Social Media Benefits Those With Disabilities, but Policy Updates, Industry Outreach Needed
Social media can benefit people with disabilities, but only if online video policies keep up with technology and developers are responsive to accessibility concerns, said government officials and advocates at an FCC workshop Thursday. “Social media has been a game changer for my community,” said Julia Bascom, director of programs for the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. Social media helps include those with disabilities in seemingly trivial “water cooler talk,” which is actually “where a lot of networking occurs,” said Andrew Phillips, policy counsel at the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), through an interpreter. “Social media has changed the playing field."
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But full accessibility remains elusive, said advocates and government officials. Only in recent years have social networks and government agencies started seriously considering the accessibility of various interfaces, said Janice Lehrer-Stein, chair of the Access and Integration Committee at the National Council on Disability (NCD). Government must adopt policies to encourage standard government interfaces and ensure there’s a working feedback loop with government-contracted developers, said Lehrer-Stein and Michael Reardon, who heads employment-related support policy at the Department of Labor’s Office of Disability and Employment Policy. “There’s a constant need for federal agencies, if they're going to use social media, to have a responsibility” to test accessibility, hear from consumers and respond to concerns, Reardon said.
NCD this year held two online dialogues with stakeholders to create accessibility recommendations, Lehrer-Stein said. The first covered user experience, she said. Stakeholders highlighted the importance of “providing a standard prompt,” which allows “people to obtain written description for images that are posted on social media sites,” Lehrer-Stein said. Building in the “ability to personalize and change font and color so that people with print disabilities can have their optimal display” is also essential, she said.
The second dialogue “targeted the technology industry itself,” Lehrer-Stein said. There was “a lot of discussion about the concept that social media can standardize and use universal design,” she said. “This is not a philosophy, but something that is an achievable goal.” NCD opened a third dialogue Thursday, Lehrer-Stein said. It will focus on encouraging people with disabilities to work in the social media industry, an issue participants cited as a necessary step in providing accessibility. The group noted that among platforms, only LinkedIn and Drupal had representatives in the audience.
Disability laws have not caught up with the Internet, said government officials. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires accessibility to many services for those with disabilities, but it’s unclear how ADA maps onto the Internet, Lehrer-Stein said. “Whether or not the ADA applies to every piece of info that goes out on the Internet is not a question I would even dare to begin to address,” she said. There’s case law that has been unfolding for years, she said. The Department of Justice (DOJ) also issued proposed accessibility guidelines for public websites (http://1.usa.gov/1nPXmcS). “That DOJ gave direction should be a pretty good indicator to everyone that there are nuances ... in the various articles of the ADA."
NAD’s Phillips also pointed to “frustrations” with the government’s online video captioning policies. Phillips said he was “very grateful to the FCC” for its recent approval of closed captioning requirements for online video clips (CD July 14 p7). Broadcast industry groups questioned in the leadup to the vote whether the FCC had the regulatory authority to pass such requirements (CD July 9 p3). Phillips said the change was needed as the Internet becomes more video-centric and news programs are increasingly disseminated through online clips. “This is an exciting time for deaf and hard of hearing individuals, but we're a little nervous as more and more social media leaves the world of text and goes into the world of video."
"Because this industry changes by the moment,” advocates and government must work with developers themselves. “Baking in inclusion” for people with disabilities “will, without question, improve the lives of everyone,” said Lehrer-Stein.