Newsflash: bringing accessibility and inclusion to a new space
I’ve been sitting on this one for a while, but I have exciting news! Starting next Monday, September 21st, I will appear as a contributor to Dave Brown’s excellent morning show, Now with Dave Brown, on AMI-TV and AMI-Audio. The show is broadcasted live on weekdays between 9 am and 11 am eastern and explores the latest news, entertainment, sports, and current events through a disability lens. I will come in once a month for a 12-minute segment to talk about web accessibility, discuss the stakes of digital inclusion and explore ways in which we can make online communications more inclusive to people with disabilities.
As someone who has been actively advocating for more inclusion in the digital space for about 20 years, this is a fantastic opportunity to spread my wings further into a new communication channel that I have not touched much yet: audio and video content. Over the years, I’ve been involved with pretty much every aspect of web development and design, and I’ve seen first hand how utterly broken the web can be for people with disabilities and those at risk of being marginalized by our use of technology. This will be a chance to share what I’ve learned with a new crowd, and I’m really excited for that opportunity!
These segments will provide the show’s listeners with insights on what it means to create an inclusive online experience for everyone, what causes barriers to people with disabilities, some insiders’ explanations about how web technologies work, and how they typically fail those who have disabilities. Through these segments, we’ll follow newsworthy events, debunk common myths, shed some light on common inclusion issues people face online, and what we can do to actively take our power back.
Drawing from years of experience building the web and working with those who do, we’ll analyze real-world situations, cover recent accessibility lawsuits, explore the business case for creating accessible online content and provide the listeners with tools to better understand why the web often feels broken. More importantly, we’ll discuss what we can do about it collectively, and how we can help organizations that fail us understand how they could make things better and more inclusive for the rest of us.
To get started on these segments, it feels logical to begin by setting the stage and identify what it is that a discipline like web accessibility tries to address. To that effect, we’ll start by defining what we mean by web accessibility and digital inclusion, and how important it is for society that the web be usable by anyone, on any device. Using examples inspired by recent events, we’ll explore what it means to be prevented from freely using the web inclusively and ultimately, what it costs all of us as a society, in terms of human capital and lost opportunities, especially when most people’s default is to turn to the web for information.
As the segments will be more focused on the people aspect than the technical nuts and bolts of web development, we’ll explore these topics from the lens of inclusive design and communications, and how we can all contribute to a more welcoming society by doing our part in advocating for more inclusion in the digital world so that everyone is empowered to truly connect.
So if any of this sounds interesting to you, and I certainly hope it does, then tune in next Monday, September 21st, around 9:25 am Eastern on AMI-TV or listen to the segment live on AMI-Audio. The show is also available daily on multiple platforms as a series of podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, TuneIn, and Stitcher. So if you can’t make the time then, you’ll be able to catch up on the recordings quickly after by streaming or downloading the segments through either platform on the show’s webpage.
I’m looking forward to this great opportunity and I’m also looking forward to the discussions that might ensue with the community. If you do listen in and want to reach out with questions, comments, or ideas, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter at @dboudreau, or reach out to Dave at @davebrownradio.
