Most organizations want to claim they are inclusive.

You don’t find many that proudly shout publicly that they intentionally exclude underrepresented minorities, such as people with disabilities.

Despite this, there are many actions that employees at these same companies take which completely undermine corporate disability inclusion claims. Those ableist, uninclusive employee actions speak much, much louder than the organization’s words.

Not calling out ableism.

You automatically lose your disability ally card if you are present for ableism, but never call it out. In order to do this, allies must be able to accurately identify what is ableist. …

I am a quintessential “thin-slicer,” a personality trait that Malcolm Gladwell thoroughly explored in his book, Blink.

Thin-slicing describes a person’s ability to find patterns in events based only on “thin slices,” or narrow windows, of experience. The most interesting aspect of thin-slicing to me is that thin-slicer’s conclusions can be as accurate, or even more accurate, than judgments based on significantly more information. Thin-slicers can provide rapid inferences about the state, characteristics, or details of an individual or situation with tiny amounts of information.

Thin-slicing is effectively a super, highly honed, very accurate instinct. All good, right? Where could…

In the first part of this article, I explored whether bad image descriptions were better than no image descriptions. After consulting with many blind users, I didn’t find a single one who said they would rather have bad image descriptions.

Now I’m applying the same question in the context of captioning — are bad captions better than no captions at all?

I don’t have to go far to find real-life experience. My daughter has a moderately severe bilateral congenital hearing loss. I have an acquired autoimmune hearing loss and a wicked case of tinnitus from decades of NSAID use because…

This is the first part of a two-part article. The second part, “Are bad captions better than no captions” can be read here.

In previous articles on graphical descriptions (known as alt text), I described the importance of accurate and succinct alt-text to people with disabilities who have vision loss.

I was recently sent a link to a public web page from one of the overlay companies that commented favorably on automatic, AI-based alt-text generation. …

By itself, the statement “we all have the same 24 hours” is an empty maxim. Commonly followed up with by “What you do with it is up to you,” or “Successful people just sacrifice more than you,” the statement turns from fatuous into aggressive, blaming, cringe-worthy, condescending, and in many cases, discriminatory.

I am a person with several disabilities. One of the things that people with disabilities inherently lose access to when we become disabled is that we don’t have the same 24 hours as everyone else does. The disability time thief sees to that.

Media representation of people with disabilities is at an all-time high. But the numbers don’t tell a complete story. For starters, that “all-time high” means that now 1 in 4 characters with a disability are authentically played by an actor with that disability. This means 3/4 are being played by actors who are, well, pretending.

Most people with disabilities were thrilled to hear last month that NBC Universal had vowed to audition more actors with disabilities. But increasing the opportunities is only part of the story. …

The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) is the premier global advocate for technology, representing the world’s most innovative companies. ITI promotes public policies and industry standards that advance competition and innovation worldwide.

One of the things that ITI produces is the ACR/VPAT template.

• ACR is “Accessibility Conformance Report”
• VPAT is “Voluntary Product Accessibility Template”

Are the terms ACR and VPAT interchangeable?

No. Before Section 508 harmonized with the WCAG standard, there was only the VPAT, and it was a standalone document. Since the harmonization, what used to be the standalone VPAT has been integrated into a larger report, the ACR. Hence, the use of the term ACR/VPAT.

What accessibility standards are included in an ACR/VPAT?

…

Pre-COVID, they were called “Hot Mic” incidents. Situations where people didn’t realize their microphone was live, and they said something they clearly shouldn’t, and probably wouldn't have if they knew the microphone was on. Sometimes it was just embarrassing, but sometimes people lost their jobs.

A few years ago, hot mic incidents occurred most frequently either on live TV broadcasts (news and sports were common) or political events.

• The most famous pre-pandemic hot mic incident was probably the (in)famous Trump 2005 bus conversation with Billy Bush about what you could get away with when you were famous.
• Second place might…