Genuinely. Genuinely. Why in hell’s name aren’t shower safety rails mandatory in all showers?? Immediately adds +10 to accessibility AND benefits sick/drunk people. Plus, bonus space to hang flannels.
Wait what’s a buildings fire evacuation plan if you aren’t supposed to use the elevator to get down
You go down the stairwell/fire escape. Is that weird?
But what if you have a walker or a wheelchair??
in america at least, in this situation, there isnt one. either your loved ones or the firemen can get you out using the emergency fire escapes or stairs, or you die
That’s fucking horrific, thank you
“fun” little story:
last summer my friend who is an amazingly talented artist and i were in this super tall building, and she’s in a wheelchair and i’m pushing her around the room. it’s an art exhibit and some of her art was chosen to be showcased there and so it’s all fine and dandy until suddenly an alarm starts going off
a FIRE ALARM
everyone starts running for the stairs and my friend just looks at me with this forlorn look on her face
“i can’t go down the stairs”
but i’m a stubborn bitch “i’ll carry you”
“what about my chair? it’s too expensive for me to be able to get another one if i can’t get this one back”
“i’ll carry that too”
and i did. we went to the stairs (by then most people from our floor were gone) and i lifted her up in a fireman’s carry over my shoulder and then lifted her chair up and used the ridiculous amount of adrenaline that was coursing through my veins to make it down approximately 20 half-flights of stairs until we met some people exiting lower floors, one of which who kindly took the chair. I changed positions so i was holding my friend bridal-style which was, somehow, easier and the person who took her wheelchair (with her permission to handle it of course) accompanied me to the ground floor and then out the doors
basically there is no real protocol for people who can’t use the stairs in an emergency. it’s up to the people with them, if anyone, to help them or the person to somehow make it down the stairs alone, unassisted
thank fuck that it was just a faulty alarm system, because if i was unable to carry her down those stairs and the building was on fucking fire???? then i don’t know what would have happened to her, but i don’t think it would have been very good.
it’s fucking ridiculous and ableist to the absolute max.
I use a cane. When I did a day-long fire safety training at my northeast American university (UMass Amherst), I asked that exact same question: “what am I supposed to do if the fire alarm goes off and I’m in my lab on the twelfth floor?”
the fire marshal hemmed and hawed for a while and then said to take the elevator- you’re supposed to leave it free for the fire department to use and they want able-bodied people out fast not waiting for elevators. if the fire alarm has just gone off the building probably hasn’t suffered enough structural damage to make using the elevator dangerous, and modern elevator wells are heavily reinforced. many large and high-trafficked buildings on my campus have fire rated elevators that link in with the fire alarm system so they won’t let you off on a floor with a possible fire.
if the elevator isn’t working, wait in the stairwell and call the fire department to let them know where you are. modern stairwells are also heavily reinforced- it might not be pleasant but modern building code usually requires fire-resistant stairwell doors in office and big residential buildings, also to help firefighters get in and out safely. older buildings’ stairwells may or may not be retrofitted with fire-resistant doors but a stairwell is generally the safest place to wait if you can’t get out.
what happened to your friend was horrible, and i’m very glad you were there to help her out, but you can absolutely use the elevator to evacuate if it’s not shut down. those don’t-use-the-elevator rules are for abled people.
This is GOOD TO KNOW. why do they not tell people this??
Okay, firefighter here. If you are not physically able to use the stairs, and the elevator is NOT compromised, use the elevator. But you MUST be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that the elevator is NOT compromised before you get into it, because there is always the chance that once you get into it, you may not exit it. Power could go out. The elevator may actually BE compromised and you just couldn’t tell from where you were until you were in there, and it suddenly shuts down on you. Something else could happen.
Understand that once you enter the elevator, you could POTENTIALLY be taking your life into your hands there.
It is NOT LIKELY, to be perfectly honest. It’s only in a pretty catastrophic scenario - think the Twin Towers, USA, on September 11th - that the elevators will be compromised and out of service. But there is a NOT ZERO PERCENT CHANCE and you need to understand that and accept it.
As for leaving the elevators free for the firefighters, okay, here’s the deal. Unless your nearest fire station is literally right next door? Your first on scene fire truck is NOT likely to be there on scene and needing that elevator before you get to the ground. It takes us TIME to find the address, gear up, and drive to the building. Then we need to hoof it into where the elevators even ARE, so YOU HAVE TIME to use the elevator to get down to the ground floor… BUT ONLY IF THERE’S NOT A RUSH ON THE ELEVATOR! And THAT is WHY we don’t tell people this shit. That’s WHY we tell people to NEVER USE THE ELEVATOR… because every self-entitled asshole will use it because they don’t feel like walking, and then put YOU in danger by delaying the elevator’s arrival to you.
IF, however, the elevator IS compromised, or you just can’t get it to come for you, or whatever, and you either don’t have anyone with you who has the adrenaline fueled BALLS to be able to toss you over their shoulder and hoof it down the stairs with you - because, let’s face it, that is RARE AS FUCK, then HERE IS WHAT YOU DO:
You call 911 and tell the call taker that you are in the building that has a fire alarm going off, and you are not able to evacuate because of a physical disability, and you tell them what floor you are on, and EXACTLY what stairwell you are waiting at. And the very FIRST thing that the firefighters are going to do once they arrive, if it is, indeed, a REAL emergency, and not a false alarm, is come get your ass and bring you down. Whether that means carrying you down the stairs, or whether that means locking out the elevators so that no one else can override them and coming to get you themselves, they WILL come get you FIRST THING if it is a real event. And if it is a false alarm? You will probably be the first person who is not involved with the building to know, because the call-taker is going to stay on the line with you until you are under someone’s care and out of danger, or until the scene has been sorted out as real or false, and you are out of danger that way.
These are pretty standard operations in the fire service throughout the United States. There may be some minor variations based on specific municipalities, but, for the most part, this is pretty typical: LIFE BEFORE PROPERTY. So, as long as SOMEONE knows where you are - hence why you call 911 - Firefighters will come get you. You are NOT alone, and you have NOT been abandoned. I PROMISE. It’s like, our whole reason for doing the shit we do: to save lives and to break shit. Sometimes, we get lucky enough to do both at the same time.
High rise fires suck ass, and I always hated them. But the very FIRST thing I asked anytime we got one was if we had “any entrapments” - which is what we call anyone who could not self-evacuate for ANY reason. We ain’t leaving you behind. And yes, your friend who doesn’t have the stamina to carry you down can stay with you, too. Because I would never ask that of someone, honestly.
Also, just a little FYI… MOST fire alarms are false alarms. Not to make anyone complacent or anything, but, yeah. Most of them are either system malfunctions, someone accidentally hit a pull station, or someone burned popcorn in a break room. So don’t let a fire alarm freak you out until you need it to - by smelling or seeing smoke or flames.
i have had multiple nightmares about this very thing because NOBODY BOTHERS TO ACTUALLY TELL WHEELCHAIR USERS THIS STUFF
so i had my eyes checked today. ive had horrible vision since…. elementary school. mostly a combination of genertics (thanks dad) and a LOT of reading, computer usage, etc. (and i mean lots.)
but something i learned today is that due to my absolutely abysmal vision, i have a higher chance of retinal detachment, which is about as fun as it sounds. (treatment rate is about 95% but still… i dont want it…) how much of a higher chance, you may ask? 1 in 20 as opposed to the typical 1 in 300 chance! which sucks! so i want to talk about measures for reducing eye strain and consequentially, letting people keep better vision.
large print: its associated with old people who can’t read the small print, but why not just help people from getting bad eyes in the first place by making everything available in large, easy to read fonts. e readers also let ppl do this, but then there’s the fact that screens cause more eye strain so… idk
audio: i love that @solarpunkpress is already doing this but people dont need to read as much when they can listen to things. obviously not as good for academic texts etc but still. imagine solarpunk audio gardens, where people go to listen to audiobooks of short stories or poetry or w/e, in a garden with flowers, tables, maybe a café. they could also be designed to be especially friendly to the visually impaired, taking advantage of scent in garden design idk
thats the extent of my ideas feel free to comment, add, etc
I’m doing a set of park designs for my final in one of my classes and I’m definitely running with the idea of audio gardens. –Watson
cool! you’re at hampshire right? tell me what you come up with!
Yeah! It’s for my Green Cities class, which is all about the architecture of parks. I’m going to design a proposed set of new public parks for my home town. (It’ll be pretty ambitious for a town that probably doesn’t want to build new parks anyway, but I have every intention of sending it to the local planning people when I’m done, regardless.)
I’m really excited about this project, because it’s going to be a lot of fun, and really interesting, to try and develop an idea of a whole system of parks for a complete community, that meets as many needs as possible. It feels like a very solarpunk project to me – and even if it ends up not being (because I have to be at least a little realistic about technology, budgets, and what I could persuade even an imaginary town council to agree to) I think it’ll still be a really good learning experience for the details of those problems.
Building green spaces that are specifically optimized for use by blind or visually impaired people, and green spaces that are built with use of personal technology in mind, are two big areas of function that I hadn’t really thought about yet.
Art Nouveau fonts struck me as really similar in appearance to fonts designed for people with dyslexia, like OpenDyslexic. Like, they bulge in different places and stuff, and that’s a really big deal when it comes to these fonts, but the point is that it looks like it’d be easy to take the principles of accessible font design for dyslexia and apply them to graphic design for a new generation of Art Nouveau inspired work — like Solarpunk.
I love the thought that an aesthetic movement could have accessibility baked in like that — not placing aesthetic over usability, or even working accessibility in despite the aesthetic goals — I mean using the art style as the mechanism for accessibility.
Art is, at least partially, about taking up space in the world to make room for human experience as a priority. In this case, with this movement, that could be very literal.
And that got me really excited, because Solarpunk is so obviously equipped to be totally all about that — I love the idea of Solarpunk planners and designers and architects keeping in mind as a real priority making their spaces deliberately pleasant, comfortable and helpful for people with disabilities, not just tolerably navigable to meet code. I love the idea of a basic principle of Solarpunk design being ”Every human is worth the effort of significant care in design choices.” The idea that accessibility is a form of beauty that the Solarpunk art movement prioritizes.
And it fits right in with the punk part of the movement, because it screams “Disability is what happens when you build a city to use its people, not for the people to use the city.”
(Edited shortly after posting because the last sentence was confusing)
It looks like that beta text editor Tumblr was teasing is with is no longer an option for now, so I wanted to show you guys how to add alt text to your roleplay icons (or any other images in your posts) with the current text editor.
For this example, I took the content from the main body of the answer to this ask on my main blog and stuck it in a new post to make things a bit cleaner. As with some of my previous posts, the images in this guide are all decorative, Tumblr just won’t let me make them properly invisible to screen readers. So if you’re a screen reader user, rest assured that everything meaningful about these images is described in the text of this post. And though it’s not that important, if you’re really curious about the content of the sample roleplay post I’m using, you can read it in the link I provided earlier in this paragraph.
Now the, when you make a post, most of us write it up and add images in the default setting of Tumblr’s text editor: Rich text. This just means that it displays your post as it will display on the dashboard once you post it, formatting, spacing, images, and all.
If this is the way you like to write your posts, I’d recommend getting everything ready before you delve into this alt text stuff. This is because switching the post back to “Rich text” editor mode after the edits I’m about to show you undoes pretty much all of your work.
So, once you think your post is ready for the world, go to that little gear at the top-right corner of the page. This is where can switch your text editor view from Rich text to HTML.
Once you select that from the dropdown and return to your post-in-progress, it will probably look something like this:
If you, like me, aren’t terribly code-savvy, this mess of black, purple, and blue text with all those numbers and letter strings is probably pretty daunting to look at. But don’t worry! You don’t need to understand all that. Just save the post as a draft, go to your Drafts folder, and open it again to edit.
At first glance, this might look exactly the same as that mess I just told you not to worry about. But take another look:
Each image now has an alt text attribute in the coding that Tumblr added automatically when you drafted the post. I’ve outlined all three here for ease of finding it. The “alt=” is in light blue, but the actual alt text attribute “image” (and the quotation marks around it) are purple. This color can help some users (like me) more easily differentiate different parts of the code.
The issue is, Tumblr giving each image the alt text “image” isn’t very helpful for screen reader users. Screen readers already know to tell users it is an image because of the file type, and “image” certainly doesn’t tell the user anything useful about the image. Unlike with normal HTML, removing the word “image” from between the quotation marks in the alt text attribute will not make a screen reader skip over the image entirely—it will still read “image” when a screen reader comes across it. So for the time being, the only way to prevent these images from being an annoying mystery to screen reader users is to add alt text to them, even if they’re arguably decorative (or put a disclaimer at the start like I did for this post, but that’s not something you’re probably keen on doing for every single post you make). If the images are simple enough that alt text is an option, it’s usually best to go with that.
Start by highlighting the word “image” between the two quotation marks after the “alt=” part of the code.
Replace it with some text that actually describes the first image in your post. For example, here I changed the “image” to “Pearl smiling with mild amusement” instead.
Make sure to put something meaningful for the other two alt text attributes as well! In this case, I used “Pearl smiling excitedly with eyes closed” for the second image and “Pearl smiling with eyes open and a gentle admiration” for the third. Once you’re done adding your alt text, you’re ready to post!
Happy Earth Day! Remember to include disabled people in your activism and sustainability plans, because one person’s luxury is another person’s lifeline. Plastic straws are a good example of this, but there are tons more in places you might not expect.
Subtitles and Closed Captions that say things like “[SPEAKS GERMAN]” or “[SPEAKS NATIVE LANGUAGE]” are an accessibility failure and studios should do better.
I don’t care if the characters wouldn’t understand - a viewer who knows German will understand a German character.
Honestly, yeah. The only time captions should be doing this is if it’s a non-specific language (e.g., “alien language”) or a language that is not directly transcribable due to having no written form (e.g., Harsusi, pretty much any sign language, etc.).
You might be able to get away with this when using some fantasy languages too, especially if those languages really don’t have a set vocabulary or grammar (they’re just sounds being used for the sake of the story.) But if it’s a fantasy language that does have vocabulary and grammar, like Klingon or Sindarin, you really ought to be transcribing those word-for-word too.
Hi, caption writer here. And I want you to understand that IT IS NOT OUR FAULT. This is not a choice that WE make. This is not something that we are even allowed to change.
First of all, the entire caption industry is contractors, just like Uber. And each company has a specific way they want those caption to be written. One of the easiest ways to tell which company had the contract for an episode is to see what punctuation is used for sound effects and speaker tags, which should clue you in that we are judged even on something as stupid as when exactly an ellipsis is allowed.
We are not allowed to transcribe foreign audio, even if we do know it. Because of the rushed timetable we are expected to keep, it’s not like we’d have time to look up words even if we were allowed to. Heck, we aren’t even allowed to *label* the language unless we are absolutely positive and sure 100%. And that file is ours. We are the only ones who see it, because otherwise they’d actually have to pay wages to real employees.
And then we get graded. Not even by actual employees, just by other trusted contractors. If our ratings drop below the threshold, our account is closed and that’s it. Done. Try another company. And here’s the thing.
Captioning is work done by people who can’t get anything else. I’m disabled, I have the stamina to work 10 hours a week, and no one will hire me for that short a time at a real job. I’m not artistic and I can’t write my own words, which left me with transcription and captions. Transcription make 10 cents per minute of audio. Captions make 50 cents per minute of audio.
I use captions as often as I can, I love them. And it breaks my heart every time I see a set where someone decided to get through it as fast as possible and cut every corner they could get away with. But it’s the industry that is broken. The industry that set itself up to move things as fast as possible, take advantage of the community it was serving TWICE, and resist any change that did not directly relate to their profit margin.
Fuck capitalism, not captioners. Fuck America-centered English captions, not the ones who write them. Fuck tightwad companies treating subs as an afterthought and picking only the company with the lowest rates, but that just cycles back around to Fuck Capitalism.
I’m not interested in ever making image descriptions invisible to sighted folks.
for one thing, some sighted folks need image descriptions and don’t use screen readers. for another, able bodied folks absolutely need to be exposed to accessible practices, and the only way to do that is to….expose them to accessible practices.
I’m not interested in making any accessibility hidden from able bodied folks. able bodied people need to learn to recognize accessibility and inaccessibility when they see it. ableds need to be confronted with these practices directly. so even if alt text descriptions were the best option (they’re not), i would not personally opt to use them alone.
This …is something I will have to think about regarding Dreamwidth. (Their native image hosting has fields for both short and long image descriptions, and I’ve been trying to use both for every image I upload, but you definitely make a good point.)
Also gonna add that often times, accessibility aids for one group also ends up being useful for other groups. I operate mostly by sight and love descriptions, because a lot of time I’m using third-party mechanisms to manage my Tumblr intake and images don’t come with them (but text, including descriptions, does). Or I’m on regular Tumblr but the Internet is just slow af so the images aren’t loading but the text is there. I can see whether it’s worth waiting for the post to finish loading or just move on to the next one.
It’s a little embarrassing in retrospect but I actually didn’t even realize at first that descriptions were supposed to be an accessibility feature. They started getting popular around the same time Tumblr did some major overhauls that resulted in weird gradients when images were loading and (for some of us) slower loading in general, especially as Tumblr also increased the maximum file size for images. So I actually assumed at first that descriptions were because images weren’t loading as well as they used to, and it was only after the trend stuck around that I realized it was for accessibility.
Tumblr just launched the Android version of Cabana, Tumblr’s cool new video sharing app, and it is just as fun and addicting as the iOS version we launched last month. As Yahoo’s Senior Director of Accessibility Mike Shebanek mentioned in his blog about the iOS version, the concept of Cabana is simple but really powerful. You find a funny or interesting video, you invite your friends, and you all watch the video together on your phones, while you watch each other at the same time. I’ve had a blast using Cabana, and I love getting my brother to watch videos with me while I mock his naïve political biases ;-)
Image: Cabana by Tumblr logo
Pausing to reflect on my poor choice for the setting of my testing, I realized that as a blind guy, Cabana could be a virtual assistance tool, connecting me to friends or family in case I need to “borrow eyes” to find or identify something. I’ve been thinking of many ways this could be useful in my daily life. It is not what we designed the app to do; it is just another reason to love Cabana. And by the way, although she initially expressed her annoyance at the interruption, my wife was still watching videos and chatting with me nearly an hour later!
Even if you or a friend have a disability, we want you to enjoy Cabana and invite your friends to watch videos together too. As with the iOS version, the Android version of Cabana has also been optimized in several ways to make it accessible:
Cabana incorporates live video conferencing so you can use sign language
The color scheme has been tweaked to make it higher contrast for improved readability
You can control Cabana using a physical keyboard or alternate input device in addition to gestures
The app has been optimized for TalkBack users so if you’re a screen reader user, you can invite your friends, answer an invitation, and choose and control the video. Even the welcome and setup screens, including the camera feature used to capture your avatar photo, have been optimized.
Virtual Assistant
I discovered another powerful way to use Cabana. While my wife Paula was reading a book in bed, I set up my iPhone on her nightstand with Cabana showing a Saturday Night Live video clip. My Android phone was connected to the same video, and I took it into my kitchen and began chatting with Paula. After grumbling her annoyance at the interruption, she graciously informed me that she could see a nice pile of dishes that could use my attention.
Image: Cabana Image. Text reads Watch Videos Together
Image: Cabana image. Text reads Hang out, watch stuff.
Cabana is free, and available today on the Play Store for your Android phone. Check it out and invite your friends.
Mike Shebanek, Yahoo Senior Director of Accessibility
I’m very excited to share that Teach Access, an initiative to include accessibility and universal design principles in the curricula of computer scientists, designers and researchers in undergraduate, graduate and continuing education, has won the Knowbility, Inc. award for Educational Achievement! Yahoo is a founding member of the project.
Teach Access was created by a coalition of tech companies, universities and advocates for people with disabilities. Its mission is to expand awareness and knowledge of accessible technology development in higher education through approaches such as faculty bootcamps, guest lectures, internships, challenge grants for research and curriculum development and industry partnerships. Teach Access also builds open source online learning tools that reflect and teach accessibility best practices. The tools are widely available to individuals, companies and organizations. In addition, Teach Access has developed job descriptions that include preference for accessibility knowledge to support recruitment activities and to extend the post-secondary foundation through “on the job training” in product and service development.
Image: Knowbility Award. Inscription reads Knowbility is pleased to recognize Teach Access for Educational Achievement for creating and promoting an initiative to include accessibility and universal design principles in college and university curricula. 2017 Community Heroes of Accessibility Awards.
This is an extremely proud moment for Teach Access and its members and supporters as we continue our pursuit to bring accessible design and development skills into college classrooms.
Yahoo’s Accessibility Lab is well known for creating hands-on interactions for software developers to experience how people with disabilities successfully use technology—when it’s well designed of course! One of the experiences makes use of goggles with filtered lenses that simulate different types of vision loss, such as glaucoma and cataracts. Unfortunately, the lab is limited in the number of goggles we have available, and visitors to the lab can’t take the goggles home with them or back to their offices to experience vision loss in their own environments or to share this alternate reality with their colleagues. Thanks to Theia Immersive in the UK, that is about to change.
Theia has just introduced a new technology called Eyeware which is designed to enable architects, environmental engineers and space planners to explore how their designs and spaces might limit or enable people with disabilities. But by putting Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality to work, Eyeware can also create a real-time, immersive simulation that opens the door to simulating the many different and unique experiences of how people with low vision, color blindness and a variety of other eye conditions, see and navigate the world around them.
Using Virtual Reality, Theia Immersive can model a real environment, indoors or out and can simulate what it would be like to navigate with vision loss, or limited mobility. But even more impressively, they can make adjustments to the virtual environment in real time, to better understand how changes in lighting, signage, the use of color, and many other elements impact a user’s experience in that space. The system uses OmniDeck technology that drives the VR experience and enables a person to really (physically) walk through the virtual world, hear positional audio, and interact with their virtual environment. All of this can be captured, analyzed, and shared, also in real time, to an audience via TV monitors and computer screens.
The company has also created a personal, mobile version of their technology—Eyeware for iOSandEyeware for Android. This version uses Augmented Reality - the app runs on your phone when mounted in the Google Cardboard viewer (about $10). Theia Immersive offers their own Cardboard viewer that has a cutout to uncover your phone’s built-in rear camera (you can cut a hole in your own Cardboard viewer to achieve the same purpose). You can choose various visual effects to simulate different types of vision loss. As you look through the Cardboard googles, you’re seeing the real world around you, but through the eyes of someone that has vision loss.
Video of the Augmented Reality Eyeware app using a Cardboard Viewer
We are very excited about this new technology and its far-reaching potential and are working with Theia to bring Eyeware into the Yahoo Accessibility Lab. We think it can have a profound impact on our visitors and will be encouraging our product teams to “see it for themselves” and consider how they can better design their products to provide access to people with vision loss and other disabilities.
This week, Tumblr released a cool new iOS app called Cabana. The idea behind it is simple but really powerful. When you find a funny or interesting video you can’t wait to share with your friends, fire up Cabana, tap their names and invite them to join you. You’ll all see each other, and the video, together live. Share a good cry, make jokes, shout at the video, or just make crazy faces. It’s up to you what you say or do. The only caveat is to be careful—it’s totally addicting!
If you or a friend have a disability, you might be wondering if Cabana is something you can do too. Of course! We want everyone to be part of this new experience and invite their friends so we’ve optimized Cabana in a bunch of ways to make it accessible:
Cabana incorporates live video conferencing so you can use sign language
The color scheme has been tweaked to make it higher contrast for improved readability
You can drive Cabana using a physical keyboard or alternate input device
The app has been optimized for VoiceOver users (iOS) so if you’re a screen reader user, you can invite your friends, answer an invitation, and choose and control the video. Even the welcome and setup screens, including the camera feature used to capture your avatar photo, have been optimized.
Image: The Cabana app running on an iPhone showing six friends watching a video. The caption next to the phone reads “Watch videos together.”
Image: The Cabana app running on an iPhone showing the Friends list. The heading on the Cabana app reads “Hang Out, watch stuff.”
Cabana is free, and available today on the App Store for your iPhone. Check it out and invite your friends.
By Andrew Schulte, Chief of Staff to the CEO, Yahoo
A few weeks ago, we received nearly two dozen handwritten letters from 7th grade students at Chaboya Middle School in San Jose, all addressed to Marissa Mayer. These incredibly thoughtful and inquisitive letters penned questions about leadership, STEM, being a female CEO, the future of tech and general advice on working for a company like Yahoo. These letters touched and inspired Marissa and the team here, so what better way to answer their questions than a field trip to Yahoo headquarters!
We kicked off the day with an assembly that included an engaging Q&A discussion with Marissa addressing all the students’ top questions. Afterwards, we took them on an all access behind-the-scenes tour of what it’s like to work in Silicon Valley, including what it takes to launch some of our latest mobile products.
The first stop on their tour was our User Experience (UX) Lab where students had a chance to learn first hand about the importance of user feedback in consumer product development. Students met our UX and product teams, and learned how real world testing is critical to innovating and improving on products.
Next up, was a tour of Yahoo Studios, where students got the inside scoop on production, and how we put together a lot of our original video content. A few students even showed great promise as future on-air talent!
Then it was off to the Accessibility Lab, where they learned about the importance of building products that serve all our users, regardless of their physical capabilities. The students had an opportunity for hands-on problem solving to help individuals with hearing or visual impairment, or limited mobility use of our products.
We finished off the tour with a stop by our Publisher Products team, which works on some of Yahoo’s most popular products, like Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance. Here, they got an inside look at a day in the life of an engineer – from coding the personalized homepage stream, to the data and analytics team that helps us make data-driven decisions, to the release engineers that manage quality control for final publishing.
We had just as much fun as the students, and we’d like to send our deepest thanks to Chaboya Middle School, Mr. Joe Ennes, and the 7th grade class for bringing their best and brightest energy to Yahoo. We had an amazing time hosting you, and have tremendous optimism for the great things you’ll achieve in the future!
The men’s college basketball tournament, aka The Big Dance, is a truly massive event across America. 68 of the top colleges in the nation take part, and offices and sports bars everywhere are abuzz with excitement over their brackets. I’ve been filling out mine since I was a college student back in the 1980’s, and that didn’t stop after I lost my sight in the 1990’s. I always played, but it just wasn’t the same when a friend or colleague filled out the brackets for me. It was kind of like someone was looking over my shoulder, and it affected how I made my picks.
All that changes today. I’m excited to announce that for the first time, you can use your favorite screen reader to complete your bracket using Yahoo Fantasy Sports Tourney Pick'em on your iOS device. Why such a big deal? Because now you’ll be able to join the millions of other college basketball fans on Yahoo Sports. Even if you have a disability like I do, you can independently join or create your own group, make your picks and track your progress against your friends through the entire championship tournament.
It all starts on Sunday when the brackets go live. Choose a winner for each of the games in every round and then root for your teams as you track your predictions throughout the six rounds of the tournament. For the iOS app, we’ve implemented Apple’s “magic-tap,” a single two-finger double-tap gesture that let’s you quickly find and follow your favorite team from round to round. So, if you like Kansas to win it all, you just find Kansas in the first round, do the magic-tap, and you are immediately taken to the Kansas game in the second round without any additional taps or swipes. Magic-tap again, and you are on the Kansas game in the third round. It’s a super easy way to follow your favorite team.
Check out Tourney Pick’em on Yahoo Fantasy Sports or download the latest version of the Yahoo Fantasy app on your iOS device. The Brackets are revealed at 5:30 pm EDT Sunday March 12, and you’ll have until tipoff of the first game on Thursday to join a group and make your picks.
By Mike Shebanek, Senior Director of Accessibility
Starting today, you’ll notice some significant changes to our blog, both in design and in content, that better reflect who we are and what we do. I’d like to to tell you why we’re making these changes and what you can look forward to as you follow our blog.
One of the things that makes Yahoo’s approach to accessibility unique is that its Accessibility Team and its User Experience Research Team are integrated. That may sound like an obvious approach, but it hasn’t always been this way at Yahoo and we’ve come to find out it’s pretty unusual in the tech industry. In the all-too-rare organizations that actually have a dedicated Accessibility Team, they often report to the chief legal counsel, or are part of an administrative or compliance group. Other times they’re siloed in one division, which prevents them from being able to impact product development or customer support in another. Having a dedicated Accessibility Team and where that team is placed in an organization says a lot about a company’s values, and this is especially true of Yahoo.
In our case, we’re part of a team called User Research and Accessibility or UXRA for short. Our team supports the entire company – every division, every VP, every employee – and it is tasked with representing our users’ unique needs, requirements and points of view in every activity we undertake. We are not just “closely aligned” with our user research team – we are the same team! We share user study labs, training, techniques, findings and the same mission: to accurately represent all users. We work to ensure that users come first in whatever we do, and that this includes people with disabilities, of all ages, of all genders and of all abilities. So, whenever we perform a user study, take a survey, gather product feedback or identify requirements, people with disabilities are included along with everyone else. We can’t imagine any other way.
To better reflect this mission and to give you deeper insight into how we go about understanding and representing our users, you’ll be hearing more from our User Researchers in addition to our Accessibility Team members on this blog. We have a lot of exciting things to share, and we hope it is informative and inspiring to you and our industry peers as we all continue to reach for greater inclusion.
Last week we introduced a new Yahoo app for Android and iOS that re-imagines the Q&A experience for mobile users. Say hello to Yahoo Answers Now.
Using Yahoo Answers Now with assistive technology is as simple as plugging in your bluetooth keyboard, adjusting your smartphone’s text size or turning on your built in screen reader, such as to TalkBack or VoiceOver. And, of course, “looking” for the answer to a question that will make your day.
Yahoo Answers Now re-imagines the Q&A experience for mobile users. It helps users ask questions and receive quality answers quickly from community for answers that require human experiences and expertise.
For example: “what should I get my 50-year-old mother for the holidays?” or “what should photography hobbyists do when visiting Miami this weekend?”
Using assistive technology (e.g. screen reader), other questions and answers are just a swipe away, along with the number of answers provided and the option to evaluate the answer and/or add your own.
Take Matching for example. It is a key feature of Yahoo Answers Now that routes questions to qualified responders who have the experiences and expertise to provide a high quality answer. When you ask a question, there is floating button in the lower right-hand side of your display – the focus switches to the question answer field. Type in your question and, if you like, swipe to the “Details” text field to enter additional information. In either case, swipe back to the “Post” button. After pressing this button Yahoo Answers Now routes your question to qualified responders who have the experiences and expertise to provide a high quality answer. All this can be done without “looking” at the screen.
Want to answer a question? Use your screen reader to open a Yahoo Answers Now questions details card. When you swipe to a question, your screen reader will begin to read the questions category (for example, Maintenance & Repair), the most recent answer entered and additional information about it. Double-tap anywhere to open the question details and swipe to the “Answer” button. Give the question your best shot. You can also swipe to the options to add an assortment of media, including images and links. Again, no “looking” required.
Download Yahoo Answers Now from the App Storeor Play Store today to give these features a whirl and tap into the insight of our community! As always, you can send your questions or feedback to us at[email protected].
Teach Access, the industry-academia collaboration founded by Yahoo, Facebook and two dozen other industry and higher ed organizations, has been busy. We’ve been on the road spreading the word about the need to make accessible design and development fundamental to college students in computer science, design and related fields. The mission of making technology pervasively accessible starts with making sure all college students in tech-related fields understand, at a minimum, the fundamental concepts of making tech work for people of all abilities.
Above photo: Larry Goldberg of Yahoo, Ted Drake of Intuit, Amy Chen of Adobe, Mike Shebanek of Yahoo, Laura Palmaro of Google, and Jeff Wieland of Facebook representing Teach Access during a panel session at the Tech Inclusion conference.
On October 26, we hosted a panel at the Tech Inclusion conference in San Francisco. I moderated the panel and our friends from Facebook, Adobe, Google and Intuit joined our own Mike Shebanek for a deep dive into the why and how of Teach Access for an audience of start-ups, long-standing companies, students and hiring managers, all gathered to learn how the diversity movement needs to be inclusive of people with disabilities.
Above photo: Larry Goldberg of Yahoo, Matt Huenerfauth of RIT, Bruce Walker of Georgia Tech leading a panel session at the Disability and Inclusive Technology summit at the White House.
Then, on November 7, the White House hosted the Disability and Inclusive Technology Summit where Teach Access was presented by RIT’s Matt Huenerfauth and Georgia Tech’s Bruce Walker with me as the moderator. Many in the audience of policymakers, major corporations and advocates for people with disabilities responded in agreement that Teach Access’ mission was the best way forward to assure that future technologies are “born accessible” rather than retro-fitted for accessibility after release. Shadi Abou-Zahra from the W3C attended and filed this report.
Above photo: Prof. Dave Chesney of the University of Michigan and Larry Goldberg of Yahoo at the Accessing Higher Ground Conference
On November 16 and 17, Teach Access continued spreading the word at the Accessing Higher Ground Conference near Denver, Colorado. Professor Dave Chesney form the University of Michigan and I sat down to discuss Teach Access with a gathering of 500 university-based accessibility professionals, campus leaders and solution providers in the field. Dave’s presentation, “Building Accessibility into a Computer Science Capstone Course,” was a highlight of the week, demonstrating practical methods of teaching accessibility in a mainstream computer science course at a major university. I also had the opportunity to present the project at a lunch time plenary session entitled, “Sorting Out Certifications for Accessibility Professionals, Application Designers & Developers.” I couldn’t be more excited by the positive response to Teach Access and the commitment of its members.
Stay tuned to this space for continued updates throughout this and the upcoming year.
At Yahoo we are very proud of our iOS Weather app. For one reason, it is an Apple Design award winner.
You’d have to work for the Weather Channel to know more about your weather than you can get from our app. Temperatures and forecast, sure – and for five and ten days out AND hourly and daily. But the Yahoo iOS Weather app also provides humidity, UV Index, precipitation by time of day, wind and barometric pressure. Oh, and the Moon’s current stage (e.g. Waning Crescent), the Sun’s position and time to sunset. Feel free to do your own weather broadcast for family, friends and colleagues!
But now we have another reason to be proud – it’s also the most accessible, Apple award winning, Weather app.
Here’s how this weather-person-in-an-app works with VoiceOver and related assistive technology options to make checking the forecast a breeze. (Pun intended!)
Screen shot of the iOS Yahoo Weather app, including precipitation, wind & pressure, and sun & moon displays for Sunnyvale, California.
Navigating an hourly forecast with VoiceOver to get to the daily forecast could be tedious by requiring a lot of swiping. Here’s a tip: While you are navigating hour-by-hour, the daily forecast is approximately mid-display. Touch anywhere in that area and begin navigating day-by-day.
Yahoo’s iOS Weather app is as easy to access for a screen reader user as it is for a user who is swiping a single finger up and down to get from the top (where you’ll see the current temperature) to the bottom of the app (where you’ll see an animated effect used to represent the rising and setting sun, one of our favorite features).
Using VoiceOver’s heading option the “Sun & Moon” section of the app is as easy to navigate as using several single-finger swipes. This section of the app provides information on the moon’s current phase and the sun’s apogee. The latter is represented visually as an animated arch from sunrise to sunset. But there’s no accessibility problem with this animation. Our screen reader label reads: “Currently the sun is at 30% of its apogee in the sky, there are 8 hours and 59 minutes until sunset.”
If you’re looking to prioritize the app’s weather modules, no problem. The order in which you see Forecast, Details, Map, Precipitation, Wind & Pressure and Sun & Moon are easily customizable. Next to these labeled headings is a “reorder module image.” Click and hold. A brief sound effect will alert you that you can drag the module up or down in the list.
Go explore the weather in your favorite places around the world with the Yahoo Weather for iOS. See and hear for yourself! You can download the latest version in the App Store.
An open letter to the artist community (from a disabled artist)
I’m not really someone who likes making PSA type posts, as I like to keep my existence mainly quiet but with some consideration I’d like to cast my stone in the water today to talk about the entitlement of able bodied artists towards disabled folk.
I want to express foremost that I AM disabled, I AM an artist. I’ve been doing art since I was 9, and have been taking it as a serious career possibility since I was 10. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and while I might not be in the same business as many other artists, I absolutely get the right to talk about our own community.
I’ve gotten into the ID scene more recently than I’ve been an artist. I am not a perfect product of IDers, but I am someone I consider knowledgeable on the subject and want to share part of my insight for other artists, young and old.
What are IDs?
IDs, or image descriptions, are text additions onto a post that describe what is going on in the image or video. These IDs are here so people who have visual impairments, who cannot see the image, or otherwise do not understand what is going on can gain access to the post and understand what is going on.
IDs ARE necessary, because not everyone on the internet is able bodied, and disabled people shouldn’t be excluded from enjoying the posts or art we enjoy. If you think disabled people don’t belong on the internet, or that adding IDs are a waste of time, or make a post look ‘ugly’, you are ableist.
They are valuable tools that disabled people need, and as a community we should all work towards adding more IDs to our posts, or reblogging posts with IDs in the notes. Many of us are not asking you not to post ever unless a post has an ID, and we’re not asking everyone to start adding identifications (though it would be deeply appreciated!), we’re asking you to be more conscious of these usual tools so that other parts of the community who are otherwise excluded from your normal posts, can be included!
Art entitlement
Okay, great! Cool! We know what an ID is, and why they’re important, but what’s the tie into art? Very glad you asked! You see, most art is a visual medium that has traditionally been only accessible to those who can see it. Thanks to the internet, art has become a more widespread medium that anyone can enjoy!
That’s why, in more recent years, accessibility blogs have been reblogging art with image descriptions so that those who might not be able to access art in its image form, can still enjoy what an artist is trying to communicate with visuals.
IDs on art can be VERY helpful tools, especially for people who might consume similar content to you, but can’t always enjoy the exact same content as you due to outside factors.
It’s why, as an artist, you should be conscious about posting art, or reblogging others’ art.
Now, like above I am NOT saying you cannot post art ever unless you have an image ID. However I am saying that when you believe in full truth, that you as an artist are entitled to being reblogged for your time and effort, you are disrespecting several ideas.
You are disrespecting the idea that people OWE you something, when they don’t. As artists we often need as much attention as we can get on our art if we want to make big money off our work. However, as artists we are also often freelance.
We have no employers besides ourselves, and our occasional clients. When we offer our work to others, our clients do not owe us to accept our services. They are entitled to say no. It’s the same in reblogs.
You are offering your service (art), and if a client for whatever reason doesn’t want to reblog your art. They don’t have to. You are not entitled to telling people what they do with their own autonomy.
Additionally, when you are not providing accessibility to your art & are demanding/begging for people to reblog your art over liking it, you are digging your own grave here.
No one OWES you that reblog, but when you are purposefully excluding an entire community from your post, you are making it harder for people who DO want to reblog your post.
As someone who is disabled, I have very limited spoons. I take it out of my day to go online, and spend 5-20 minutes writing up an image description for posts I want to reblog. I cannot work endlessly reblogging posts with my own image IDs, but in most cases I have to make my own IDs because no one else has.
Not every artist is able bodied, but a large majority of you are. It often takes much less effort and energy than it does for someone like me, or my friends, to make a short image description.
If you are unwilling to do that bare minimum, or are unable to at that moment, you do not get to feel entitled to people reblogging your work. You do not get to shame your other community members, or your clients, for not reblogging your work ever. Period.
I am tired of having to hear people complain over and over again, shaming their fellow artists for being the ‘weak backbone’ of their community for not reblogging each other’s art. I am tired, I am disabled and I’m an artist: and I need you all to give a damn about adding image descriptions to your art/reblogging posts of art with image Ids.
