Researchers/legislation are focused on AI Bias with respect to gender and race. Few people are examining AI bias with respect to disability. In May, San Francisco passed an ordinance banning the city governmentfrom using facial recognition technology. The primary concern exhibited…
Are you guilty of “inspiration porn”?
Inspiration porn is everywhere. It is a form of unconscious bias that hurts people with disabilities Inspiration porn is portraying people with disabilities as: inspirational solely or in part on the basis of their disability, or One-dimensional saints who only…
Want an employee who is a natural problem solver? Hire someone with a Disability
Employers should be seeking out employees with disabilities, not avoiding them. Why are problem solving skills desirable in business? The ability to troubleshoot or solve problems is really a collection of a number of other skills including: Decision Making: To solve…
How to identify a Toxic Accessibility Culture, and what you can do about it
A broken organizational culture makes everything disability-related harder, from implementing accessibility projects to getting critical support to move the disability / accessibility needle forward Urban dictionary defines “Dumpster Fire” as: 1. A complete disaster. 2. Something very difficult that nobody wants…
Starting a Disability Employee Resource Group (ERG)
Last week, I wrote about how important disability-focused employee resource groups are to creating an environment where employees with disabilities feel comfortable disclosing them and in turn helping others. This week I’m going to describe some steps to take to…
Want to add value to your startup? Be accessible
What is accessibility? I could answer this question by doing a deep-dive into the WCAG guidelines and talk about the four pillars and 50 rules of accessibility, or I could say “Steven Hawking and Stevie Wonder need to be able to use…
The Importance of Disability Employee Resource Groups
Do you bring your “authentic self” to work? Most people with disabilities don’t, especially those with invisible disabilities. Disability ERGs can help with that. First-class relationships are possible only in an atmosphere of total trust. ― Wu Wei, I Ching Life: Becoming…
Ethical design and accessibility
Design is not about expressing yourself. Design is not about following your dream. Design is not about becoming a creative. Design is about keeping people from doing terrible things to other people — Mike Monteiro Ethical design means thinking about your product in the context of its users…
This Week in Accessibility: Diaz v. Kroger
Have we run out of grocery stores to sue over digital accessibility violations yet? Let’s do a quick check of the top grocery stores in the US with respect to digital accessibility lawsuits. Winn-Dixie — Somehow this company managed to miss the…
Accessibility Debt — What is it? How to pay it off ???
Sometimes, accessibility isn’t important until suddenly it is. The accessibility paradigm shift from “yeah, eventually” to being included as part of “business as usual” usually derives from one of the following occurances: a lost sales opportunity over lack of accessibility…