YOU should be celebrating the expansion of the ADA!
08:36, 27 July 2010
.. Posted in techculture and tech to help.. Link
The US House of Representatives on Monday celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act by approving legislation assuring that the disabled have full access to the Internet and television.
The bill, which passed 348-23 and now moves to the Senate, takes such steps as making it easier for people with disabilities to access the Internet from smart phones, providing deaf people with the ability to watch new TV programs online with captions included, and requiring that telecom equipment used to make calls over the Internet be compatible with hearing aids.
THIS IS HUGE!! I hope absolutely everyone reading this who has a blog will blog about this today, if you haven't already! Every newspaper and television tech reporter needs to be covering this.
Every person reading this blog in the USA has benefited from the ADA. Not only has kept thousands and thousands and thousands of people in the workforce rather than on government programs, not only has it allowed millions of people to be far more independent than they ever could have been otherwise (and thereby be less of a burden on the government and families for help), but we ALL use the tools that ADA has brought us: wheel chair ramps are used by parents pushing prams, by people who are on crutches , and by delivery people pushing carts; extra large bathroom stalls have been used by parents with small children and people needing to change clothes and people with luggage; closed captioning allows us to watch a video training from our work desks without disturbing our colleagues or to watch the news in a noisy bar; web sites that are accessible for people using assistive technologies can also be accessed by our non-smart cell phones, and on and on and on. This legislation doesn't cost money as much as it pushes us all to work in such a way that we build products and services that are inclusive for everyone, not exclusive. This is a civil rights issue.
This extension of what the ADA does is a wonderful announcement, building on the hard work of nonprofit organizations like Knowbility. (which had representatives in D.C for this announcement - hurrah!). We should all be celebrating.
Everyone should be supporting this act, but sadly, not everyone is: see the comments section under the AP story on Yahoo to see outrageous, even disgusting comments against the ADA and this expansion. What are we coming to?
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