide just enough accessibility to get a disabled person stuck.

• If you can get through the door, but not move around inside, it's a problem. And the disabled person won't know exactly what kind of a problem until they are actually in it.

• If you can eat and drink, but can't use the restroom, it's a problem. It's humiliating, physically uncomfortable, and it usually becomes a problem only after it's too late to do anything about it.

• Being "stuck" in these ways is annoying and exhausting at best. At worst, it can be dangerous.

• If you can start down a path but run into a barrier you can't get around, it's a problem. Imagine using a properly-designed curb ramp to get onto a sidewalk in a wheelchair, only to find later that there's no way to get to the next pathway, because there's no ramp ... or worse, because the ramp is built wrong or crumbling. You either have to backtrack to the last ramp and rethink your entire route, or risking being stuck or injured by forging ahead. There's not a wheelchair user alive who hasn't either tipped over or needed help to get out of a situation caused by partial, incomplete, or poorly-maintained accessibility.

3. Don't forget communication access.

• One of the most common problems in disability culture is the lack of true recognition that "disabled" includes people who don't use wheelchairs or mobility aids, and whose disabilities aren't obvious to the causal observer.

• Deaf and hearing impaired people need options for understanding voice and audio content. In simple interactions, it may be possible to muddle through with lip-reading, written notes, and mutual patience. But for complex legal, financial, or medical matters, Sign Language Interpreting may be required, and service providers in such fields should be ready to provide it in a reasonably timely manner.

• Blind and visually-impaired people need options for getting any printed information offered to the public. This can include large print, braille, and audio recordings, or reading signs and brief written materials to customers.

• Note that both hearing and visually impaired people usually know which accommodations work best for them in different situations, and it's best to just follow their lead whenever possible.

• People who are unable to speak will most likely also have their own preferred tools for communication, which mainly call for patience and disciplined listening. Others may use electronic speech devices. Be careful not to dismiss people with speech impairments, or rush through serving them because you're uncomfortable.

• Make a real effort to make your information and procedures cognitive accessible. Cognitive accessibility means making written materials and other forms of communication accessible to people with intellectual disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, learning disabilities, mental illness, and other impairments that can affect how people process information. One of the core elements of cognitive accessibility is writing in "plain language." That doesn't mean making your ideas "simple" or leaving information out. It means writing in a direct, easily-digested way, with fewer specialized terms and less use of abstract metaphors. It's not an easy skill to master. But it's worth your attention, and there may be more resources in the near future as cognitive accessibility becomes a higher priority.

• For help with communication accessibility, review the ADA Requirements for Effective Communication

4. Don't invest time and money in a cool new website that's not accessible.

• In a website, "accessibility" means a couple of different things. The main requirement is that people using adaptive software need to be able to navigate and read your site fully and accurately.

• This calls for a number of technical components, most notably a simpler overall structure, with fewer frames, tables, and moving parts. If your website has a lot of automatic motion, sound, graphics, menus, and different sections on the same page, accessibility may be a problem. At the very least it's worth digging deeper to find out if there is a problem.

• One of the most important and easy requirements to meet is that graphics must include "alt-text" -- that is, a written description of the picture that screen readers can announce to visually-impaired visitors.

• Videos and live audio events need to include accurate captions and/or Sign Language Interpreting. It's also a good practice for live presenters to describe themselves for people with visual impairments.

• Don't post text as a graphic. For example, if you want to display a restaurant menu, type it in. Don't just take a photo of the menu and post it, because screen readers will see it as a picture and not read out the text.

• Finally, stay away from flashing lights, wild color contrasts, and overly fancy fonts. Your site doesn't have to be dull, but too many "bells and whistles" tend to create unanticipated problems for some visitors, like flashing lights that can trigger seizures in people with epilepsy, or sensory overload for some autistic people.

• Whether you hire a web designer or use a do-it-yourself webpage application, be sure to flesh out carefully whether they truly understand and implement accessible design. As with other areas of accessibility, it's easy to say your web design is accessible when it really isn't. And if at all possible, ask some visually and cognitively impaired people to give you feedback on your site and any changes you make to it, and be prepared to pay them for this valuable help.

• Resource on web accessibility: GSA Section 508 Accessibility.

5. Don't be defensive, procrastinate, or pass the buck in response to complaints.

• Whoever receives complaints in your organization should be polite, not defensive, and receptive to feedback. Don't try to explain why you're not accessible, and certainly don't try to argue the point.

• Next, resolve to actually do something in response to complaints, and follow through. It's been said a thousand times recently, but it's worth repeating. The Americans with Disabilities Act has been around for 30 years. Nobody needs "more time" to comply. Obviously, fixing an accessibility problem is going to take some time. The point is to get on it and don't procrastinate.

One more piece of advice: there are consultants to help organizations improve accessibility, but most of what you need to know is available for free on the government's own ADA websites. And you should also check with your nearest Center for Independent Living. They have disabled people who know about accessibility, both as technical experts and from personal experience. Listen to what they have to say and take it seriously.

Accessibility fails are avoidable, but it takes work. Crossing your fingers and hoping nobody notices won't do it.