Accessibility News August 15,2020 Update – Accessibility News, your Online Magazine Devoted to Disability Accessibility.
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The AODA Clock is Ticking
There are 4 years, 19 weeks, 6 days until a fully Accessible Ontario! Will you be compliant?
In this Issue
*An Important New Report to the Ontario Government Calls on the Government and School Boards to Take Action Now to Ensure that One Third of a Million Students with Disabilities are Able to Fully Participate in Ontario Schools as They Re-Open This Fall
*When Street Design Leaves Some People Behind
*Enforcing AODA Compliance
*eSSENTIAL Accessibility and PixelMEDIA Partner to Improve Web Accessibility for Digital Commerce
*Sudbury Patios Causing Accessibility Challenges, Advocate Says
*YouTube Is Ending Its Community Captions Feature and Deaf Creators Aren’t Happy about it
eSSENTIAL Accessibility is an Accessibility-as-a-Service platform. It helps organizations deliver inclusive web, mobile, and product experiences in compliance with legal requirements to ensure that no one with a disability is left behind.
To learn more, visit http://www.essentialaccessibility.com.
An Important New Report to the Ontario Government Calls on the Government and School Boards to Take Action Now to Ensure that One Third of a Million Students with Disabilities are Able to Fully Participate in Ontario Schools as They Re-Open This Fall
We today share with you a very important new report that bears on the needs of a third of a million students with disabilities in Ontario-funded schools, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Three weeks ago, the Ford Government received a detailed report on the steps it needs to take to meet the needs of students with disabilities now and into the fall, in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. This thorough report, which we set out in full below, was written by a subcommittee of the Government-appointed K-12 Education Standards Development Committee.
When Street Design Leaves Some People Behind
A person in an electric wheelchair crosses a street in Hawthorne, California. Adding bike infrastructure is a boon for cyclists, but some street redesigns can make getting around harder for disabled road users.
Read more at
https://aoda.ca/when-street-design-leaves-some-people-behind/
Enforcing AODA Compliance
Review attendees suggest several new ways of enforcing AODA compliance. For instance, they suggest that more AODA inspections should be taking place. In addition, these inspections must become more thorough. Under the current AODA, inspectors must find out whether businesses and other organizations have documents about accessibility. For instance, inspectors find out whether businesses have training documents, as well as accessibility policies and plans. However, inspectors do not find out whether a business is performing the services their documents describe. As a result, a business can create an accessibility policy but not perform the tasks in the policy, such as:
Read more at
https://aoda.ca/enforcing-aoda-compliance/
eSSENTIAL Accessibility and PixelMEDIA Partner to Improve Web Accessibility for Digital Commerce
Today, eSSENTIAL Accessibility, the pioneering Accessibility-as-a-Service provider that empowers organizations to offer fully accessible and compliant digital experiences, announced a strategic partnership with PixelMEDIA, a digital commerce agency dedicated to helping lifestyle brands launch, manage, and grow their ecommerce business on Salesforce.
Sudbury Patios Causing Accessibility Challenges, Advocate Says
Rob DiMeglio often walks to work in downtown Sudbury, but recently, he’s been afraid to venture into the city’s centre after a scary incident left him “shaken up” and concerned about accessibility for people with disabilities.
Read more at
https://aoda.ca/sudbury-patios-causing-accessibility-challenges-advocate-says/
YouTube Is Ending Its Community Captions Feature and Deaf Creators Aren’t Happy about it
But deaf and hard-of-hearing creators say removing the community captions feature will stifle accessibility, and they want to see the company try to fix the issues with volunteer-created captions, rather than doing away with them entirely. Deaf YouTuber Rikki Poynter said on her channel in May that community captions were an “accessibility tool that not only allowed deaf and hard of hearing people to watch videos with captions, but allowed creators that could not afford to financially invest in captions.”
Past Newsletters
View past issues of the Newsletter at http://www.accessibilitynews.ca/category/accessibility-news-weekly-newsletter/
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