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Thread: History of accessibility
Number of posts in this thread: 5 (In chronological order)
From: Emily Ogle
Date: Wed, Aug 22 2018 7:16AM
Subject: History of accessibility
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Does anyone have a good resource for the history of accessibility, such as closed captioning, texting, critical changes in law, game-changers, etc?
Also, does anyone know when exactly Apple included Accessibility settings in its iPhone? I had thought the initial release of the iPhone included it but I'm unable to verify.
Thanks!
Emily
From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Wed, Aug 22 2018 7:31AM
Subject: Re: History of accessibility
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iPhone came out in June 2007. iPhone didn't become accessible with VoiceOver until June 2009 with the 3g version.
Jonathan
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From: chagnon
Date: Wed, Aug 22 2018 9:12AM
Subject: Re: History of accessibility
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Accessibility of what?
The start of the concept of barrier-free anything developed out of a court
case in the late 1960s. A man couldn't attend his trial at a US federal
courthouse because he was in a wheelchair and the old federal courthouse did
not have an elevator he could take to the upper level where his trial was
held. He lost that case, but later successfully sued the government for
discrimination.
Soon afterwards in 1968, the Architectural Barriers Act (ABA) was passed,
which set up the US Access Board (its legal name used in all legislation is
the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board) to regulate
full access to all US Federal facilities.
https://www.access-board.gov/news/1935-access-board-to-celebrate-50-years-of
-the-architectural-barriers-act
Access to digital information started being discussed by web developers in
the mid-1990s, 30 years later. The Windows and Apple OS-es at that time were
essentially unusable by people using screen readers and the web itself was
like the wild wild west...nothing worked consistently across all browsers,
operating systems, and even monitors.
It wasn't until Tim Berners Lee formed the W3C in 1994 to standardize how
the web would work that the concept of accessible digital information took
root. https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ Our system of consistent HTML
tags was created then, which was called the Web Standards.
At that time, some of us in the computer industry worked directly with
Microsoft and Apple to put hooks into their OS-es that would allow screen
readers to use the graphical user interfaces. To me, if felt like we
guilt-tripped the heck out of them to get them to make some changes.
By 1998, Sec. 508 was passed but its original language stated that web
information (not other digital information) must be accessible to federal
workers (not the general public). Soon afterwards, the general public was
added and in 2017, the concept of digital information was formally put into
the regs.
That's what I remember!
Hope others will contribute. I don't believe anyone has written down this
history.
This is just from a U S viewpoint, but I believe that after our the U S Sec.
508 was put into place, other countries started down the same path.
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From: chagnon
Date: Wed, Aug 22 2018 9:20AM
Subject: Re: History of accessibility
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Let me reword part of that...
The man in the 1960s defaulted on his case (not just lost). Since he
couldn't attend the trial, he lost by default. That's why this became a
violation of his civils rights and he was able to go on and sue the
government for discrimination.
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Bevi Chagnon, founder/CEO | = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
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PubCom: Technologists for Accessible Design + Publishing
consulting . training . development . design . sec. 508 services
Upcoming classes at www.PubCom.com/classes
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Latest blog-newsletter - Accessibility Tips at www.PubCom.com/blog
From: Emily Ogle
Date: Wed, Aug 22 2018 10:20AM
Subject: Re: History of accessibility
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Thank you! This is a great start.
On Wednesday, August 22, 2018, 10:20:29 AM CDT, = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
Let me reword part of that...
The man in the 1960s defaulted on his case (not just lost). Since he
couldn't attend the trial, he lost by default. That's why this became a
violation of his civils rights and he was able to go on and sue the
government for discrimination.
- - -
Bevi Chagnon, founder/CEOÂ |Â = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
- - -
PubCom: Technologists for Accessible Design + Publishing
consulting . training . development . design . sec. 508 services
Upcoming classes at www.PubCom.com/classes
- - -
Latest blog-newsletter - Accessibility Tips at www.PubCom.com/blog