Removing barriers for people with a disability – and identifying new ones
Over the last years people with a disability have experienced many improvements in their everyday life and regarding their inclusion. Maybe surprisingly, they have to cope, however, with almost unnoticed barriers in a fast-developing hi-tech area: social networking.
The European Commission has launched the Interpretative Guidelines that aim at ensuring the fulfilment of the Regulation protecting the rights of persons with disabilities when travelling by plane (Regulation 1107/2006). While these guidelines are not legally binding they are certainly going to improve the journeys of about 80 million persons with disabilities. Although the EU regulation of 2006 rules the rights of passengers with disabilities there have been still many reports of discrimination. In some cases people were even denied boarding because they were unaccompanied. Such incidences prompted the EU to clarify and detail their expectations with regard to the implementation of the original regulation. The guidelines first suggest to clearly distinguish the assistance provided at the airport from the assistance provided on planes. Also, the good practice of certain air carriers to offer a free seat for the support person of a passenger with a disability is promoted. The guidelines also point out the need for training of personnel involved throughout the service chain of an air travel and it is suggested that no medical certificates should be required from people with a disability to provide evidence for their handicap or their need for assistance. According to the president of the European Disability Forum (EDF), Yannis Vardakastanis, the Commission made an effort to provide quality assistance to passengers with a disability as well as passengers with reduced mobility.
Such elaborate guidelines are from being thought about in the area of social networking. Two current studies shows the actual need to improve the accessibility of social media particularly for people with visual disabilities. Denis Boudreau, a Canadian with over 11 years of web accessibility experience carried out a study of LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Google Plus. He put his focus on basic web accessibility principles defined and described in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and which form a part of all web accessibility checks, manual or automated. The result of his study shows that social media websites have a large number of serious web accessibility deficits. LinkedIn came out ahead of the other social media websites with a ‘high score’ of approximately 30% accessibility. Another study was conducted by Athen, the Assistive Technology in Higher Education Network, on the accessibility of Google Docs – a website that enables people to work on documents through their browsers from all over the world. They found that the Google Docs service is practically impossible to be used effectively by people who use screen readers or by other users with visual disabilities. These studies show some aspects of accessibility that will need improvement, but lectures at Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference have also indicated that individuals reporting accessibility issues to social media websites have had limited success in having their requests heard let alone resolved.
The examples may tell us that it can take decades to make tangible progress in regards to Inclusion while it is very easy to overlook barriers in installing systems which will then again take years to improve. Why not think thoroughly from day 1?
