A film called CODA

A film called CODA will debut at the next Sundance Film Festival. The director and screenwriter is Siân Heder and the film is about a hearing child--the only hearing person in her deaf family. When the family’s fishing business is threatened, Ruby finds herself torn between pursuing her love of music and her family's reliance on her to be their connection to the outside world. Emilia Jones plays the hearing girl and Marlee Matlin is one of the co-stars. CODA will debut on Jan. 30 and tickets for the film festival, which has been moved online, go on sale on Jan. 7 and you can buy them here. Below is a preview.

TechRadar: “Accessibility should not be an afterthought“

TechRadar takes a look at some recent develops in social media that leaves out entire communities--particularly Twitters expansion into audio. Read the story here.

Website accessibility study

Many websites are not accessible, according to a company called accessiBe. They tested 10,000,000 websites for accessibility compliance and found:

98% of menus failed
83% of buttons
71% of forms
52% of images
89% of pop-ups.

Read more here.

Online Education Resources for the Deaf Community

Voice of America's Calla Yu has a video report on teachers who are creating online resources in American Sign Language.

Zoom fatigue is nothing new--to the deaf and HoH

Zoom fatigue is something the Deaf community knows very well. It’s called “concentration fatigue" and people who are deaf and hard of hearing deal with it every day. Read more about the topic in a Quartz article here.

Leaving students behind in the rush to go online

Digital Trends reports "The rapid migration to virtual classes has forced disabled students into using websites and apps that were never designed to accommodate them." Read the full story here.

NAD wins settlement against Harvard over captioning video

Harvard has settled a lawsuit over captioning. The school has agreed to make its website and online courses "friendlier" to those who are deaf or hard of hearing. The National Association of the Deaf filed the suit four years ago, saying "many of its videos and audio recordings lacked captions or used inaccurate captions." NAD CEO Howard Rosenblum said, "This lawsuit (puts) universities and colleges on notice that all aspects of their campus including their websites must be accessible to everyone." At first, Harvard tried to get the lawsuit dismissed. A judge rejected Harvard’s argument that its websites do not constitute a physical “public accommodation” covered by federal civil rights laws. The judge ruled that Harvard’s online are offerings can be seen as an extension of the campus. Read more details on the settlement from the NAD here.

Myths about making your website accessible

More than 2,250 federal lawsuits were filed against websites for ADA compliance issues in 2018, according to Amihai Miron, who heads User1st, a website accessibility firm. That's triple the number the year before. He says there are six myths related to the ADA issue including the idea that "No one’s complained, so there’s no problem" and "There’s no clear legal standard." Read more at Technical.ly here.

Deaf People Answer Oddly Common Googled Questions

What Makes a Website "Accessible"?

U.S. courts have issued conflicting rulings about ADA law and the internet. "As a result, businesses, litigants and the courts have had no governmental rules or guidance to look to for what must be done to a website to make it compliant with the ADA," Charles Marion writes on Law.com. He says one case was dismissed for the lack of government rules on the matter. Read more about how websites and accessibility are a work in progress here.

Proposed Deaf Emojis

Apple is proposing that the Unicode Consortium (which oversees the internet) approve some new emojis to represent users with disabilities. Apples says, "Diversifying the options available helps fill a significant gap and provides a more inclusive experience for all." The National Association of the Deaf helped come up with the new images. Among the proposed emojis:

 Service Dog With Vest and Leash
 Ear With Hearing Aid
 Deaf Sign (Male and Female)

 Read the proposal here.

How Does ADA Law Apply to the Internet?

How the American Disabilities Act applies to the Internet seems like a straightforward question. But the answer has been made complicated by US law and policy over the years since the law was passed. While the general answer would be "yes" Law.com offers this bottom line: There is a..

"gaping hole in the law governing accessibility requirements for websites that are not tied to a traditional “brick-and-mortar” store. For now, whether a particular website—which reaches people nationwide—is a 'public accommodation' under Title III depends upon the location of the court hearing a challenge to its inaccessibility." 

Read the complete analysis here.

A flood of lawsuits over Website Accessibility

Hundreds of companies are facing federal class actions filed in recent months alleging that their websites don't comply with ADA law. CBS News reports that Nike, Burger King, Hershey, Lord & Taylor and Pandora are among those companies facing lawsuits. Read the full story here.

Beauty blogger uses ASL

Beauty Blogger Catherine Martinez

A beauty blogger is using sign language in her tutorials. Catherine Martinez says she wants to maek her video's more accessible to the deaf and hard-of-hearing, having been inspired by a deaf classmate at NYU. Read the full story here.

Website ADA Compliance put on the Federal Gov.'s Back Burner

The Department of Justice has put the issue website compliance with ADA law on its "inactive list." New regulations had been scheduled to start next year but the issue has been set aside for now. The Pepper Hamilton law firm tells its clients, "There is no longer an imminent expectation that the DOJ will provide new guidance regarding what type of private website formatting or accommodations must be provided to users in order to comply with the ADA. In fact, the DOJ’s newly professed lack of interest appears to weigh against an assumption that the ADA applies to websites." You can read more here.

One Billion Videos Captioned.. sort of

While YouTube is bragging about have one billion captioned videos, critics are pointing out that many of the automatically generated captions are wildly inaccurate. It's been eight years since Google added the automatic speech recognition designed to generate captions and the company says it's accuracy is up by 50 percent. But in the anouncement about the number of captioned videos, Google Product Manager Liat Kaver admits the program is not where the company wants it to be:

A major goal for the team has been improving the accuracy of automatic captions — something that is not easy to do for a platform of YouTube’s size and diversity of content. Key to the success of this endeavor was improving our speech recognition, machine learning algorithms, and expanding our training data. There were limitations with the technology that underscored the need to improve the captions themselves. Results were sometimes less than perfect, prompting some creators to have a little fun at our expense!

Read the full announcement from YouTube here.

Web access challenge underway against real estate co.'s

Real estate firms are being challenged over whether their websites are ADA compliant. "Lawyers representing visually impaired, hearing-impaired and other clients say the vast majority of realty sites don't offer features needed to allow handicapped individuals to shop for homes and absorb content like other visitors. These include alternative texts accompanying images, transcripts for audiovisual content, descriptive links and resizable text, and a variety of other features," reports the Chicago Tribune. Read the full story here.

Gally gets grant for new online effort

A grant of a quarter of a million dollars will support Gallaudet University's ASL Connect effort. The funds will come from The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. ASL Connect won't go live until next year, but when it does it will offer online ASL education--including an ASL certificate program, a ASL Placement Test, ASL coaching and tutoring, as well as MOOC (massive open online course) classes and much more. Read more about the grant and ASL Connect here.

Online course provider cuts deal with Feds over Accessibility

Online course provider edX is settled a Justice Dept. complaint that its classes were not accessible to the deaf and blind. The nonprofit MOOC provider created by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will change it's website and digital tools--meaning the agreement affects the 60 colleges now using the platform. edX will not pay a fine. The National Associated of the Deaf filed a lawsuit against Harvard and MIT over its poorly captioned or missing captions on their instructional videos.Read the full settlement here.

Suit over Online Course Captioning

A deaf student is suing the American Heart Association for failing to caption video in an online course. Ian Deandrea-Lazarus says he was required to take the course as part of his degree requirements at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. WROC-TV has a video report.