Accessibility in the News—08/18/16
In this issue of Accessibility in the News (AITN), we have accessibility-related media coverage on making health and social care information accessible, medical advances, and a comparative look at how accessible the websites are for U.S. presidential candidates.
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UX upgrades designed for marketers could also satisfy DOT accessibility demands
8/10 | Source: tnooz
The US Department Of Transportation deadline for website accessibility compliance has come and gone and is coming back again, after the approval of an extension which allows airlines to complete their work by the end of this year.
Many airlines have been working on their digital systems and infrastructure to meet needs of the disabled community,with some success. Advocacy groups see progress to date as a mixed bag of exemplary results, half-measures, and definite failures…
Accessible Information Standard
8/11 | Source: NHS England
Making health and social care information accessible
Press Release: NHS England has published a press release to mark the implementation of the Accessible Information Standard. You can read the ‘Summer 2016 update‘ on the Accessible information standard in Microsoft Word. The update is also available in easy read and as a British Sign Language (BSL) film…
Paraplegics moving again years after injuries
8/11 | Source: CNN
Researchers have just witnessed something that they say has never before been seen in the field of medicine: Patients who have been severely paralyzed for more than a decade have regained some sensation and neurological control in key muscles. In other words, they can move again, at least a bit.
Paraplegic people with spinal cord injuries spent a year training on brain-machine interfaces, such as virtual reality systems and robotic exoskeletons, which allowed them to use their own brain activity to simulate control of their legs, according to a small study published in the journal Scientific Reports…
Florida Earns ‘F’ On Price Transparency Report Card
8/15 | Source: Health News Florida
According to a new report, Florida and 42 other states fail to give the public easy access to health care pricing. The study, co-published by two nonprofits – Catalyst for Payment Reform and Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute – assessed how readily consumers were able to find health care prices in each state.
Suzanne Delbanko , the executive director of Catalyst for Payment Reform, said Florida is not alone when it comes to getting an ‘F’ grade…
Hallock couple developing B-Able app to rate hotels on accessibility
8/15 | Source: InForum
Jana Younggren remembers taking only one trip with her parents as a child. It was before she turned 8 and before her mother, Beverly Weberg, was confined to a wheelchair due to advanced multiple sclerosis. She made up for it when she and her husband, Loren, had children. Every year, the family would set out on a new adventure.
The couple continued to travel after their kids were grown, but it became more difficult seven years ago when Younggren was forced to use a wheelchair due to her own battle with MS…
City to offer more data online in more easily accessible formats
8/16 | Source: Lincoln Journal Star
The two youngest members of the City Council want to put Lincoln up with cities like Seattle, Minneapolis and New York which offer their citizens easy access to mountains of data. Leirion Gaylor Baird and Trent Fellers authored a resolution encouraging all city departments to look at publishing city data in easily accessible formats and sharing that data through a centralized city portal.
The open data initiative resolution, which passed unanimously, creates an atmosphere encouraging data sharing and a committee to oversee the new portal…
United States: Final Rule On Section 1557 Of The ACA Has Implications For Digital Health Industry
8/17 | Source: Mondaq
On May 18, 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) issued a final rule implementing Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), which prohibits discrimination on the grounds of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability in certain health programs and activities. Effective July 18, 2016, the final rule, “Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities” (“Rule”), will require entities covered by the Rule to comply with certain accessibility requirements applicable to their use of technology in the provision of services.
The Rule applies to: (i) to every health program or activity, any part of which receives federal financial assistance provided or made available by HHS; (ii) health insurance plans and marketplaces; and (iii) HHS itself. The Rule defines “HHS financial assistance” broadly, to include almost all types of financial benefit transfers, among them grants, loans, credits, subsidies, or transfers of real or personal property (but excludes Medicare Part B payments). Key points of the Rule include the following…
Making Web Accessibility Great Again: Auditing the US Presidential Candidates Websites for Accessibility
8/17 | Source: Lullabot
Imagine that you arrive at a website, but you cannot see the screen. How do you know what’s there? How do you navigate? This is normal for many people, and the accessibility of your site will make or break their experience. Accessibility is about including everyone. People with physical and cognitive disabilities have specific challenges online—and making your site accessible removes those barriers and opens the door to more users.
Severely disabled Americans constitute a population of 38.3 million people, and make up a huge swath of voters (see the #CripTheVote movement on Twitter). Some notable U.S. presidential elections have been decided by much less, and because of this, we’re auditing the US presidential election candidates’ websites…
COMO Connect adding assistive technology to website
8/18 | Source: ABC 17 News
The website for Columbia’s bus system has new features aimed at making it more accessible to people with disabilities.
The website now has screen reader components which can pair with smartphone and computer technology. The aim is to allow every COMO Connect customer to have access to map routes and schedules on a mobile device…
Braigo launches web app to help blind people parse text on images
8/18 | Source: Tech Crunch
The internet is all about sharing information, but a lot of the information shared assumes that its users are able to rely on their senses to consume said information. That isn’t always the case, and for the more than 285 million people around the world who are visually impaired, browsing the ‘net can be a less than fruitful experience. Braigo Labs is today launching a beta of its service to help blind and visually impaired people make sense of text on images. The beta is the first part of a bigger platform, taking a broad-spectrum approach to helping those unable to see.
Braigo Platform is a free web application aimed at anyone who needs accessibility solutions for the visually impaired. The platform supports more than 50 languages, and can be used to extract text from images from a variety of sources, whether from the web or from a phone…
To receive this “Accessibility in the News” curation via email, please send a subscription request to [email protected]. Each issue, we bring you accessibility news stories curated from around the web. Topics vary, but generally focus on digital accessibility standards and implementation, accessibility compliance and accessibility litigation, and other online access areas.
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