This document discusses increasing accessibility for people with disabilities through accessible technology. It provides statistics on disability populations and describes how different categories of disabilities interact with information technology. The benefits of accessibility include alternative text, transcripts, and logical organization that can help various groups. The document suggests prioritizing accessibility from the start and complying with standards like WCAG 2.0. It also lists resources for learning more about creating accessible websites and content.

1. The Untapped Minority: Social, Economic, and
Service Implications Of Increasing the Use of
Accessible World 2.0 Technology
Pratik patel
President & CEO, Patel EZFire Enterprises LLC
pratikp1@gmail.com
ppatel@ezfire.net
718-928-5529

2. Presentation Overview
Stats on disabilities
Categories of disability and their interaction with IT
Accessibility benefits
More reasons for accessibility

3. Presentation Overview (2)
A few suggestions on what to do
Demos
resources
For more information

4. Stats of Disabilities
North American Impact
World-wide population of people with disabilities: 650
million (2010)
U.S. population of people with disabilities: 60 Million
(2010)
Canadian population of people with disabilities: 4.5 million
(2006)
Combined population: approximately 10% of all people with
disabilities

5. Categories of Disabilities
About these categories
Blindness or visual impairment
Hearing disabilities
Motor disabilities
Learning and cognitive disabilities

6. IT Interactions: Blindness or Visual
Impairment
Text relayed via braille or audio
Require visual concepts to be turned into text
Sufficient color contrast and color combinations
Clutterless UI and layout

7. IT Interactions: Hearing
Disabilities
Sound, audio, and video
Transcripts or captioning
UI design and visual clues

8. IT Interactions: Motor Disabilities
Disabilities very
Usage characterized by alternative input methods
such as speech recognition, keyboards, and
pointing devices
Effortless navigation and UI

9. IT Interactions: Learning and
Cognitive Disabilities
Content is king
Well-written, simple content
Logical organization
Effortless navigation and UI

10. Other Benefits of Accessibility
Alternative text can be used by people who
are blind, or blind and deaf
turn off images to speed download
turn off images to lower bandwidth charges
Are search engine bots

11. Other Benefits of Accessibility
(Continued)
Transcripts for audio (podcasts, or videos) can be
used by
People who might not listen to the audio or watch
the video – deaf or hard of
hearing, busy, language, bandwidth, environment, …
More traffic to your info, e.g., SEO. Search engines
can index the transcript, but not the audio or video

12. More Reasons for Accessibility
United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of Persons
with Disabilities
Canadian Human Rights Act- Duty to Accommodate
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act
(AODA) - Integrated
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act
Americans With Disabilities Act

13. A Few Suggestions on What to
Do
Include accessibility from the very beginning
Use authoring tools that support accessibility
Make WCAG 2.0 Level AA a requirement, including
when procuring websites
Include real users throughout development process
create culture of accessibility throughout the
organization
When updating, use current best practices

14. A Few Suggestions on What to Do (2)
Provide alternative text for images and other audio
and visual elements
Use tagged and structured PDF files
Make Flash objects fully accessible
Provide appropriate labels for other interactive
elements such as form fields
Ensure keyboard focus and activation

15. Demonstrations
Wherein Pratik demonstrates his prowess with screen
readers and web sites
And
Wherein Pratik tries to show off “things”

16. Resources
Règles pour l'accessibilité des contenus Web (WCAG) 2.0
(French)
http://www.w3.org/Translations/WCAG20-fr
AccessiBlogue
http://accessibiliteweb.com/accessiblogue/pratiques/acces
siblogue/
World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative
http://www.w3c.org/wai
WebAIM: Web Accessibility In Mind
http://www.webaim.org

17. Resources (Continued)
Section 508 http://www.Section508.gov
Adobe Accessibility Resource Center
http://www.adobe.com/accessibility
Microsoft Accessibility training tools for IT
professionals http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/bb735024.aspx
Apple Accessibility
http://www.apple.com/accessibility

18. For More Information
Pratik Patel
President & CEO,
Patel EZFire Enterprises LLC
ppatel@ezfire.net
Mobile: 718-249-7019
Twitter: @ppatel