News and Articles

Structured Negotiation Helps Washington Advocates Improve Jail Conditions

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Congratulations to the Amplifying Voices of Inmates with Disabilities (AVID) project at Disability Right’s Washington. The group was recently honored for its work in improving conditions for inmates with mental illness and other cognitive disabilities in Yakima County Jail. AVID used Structured Negotiation to engage the County Jail and negotiate a settlement agreement. According to… Read more…

California Pays 66 Million Dollars for an Inaccessible Website. Lawsuit Follows

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Imagine this: Two companies charge the State of California sixty six million dollars to build a website for a state park reservation system. (Yes, $66,000,000.00). The contract requires the website to work for all California residents, including those with disabilities. (In other words, the website is supposed to be accessible.) The website gets delivered, but is not in fact accessible. Read more…

Albertsons Digital Accessibility Press Release

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Congratulations Albertsons Companies! The national grocer recently announced its commitment to digital accessibility with the press release posted below. Albertsons Cos. operates stores under popular grocery banners including Safeway, Vons, and Albertsons. Its initiative applies to all Albertsons online grocery shopping websites and mobile applications. Digital accessibility ensures that online and mobile content is available… Read more…

Happy Birthday WCAG — Now You are Twenty!

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On May 5, 1999 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) issued a press release announcing the publication of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0. The headline was confident: “WAI Provides Definitive Guidance for Web Access by People with Disabilities.” Let’s honor WCAG’s birthday by redoubling efforts to make the promise of the web a reality — let’s make it available to everyone, including people with disabilities. Read more…

2019 CSUNATC Digital Accessibility Legal Update

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On March 13, 2019, I presented the 2019 Digital Accessibility Legal Update to a packed house at the annual CSUN Assistive Technology Conference. With so much content, and no recordings, I try to follow up the powerpoint with a post like this one — summarizing this year’s updates with links to more information for those who are curious. And since it took me a month to get this out, there are even two new items in this post that were not part of the update. Read more…

Big Win for Web Accessibility in Domino’s Pizza Case

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[UPDATE: On October 7, 2019 the United States Supreme Court announced it would not hear, would not rule on, the Domino’s case. On June 13, 2019 Domino’s asked the United States Supreme Court to hear this case and reverse this decision. Read the October 7, 2019 post on this website about the Supreme Court’s announcement.]… Read more…

Fear is a Poor Motivator for Accessibility

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For a recent keynote delivered at the third annual ICT  Accessibility Testing Symposium I included the slide pictured with this post.  If social media is any indication, it was far and away the most popular slide in my talk. The slide image was developed by Jared Smith  of the accessibility consultancy WebAIM and is titled “WebAIM’s Hierarchy… Read more…