Due to specific health issues, I commonly find myself awake at 2 and 3 in the morning. It sucks because I’m in pain, but great for letting my mind wander in the hope to distract from it.
Some thoughts are mundane, like why don’t Indian restaurants around me have Idli on their menus? Some are scary, like thinking I can buy a house in Denver, Colorado. Ultimately, my mind wanders to accessibility, though I shouldn’t think about career stuff if I want any hope of falling asleep.
Humor me for a few minutes and take a journey on one of my pain-fueled late-night ponderings.
Bank robber Willie Sutton refuted the famous quote attributed to him, “Because that’s where the money is,” but due to the simple and powerful sentiment behind it, “Focus on the obvious,” the quote has endured and spawned several principles used in business and medicine.
Focusing on the obvious is also the strategy for implementing digital accessibility. Companies create technology (and inaccessible experiences), so you go to the source to implement solutions. This strategy is entirely logical but has one major conflict.
Remedying barriers and establishing accessibility measures move at glacial speed within companies (due to long-ingrained systemic ableism, but that is a long journey for another day). Still, the accessibility needs of people with disabilities usually happen instantaneously.
It’s nice to think that one-day accessibility will be initiated at the furthest point left so that it can quickly move, but we are not at “one day.” We are at right now, and what are disabled people supposed to do right now?
It shouldn’t be up to disabled people to fix access barriers they didn’t create, but depending on the when, where, and whys of those barriers, waiting for company remediation could mean the limiting of an individual’s livelihood, independence, and, some cases – life.
Paul Alexander, one of the last two individuals to use an iron lung in the United States, passed away last week. Paul spent over 70 years in an iron lung due to the effects of Polio. In 2004, he and other iron lung patients were given three options by the medical supply company that serviced the devices: they either; “transition to another ventilator device, keep using the iron lung but know that supply company may not be able to repair the device, or accept full ownership and responsibility of the iron lung and find someone else to repair it.”
The option to switch to a different, newer device might seem clear-cut, but it doesn’t consider that negative-pressure ventilation of an iron lung can be a more effective treatment for some conditions than modern positive-pressure airway ventilators. While some patients switched to newer devices, many did not and took on the responsibility of upkeep and repairing their iron lungs, necessitating the relentless search for engineers, mechanics, and fabricators skilled and charitable enough to keep the devices they depended on for their survival running.
It is essential to focus on and pressure companies to prioritize accessibility, expedite fixes when they fail, or hold them accountable when they try to abandon responsibility. However, we also need to encourage independent solutions and fixes. That means supporting open-source projects and developers, right-to-repair legislation, and other ventures organized and created by disabled people.
To close this out, I will say a few words about artificial intelligence, as many are touting it as a way to empower people with disabilities to solve unique accessibility needs.
Generative AI is still in its infancy as a technology and, in its current state, cannot tackle the many needs and requirements for comprehensive digital accessibility. It depends on companies with the infrastructure and large models to support it, and it is mainly inaccessible to individuals without deep knowledge and resources. The development of AI tools and solutions has to be within the scope and framework of companies and organizations, so it’s not presently a viable option for creating independent solutions and fixes.
Sources:
Accessibility Savvy 