Accessibility

Crowdsourcing for Accessibility

While we’re anticipating the Section 508 refresh, many government digital media teams are facing the task of incorporating WCAG 2.0 standards (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) in their projects despite having limited staff resources and budget constraints. We can use creative solutions, such as crowdsourcing, to overcome those challenges and make our works accessible. Our teams

Angela Hooker

Dec 29, 2014

Results: 2014 Federal User Experience Survey

The Federal User Experience (UX) Survey helpsus to learn how we can best improve the effectiveness, ease-of-use, and value of federal digital systems by connecting their teams to their customers.

Jonathan Rubin

Nov 21, 2014

User Experience Impossible: The Line Between Accessibility and Usability

Bob goes to a popular federal government site, using his assistive technology, and starts reading a teaser for an article. Just below the teaser, there’s an embedded video on the page. He presses the tab key, trying to navigate to a link for the full article, but suddenly he’s trapped—he can’t tab past the video.

Angela Hooker

Nov 17, 2014

Celebrate the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 508

Happy anniversary, baby! Seventies pop songs aside, July 26, 2014, was the 24th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and on August 7 of this year, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended in 1998, will have its 16th anniversary. Sometimes these two laws are mistaken one for the other,

Angela Hooker

Aug 07, 2014

508 Accessible Videos—Why (and How) to Make Them

Making Web content and video accessible to people with disabilities is the law. Ensuring a video is accessible requires planning. Taking steps from day one will save you time and money. To verify that a video is accessible you’d need to incorporate three elements: Captioning Audio descriptions An Accessible video player Why Accessibility Matters Many government

Jonathan Rubin

Ryan Leisinger

Gary Morin

Jun 30, 2014

508 Accessible Videos – Use a 508-Compliant Video Player

When you watch a video on your computer, the window that displays your video is called a “video player.” It usually has start, pause, and other buttons. You might not be aware that you’re using a player at all—you just watch your video. A fully-accessible video player (e.g. Section 508-compliant)

Jonathan Rubin

Ryan Leisinger

Gary Morin

Jun 30, 2014

508 Accessible Videos – How to Make Audio Descriptions

What are Audio Descriptions? Audio Description, also called descriptive video or video description, is an additional audio track that describes and gives context for essential visual information. Audio Description makes videos and multimedia accessible to people who have “low vision” (very poor vision), or who are blind, by capturing what

Jonathan Rubin

Ryan Leisinger

Gary Morin

Jun 30, 2014

508 Accessible Videos – How to Caption Videos

What are Captions? In a video, captions collect all audio information and describe them using text. They include not only spoken content but also non-speech information such as sound effects, music, laughter, and speaker identification and location (for example, audio spoken off-screen). Captions appear transposed over the visual elements in

Ryan Leisinger

Gary Morin

Jonathan Rubin

Jun 30, 2014

The more public information is digitized, the more it lands on or sprouts from social media channels. This is why there needs to be a greater level of awareness and consideration for those who can benefit most from that information—people with disabilities, since they have the least access to it.

Victoria Bitzer-Wales

Jun 30, 2014

The Federal #SocialGov Community, a collective of almost 700 digital engagement managers from more than 120 government agencies, marked the 2nd anniversary of our program by releasing a suite of new collaborative services to help us better work together and with partners in

Justin Herman

Jun 30, 2014

On Thursday, July 17, the FCC’s Accessibility and Innovation Initiative will host a public event called “Accessing Social Media.” The purpose is to promote collaborative, cross-sector problem-solving on how to produce and consume accessible social media, considering authoring tools, client apps, and best practices for various

Jamal Mazrui

May 08, 2014

Create Section 508-Compliant Videos on Your Government Websites

It is undeniable the reach of online video into our modern lives. From cats in shark costumes riding on Roombas to the 2.1 million people live streaming the 2012 Super Bowl. Online video inspires us with TED talks and allows us to feel the rush of Felix Baumgartner jumping from space. With online video so

Ryan Leisinger

Nov 21, 2013

Federal Contact Center Regulations & Directives

Contact centers operated and managed by federal agencies have to follow certain laws, regulations, policies, and other directives. Unless specifically noted, contact centers operated and managed by states or local governments do not have to comply with these same requirements. Access for People with Disabilities (Section 508) Federal contact centers must comply with Section 508

Tonya Beres

Oct 28, 2013

Best Week Ever in #SocialGov: 2

(This is the second installment of an ongoing series charting the programs, events and people that make the emerging field of social media and data in government From where I sit, I think we just had a great week in #socialgov. From a sold-out international forum that demonstrated how we can use free tools to

Justin Herman

Sep 30, 2013

Looking at User Experience through Two Lenses

Usability and accessibility are slightly different lenses to assess user experience. It is possible to be strong in one area and weak in the other. Using either approach alone could result in an inaccurate view of your site’s user experience. Evaluating your website with both usability and accessibility in mind gives all users the best

Katie Messner

Aug 30, 2013

Trends on Tuesday: Why You Should Be Accessible on Mobile

Mobile Marketing Watch released an article explaining why it is important for the workplace to be making the move to mobile. When it comes to marketing, it is essential to understand your customer and be easily discoverable or else your product will go unseen.

Rachel Hurley

Aug 27, 2013

Embracing Responsive Design

See how a shift in consumer behavior during the last few years lead to the responsive redesign of USA.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov.

Laura Godfrey

Aug 20, 2013

Mobile Product Accessibility Testing Resources

Accessibility testing is a subset of usability testing and is the inclusive practice of making websites and mobile applications usable by people of all abilities and disabilities. You do this by testing mobile websites and/or applications on all leading browsers, mobile devices and screen readers. This article was developed as part of the Mobile Application

Jul 31, 2013

Making Multimedia Section 508-Compliant and Accessible

If you plan for accessibility when creating and posting media, you can create a rich, interactive community where users can get important government information from your agency’s official website or blog and dialogue with government.

Angela Hooker

Jun 26, 2013

Guest post by Mario Damiani, Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) at the Department of Labor. ODEP spearheads the Social Media Accessibility Working Group within the Federal Social Media Community of Practice. The working group recently released a toolkit for agencies to make their content more accessible for citizens with disabilities, including recommendations from agencies

Mario Damiani

Jun 26, 2013

More News and Events on Accessibility