Up next in our accessible marketing series, our marketing partners at The Whole Brain Group have created this incredible infographic celebrating the 23rd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Signed into law on July 26, 1990, this landmark piece of legislation ushered in a new era of access for those with disabilities. While the ADA focused on removing physical barriers, the spirit of the law inspires new efforts today to ensure the digital technology is accessible to all.
Follow #a11ymktg on Twitter to keep up with the content posted during the series. You may even see a guest post from Deque!
Accessible Marketing: Americans With Disabilities Act 23rd Anniversary Infographic
Today marks the 23rd anniversary of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which was signed into law on July 26, 1990 to prohibit discrimination against people based on disability.
To honor this momentous occasion and to continue our Accessible Marketing content series, we have created the ADA 23rd Anniversary Infographic to highlight:
Key facts and statistics about people living with disabilities
Accessibility considerations in daily life at home, at work, and on the web
The history and impact of accessibility legislation in the U.S.
Important accessibility legislation that impacts digital marketing
Consider Accessibility When Creating Infographics
When this infographic was put together, we were careful to consider accessibility to make sure that people living with a disability could enjoy equal access to both the blog post and downloadable PDF.
Step 1: Design for accessibility. First, we selected colors and fonts that would maintain an appropriate color contrast ratio for people with color blindness and visual impairments.
Step 2: Build your infographic with accessibility in mind. We built this document to maintain structural accessibility so that it would be compatible with assistive technologies like screen readers, including:
A defined the reading order with heading and paragraph tags
Images anchored to specific text
Alt text for images
Tooltips to provide audio cues to screen readers
Step 3: Use a design tool that supports accessibility. We created the infographic design in Adobe InDesign, which allows us to create a PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro while maintaining accessibility functions such as embedded text and tool tips. Adobe Acrobat also allows you to run an accessibility test on your document. If there are any accessibility errors, Acrobat informs you of those errors and gives step by step directions for correcting them.
Step 4: Provide your infographic in multiple formats. In addition to the .png file embedded below, you’ll notice that we included a PDF that was built to be compatible with assistive technologies. We also included the full text of the infographic at the bottom of this post so that people using a screen reader would not have to download the PDF and open it separately in order to enjoy the content.
Making this infographic and blog post accessible took a little extra time, but it makes us happy to know that our marketing messages can be experienced by everyone!
Feel free to embed the infographic on your own blog using the code at the bottom of this post.
Read the other posts in the series:
Introduction to Accessible Marketing
Three Reasons to Consider Accessibility in Your Digital Marketing
ACCESSIBILITY NOTE: The full text of the infographic is translated below the graphic. Click here to download a large pdf version of the infographic!
Courtesy of: Whole Brain Group
Infographic text included for screen readers:
Celebrating the Americans with Disabilities Act 23nd Anniversary, 1990-2013
We are are excited to continue honoring the Americans with Disabilities Act, now celebrating its 23rd anniversary! As public perception evolves and technology advances, more attempts are being made to address inequality through accessibility legislation and standards. This updated infographic addresses recent legislation enacted to improve digital equality in the US and Canada.
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
Signed into law on July 26, 1990, this act is a civil rights law that prohibits, under certain circumstances, discrimination based on disability. It was intended to be a flexible set of laws that could only be strengthened, not weakened, by future case law.
How the ADA Defines disability:
A physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, has a record of such an impairment, or is regarded as having such an impairment.
Approximately 50 million Americans are living with a disability, about 16% of the population
Age Distribution of Americans with a disability: 5-17 year olds: 5%, 18-64 year olds: 10%, 65 year olds and over: 38%
Types of Disabilities that Americans (ages 18-64) have:
3.2 million: Visual
3.4 million: Self-Care
3.9 million:Hearing
6.6 million: Independent Living
7.9 million: Cognitive
9.8 million: Ambulatory
Education
Of people over the age of 25:13% of those with a disability have a bachelor’s degree or higher, while 31% of those without a disability have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
28% of those with a disability have less than a high school education, while 12% of those without a disability have less than a high school education
Employment
The unemployment rate for people with a disability is typically twice as high as the rate of people without a disability:
Approximately 10% unemployment rate for people without a disability
Approximately 20% unemployment rate for people with a disability
Home
There are ADA standards for accessible design, which have specific building code requirements. For example:
Bedroom and bathroom on the first floor
Light switches no more than 48” from the floor
Outlets 15” above the floor
Clear width for a single wheelchair: 36”
Have a ramp for the entrance
Web Accessibility
When websites are poorly designed or built, they create barriers to people with disabilities
Tips for making websites more accessible:
Making a website navigable using the keyboard improves accessibility for people with motor limitations
Adding alternative text to an image makes that image accessible to the blind
Providing the text format for audio files makes them accessible to those with a hearing disability
An estimated 90% of websites are not accessible
Studies show accessible websites have: better search results reduced maintenance cost, increased audience reach
Assistive Technology
Screen readers-Identify what is on the screen
Speech recognition-translates spoken words into text
Screen magnifiers-Present enlarged screen content
Braille translator-Translates script into braille cells
Disability Milestones
1880-National Association for the Deaf founded
1920-Disabled veterans of America and national Mental Health Association Founded
1940-National Federation of the Blind founded
1947-President’s Committee on Employment of the Handicapped created
1956-Social Security Act is amended so that working age people with disabilities receive income benefits
1961-American Council of the Blind founded
1968-Architectural Barriers Act passed which required that all buildings constructed, renovated, or financed by the federal government to be physically accessible
1973-Rehabilitation Act passed****
1975-Education for all Handicapped Children Act Passed
1982-President Reagan appoints heads of National Council on Disabilities (NCD)
1988-Senator Lowell Weicker and Congressman Tony Coelho support NCD by sponsoring the ADA
1990-ADA is passed and becomes law
****Significant Sections of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
#501 – Federal agencies are to develop affirmative action programs for hiring, placement and advancement for persons with disabilities
#502 – Establishes the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board to ensure compliance with the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 and to eliminate transportation barriers and seek ways to making housing accessible
#503 – Parties contracting with the US government are required to use affirmative action to employ qualified persons with disabilities
#504 – States that “…no otherwise qualified handicapped individuals in the United States…shall solely by reason of his handicap be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Section 504 was crafted using language in the Civil Rights Act and Education Amendments Act of 1972. Section 504 became known as “The Civil Rights Law for the Handicapped.”
#508-The law applies to all Federal agencies, and requires that electronic and information technology is accessible to people with disabilities.
2013: Section #508 Refresh: A “refresh” to Section 508 is planned for late 2013 or early 2014. This update will require government agencies to comply with WCAG 2.0 level AA standards. Technology has changed at a rapid rate over the past several years, leaving holes in accessibility standards. The refresh aims to fill in these holes with mandatory testing procedures and development tools.
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilites Act (AODA)
Ontario was the first Canadian province to develop enforceable accessibility standards. Membership on the AODA Standards Development Committee is equally divided between people with disabilities and representatives from business, government, and the public sector.
There are 5 sets of standards under the AODA
• Customer Service
• Information and Communication
• Employment
• Transportation
• Design of Public Spaces
Post ADA
The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA), of 2010, requires telecommunications services and video content to be accessible to users with a disability.
How to make audio or video compliant with CVAA:
Audio
Hearing impaired: in depth captions should be visible and in sync with the multimedia
Vision impaired: a full text transcript which describes the media should be available
Video
Hearing impaired: make content accessible to the hearing impaired through captioning
Vision impaired: include audio narration which contains descriptions of key elements
Infographic Designed by: http://www.thewholebraingroup.com
The topic of accessibility is a very broad one, and we couldn’t possibly cover everything we wanted to in this infographic. So we’re throwing it back to you! Did we miss something that absolutely should be included on an infographic about accessibility? Did we get anything wrong? We’d love to get your feedback in the comments!
Sources:
http://www.ada.gov/reg3a.html#Anchor-Appendix-52467
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb10-ff13.html
http://www.disabled-world.com/disability/statistics/american-disability.php
http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_10_1YR_S1810&prodType=table
http://webaim.org/intro/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Rehabilitation_Act_of_1973
http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_10_1YR_B18120&prodType=table
