Today we bring you another look “Inside the Board,” from members of the STC Board of Directors on various topics of interest. Today, Director at Large Lisa Pappas, an Associate Fellow, discusses the recent disability initiatives from President Obama and their implications for technical communication. Note: The thoughts expressed in this post are not the official opinion of the Society for Technical Communication or its Board of Directors, but rather only of the individual.
Obama Announces Disability Initiatives—Implications for Technical Communication
In early October, at the US Federal Government’s annual Interagency Disability Education and Awareness Showcase (IDEAS), President Obama announced new employment initiatives. The announcement coincided with National Disability Employment Awareness Month, celebrated in October. Historically, people with disabilities are disproportionately unemployed—and not for a lack of desire. US Census statistics from 2000 indicate that of the more than 33 million working-age Americans with disabilities, nearly 45% are unemployed. Legal and policy measures such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the US Section 508 guidelines are aimed to reduce barriers for people who—despite functional challenges—seek gainful employment and full social inclusion.
Technical communicators are positioned to help our employers and clients to comply with these regulations and mitigate risk of civil rights litigation. We can design our online information products to accommodate various functional abilities, such as:
- Enabling keyboard operation and not requiring a mouse for navigation and operation
- Ensuring that color alone is not used to indicate meaning so that people who are color blind can perceive meaning
- Providing alternative text equivalents for visual elements, such as text descriptions of charts or graphics
- Inheriting fonts or colors settings by people with low vision or older users with reduced visual acuity
Technical communicators are further positioned to advocate for our end users with functional limitations that inhibit their use of our information products. We can do this by:
- Documenting accessibility features—or limitations—of the subject matter (software, websites, training)
- Including personas who require accessibility features
- Engaging people with disabilities in focus groups or usability testing
The pressure for firms to provide accessible information and computer technology (ICT) is global in scope. In Canada, government agencies must ensure that their websites comply with the the Canadian Look-and-Feel guidelines, which includes conformance to the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). In the European Union, parliament is building on member state individual policy, implementing EU Mandate 376. This legislation will require member states to factor into procurement software vendors’ conformance to accessibility standards.
To learn more about accessibility as it relates to technical communication and ICT,
- Visit (or join) the AccessAbility SIG at http://www.stc-access.org/
- See “Where is the business case for accessibility?” at NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology
- Review “8-Step Implementation Model” from Web Accessibility in Mind (WebAIM)
[Note from the editor: Also check out the new AccessAbility column in the November Intercom, coauthored by Lisa Pappas and Linda Roberts.]