{"id":488680,"date":"2010-03-30T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-30T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.usa.gov\/roller\/govgab\/entry\/equal_access_for_the_disabled"},"modified":"2010-03-31T09:29:13","modified_gmt":"2010-03-31T13:29:13","slug":"equal-access-for-the-disabled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/488680","title":{"rendered":"Equal Access for the Disabled"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"298\" height=\"448\" border=\"0\" align=\"left\" style=\"margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;\" alt=\"blind business woman walking with a cane\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.usa.gov\/roller\/govgab\/resource\/blind_woman.jpg\" \/>There are an estimated <a title=\"40 million people with disabilities\" href=\"http:\/\/factfinder.census.gov\/servlet\/DTTable?_bm=y&amp;-geo_id=01000US&amp;-ds_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_&amp;-_lang=en&amp;-_caller=geoselect&amp;-state=dt&amp;-format=&amp;-mt_name=ACS_2006_EST_G2000_C18001\">40 million people with disabilities<\/a> in our country. The rest of us are temporarily abled, as they say.  It\u2019s only a matter of time until we have an injury or illness that will cause us to experience some sort of disability.<\/p>\n<p>Many people don\u2019t think of accessibility for the disabled unless they become disabled or they\u2019re close to someone who is.  In many people\u2019s minds, accessibility means wheelchair ramps, or automatic door openers, but accessibility laws apply to government websites and information technology too.<\/p>\n<p>The <a title=\"Americans with Disabilities Act\" href=\"http:\/\/answers.usa.gov\/cgi-bin\/gsa_ict.cfg\/php\/enduser\/std_adp.php?p_faqid=211\">Americans with Disabilities Act<\/a> is a well known law that gives civil rights protections to people with disabilities. If you work for the government, it\u2019s likely that you\u2019ve also heard of <a title=\"Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act\" href=\"http:\/\/www.section508.gov\">Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act<\/a>. <a title=\"Section 508\" href=\"http:\/\/www.section508.gov\">Section 508<\/a> requires access to electronic and information technology provided by the federal government.<\/p>\n<p>As a web content manager for <a title=\"USA.gov\" href=\"http:\/\/www.usa.gov\">USA.gov<\/a>,&nbsp; I\u2019ve learned a lot about Section 508 standards. We take accessibility very seriously and we go to a lot of effort to try to make our website accessible to people with all types of disabilities. <\/p>\n<p>Recently I learned that there will be an update on the Section 508 standards for information technology and telecommunications products.  There\u2019s an agency called the <a title=\"Access Board\" href=\"http:\/\/www.access-board.gov\">Access Board<\/a> that develops and maintains design criteria for buildings, vehicles, telecommunications equipment, and for electronic and information technology.<\/p>\n<p>The Access Board is circulating a <a title=\"draft of the updated standards and guidelines\" href=\"http:\/\/www.access-board.gov\/news\/ict-draft-rule.htm\">draft of the updated standards and guidelines<\/a> and you can now <a title=\"comment on the draft\" href=\"http:\/\/www.regulations.gov\/search\/Regs\/home.html#docketDetail?R=ATBCB-2010-0001\">comment on the draft<\/a>. These new standards and guidelines aim to make sure that people with disabilities have access to new technologies. So if you or somebody close to you has a disability and wants to be able to use technology that we temporarily abled people take for granted like cell phones, websites and media players\u2026be sure to <a title=\"comment on the standards\" href=\"http:\/\/www.regulations.gov\/search\/Regs\/home.html#docketDetail?R=ATBCB-2010-0001\">comment on the standards<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are an estimated 40 million people with disabilities in our country. The rest of us are temporarily abled, as they say. It\u2019s only a matter of time until we have an injury or illness that will cause us to experience some sort of disability. Many people don\u2019t think of accessibility for the disabled unless [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4153,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-488680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4153"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}