Categories
law roundup

U.S. Supreme Court Favors Digital Accessibility in Domino’s Case

A favorable decision was made yesterday (October 7, 2019) in the United States regarding digital accessibility and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA).

The U.S. Supreme Court denied to hear Domino’s Pizza appeal of the Ninth Circuit federal appeals court decision which allowed the case to be heard. So the Ninth Circuit decision for Domino’s v. Robles stands, hooray! Digital products which are a public accommodation must be accessible or will be subject to a lawsuit (and probably lose).

The accessibility community is dumbfounded and outraged as to why Domino’s, a national pizza chain in the U.S., would spend so much money and effort into fighting digital equality rather than making their digital services accessible to all, which would greatly increase their potential customer base (and avoid bad publicity!)

Here’s Domino’s statement about the Supreme Court’s decision. Domino’s doesn’t admit that besides convenience, inclusiveness, and equality, ordering online provides other perks that cannot be received in another way, such as discounts, coupons, and rewards points. Although their call for DOJ regulation has some merit, it’s more of an unwarranted excuse. Regulations aren’t completely necessary; if passed, they would likely still be WCAG 2.0 AA, and digital products would still be subject to lawsuits.

For lots of legalese, here is the the Domino’s case (PDF) and the Domino’s ruling (PDF). See below for a list of related articles and tweets.

Domino's Pizza logo with line thru it

Articles

Tweets

https://twitter.com/accessibility20/status/1181228718439780352

Categories
event roundup Toronto

Summary of Accessibility Toronto Camp

Accessibility Toronto Camp occurred Saturday, May 18 at OCAD University in incredible city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. For information on Twitter, search #a11yTOCamp and follow @a11yTO.

#a11yTO Camp logo

The camp kicked off with a warm welcome and announcements from organizers Billy Gregory, Oskar Westin, and Jenny Hiseler. Learn about all of the camp organizers on the event’s website.

Announcements during the event included the launch of a new conference Accessibility In Real Life (#a11yIRL) and an axe-pro beta program for web developers from Deque Systems.

Below are session resources, select Tweets, and a few personal notes.

Session Resources

Here’s a mix of resources from presenters of the conference.

Tweets

https://twitter.com/sophiaminmorgan/status/1130197585128493058

https://twitter.com/thedaviddias/status/1129836296212557824

Personal Notes

  • I loved exploring downtown Toronto; came across a wicked good place to eat called Rolltation — sushi burritos!
  • It was my first time at OCAD so it was cool just being there. It’s quite a funky/artsy place!
  • Met more great folks in the community including Sophia Morgan and John McNabb.
  • I have a few photos on the Instagram #a11yTOCamp feed.
Categories
csun event roundup

Summary of CSUN ATC 2019

The 34th CSUN Assistive Technology Conference has come and gone (held March 11-15, 2019). It was another terrific event, and with approximately 5000 attendees! The big difference in this year’s event was the new location—the lovely Anaheim Marriott hotel outside of Los Angeles, California. The official Twitter hashtag is #CSUNATC19. Next year’s event is planned for the same venue next March 9 to March 13, 2020.

CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, logo

Sandy Plotin (Managing Director, Center on Disabilities, CSUN) and Jennison Asuncion (Digital Accessibility Leader!) hosted the keynote event where Johanna Lucht, a Deaf Engineer at NASA, was honored. In addition, Sean Keegan, Director of California Community Colleges Accessibility Center, was announced this year’s Strache Leadership Award recipient.

Below are a great list of session resources, a few announcements made, photos, and some fun tweets! Lastly, links to past CSUN events are listed.

Recommended Session Resources

For much more, check the Great big list of CSUNATC19 accessibility presentations (Google Sheet). Also see the TPG CSUN 2019 Round-up and the Deque Systems Presentation Slides.

Announcements

Please leave a comment with anything missed.

More Related Links

Photos

Several people standing in front of meeting room with slide still projected.
David Swallow answering questions after his session.
Large meeting room with woman standing behind table and in front of large slide projection.
Sarah Pulis of Intopia presenting.
Front of room with projected slide on left, two people standing in center, and live captions on monitor on right.
Microsoft presenting on Narrator.

Fun Tweets

Past reviews of CSUN ATC conferences

Categories
conference event roundup

Accessibility Toronto Conference 2018 Review

The second Accessibility Toronto Conference was another success! It was held at TELUS in beautiful downtown Toronto, Canada. Hosted by the lovely Léonie Watson (@LeonieWatson) and the always entertaining Makoto Ueki (@mak_en).

#a11yTOConf
Accessibility Toronto Conference hash tag #a11yTOConf

Presentation Resources (partial list)

If your presentation resource is not listed, please leave a comment or contact me on Twitter at @WebAxe.

Welcome To My World
by @SteveFaulkner

Assistive Technology: Training, UX And Design: What Devs Need To Know About UX And Aging
by @SassyOutwater

Finding The Place Where Accessibility And SEO Happily Co-Exist
by @CarieFisher

If It’s Interactive, It Needs A Focus Style
by Eric Bailey @ericwbailey

A Primer On The Designer’s A11y Responsibility
by Hala Anwar @halathinkeths

The Dark Side Of The Grid
by Manuel Matuzović @mmatuzo

Creating Accessible React Apps
by Scott Vinkle @svinkle

Making Bulb More Accessible
Related article: Making Bulb accessible – introducing the new Bulb site
by Heydon Pickering @heydonworks

Photos

view of stage from back of large room with may people seated
Billy kicking off the event
projected slide with title of craptions and the grinch with caption saying hate hate hate double hate
Grinch don’t like bad captions
John standing on left of stage and projected slide on right
John Foliot talking WCAG
Makoto and Leonie on stage introducing Hala.
Makoto and Leonie on stage introducing Hala.

Collection of A11yTO 2018 photos on Google Photos

Tweets

Last Thoughts

Unfortunately, Eric Wright (@EWAccess) wasn’t able to give his presentation “Speech Recognition Solutions” due to breaking his ankle while he was in Toronto for the conference. Feel better Eric!

Was great to meet several folks in person for the first time whom I had known for a while online including Heydon Pickering, Eric Bailey, and Manuel Matuzović.

I discovered Steam Whistle pilsner (brewed in Toronto) which was very good!

Billy Gregory announced that the event will take place again next year in the same location (and Cordelia and Heydon invited to host!)

Here’s the review of last year’s conference (2017), Accessibility Toronto Conference a big success!

Categories
roundup wcag21

WCAG 2.1 article series via Knowbility

As you may know, WCAG 2.1 was recently published as a Recommendation (see my WCAG 2.1 post in this past June). It adds 1 new guideline (2.5 Input Modalities) and 17 new success criteria.

To help understand the new criteria, check out this excellent “Exploring WCAG 2.1” article series on the Knowbility website and written by Becky Gibson.

Overall: Welcome, WCAG 2.1! The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines get an update.

Knowbility logo

More WCAG 2.1 articles