#SOAR

2nd Annual State of Report May 21st, 2020

There are 2.2 Billion People Worldwide with a According to the World Health Organization

1 Foreword

By Joe Devon, Co-Founder of Diamond and Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Much has happened since we launched our 1st State of Accessibility Report. At Diamond, we had our frst full year with an accessibility practice area. We’ve learned the pain organizations & accessibility professionals face when a project revolves around compliance issues. CTOs hate losing velocity on their roadmap and increased costs as the pressure mounts on the whole organization.

Happily, our DNA is a company built by software developers for software developers. We have tai- lored our oferings to how CTOs think. Rather than focus on audits that slow down development, we actually fx the bugs and help with velocity.

The results of this year’s report show that the state of accessibility on the web hasn’t changed con- siderably. Diamond has again performed a manual analysis of registration, login and logout of the top Alexa websites and found improvements. By contrast, Jared Smith updates us on his seminal WebAIM Million study, which shows worse results than last year. Sharron Rush, accessibility pioneer at , has a somewhat somber update on accessibility in the K-12 space.

Lastly, it is long overdue that we fatten the curve of inequality for People with (“PwD”). It needs to start with the developer community. We will share our plans here to move the needle with the Diamond #GAADPledge, an initiative geared at infuencing developer culture.

In the Age of the Coronavirus, the world has gone digital. This is our moment to shine!

Joe Devon Joe Devon Co-Founder of Diamond

2 Table of Contents

Foreword pg 2 The State of Accessibility in 2020 pg 4 Accessibility of the Registration, Login and Logout of the Alexa Top 100 pg 4 Web Technology Accessibility - What We Learn from the WebAIM Million pg 5 The State of Accessibility in EdTech for K-12 pg 8 In Conclusion pg 12 It is Time to Flatten the Curve of Digital Inequality for People with Disabilities pg 12 How to Improve the State of Accessibility pg 12 What is the #GAADPledge? pg 13 Diamond Launches the GAAD Pledge pg 13 Facebook Takes the GAAD Pledge pg 13 Diamond Invites You to Take the GAAD Pledge pg 13 Until Next Year pg 13 Appendix A pg 14 Annotated Bibliography pg 14 Contributors pg 17 About Diamond pg 17 About WebAIM pg 17 About Knowbility pg 17 #SOAR & Contact Info pg 18

3 State of Accessibility in 2020

Accessibility of the Registration, Login or form element trees made available by the and Logout of the Alexa Top 100 software. by Richard Nesbitt & Joe Devon, Diamond The AXE plugin for Chrome was used to identify If registration, login and logout sections of a lang, contrast, label and ARIA errors; this was run website are inaccessible, by defnition the entire on the frst screen of the registration process for site is inaccessible. To assess the state of the top the site. websites with respect to these three features, we Registration have manually tested the Alexa Top 100 web- sites. The process of registering on most sites can be broken down into the following four phases (not Technology Methodology all sites required #4): Technology used: • Find a link or button to start the registration • VoiceOver on Safari, macOS Mojave • Fill out the form • NVDA on Firefox, Windows 10 • Submit the form • JAWS on Internet Explorer 11, Windows 10 • Complete a confrmation process Can the following processes be accessed and Most of the failures recorded for the registration completed using only the keyboard and key process were from phase 1 or 2. If the initial op- combinations made available through the screen tion to begin registration was not available to the reading software? , the site was given a failing grade. Additionally, if the page contained any forms re- • Register quiring a CAPTCHA that had no audio alternative, • Log In the site was given a failing grade. • Log Out If you can register but you can’t login, that is con- If registration could not be completed, no further sidered a failure. testing was done in most instances.

If you can login but you can’t logout, that is con- Login and Logout Upon successful registration, sidered a failure. testing of the login and logout processes was conducted. If the requisite elements (forms and/ The screen reader software listed above was or buttons) could not be accessed via the key- used to navigate through the registration pro- board, the site was given a failing grade in that cess, logging out of the site, and then logging category. back in. If registration could not be achieved, login and logout were not tested. “With Difculty” Any login and logout processes that seemed illogical, but were still completable, On occasions where the links, buttons, or forms were considered accessible “with difculty”. For did not receive focus at appropriate times, or example, triggering a login button or link and were for some reason unavailable by regular then needing to search for form elements/but- means of navigation, a search was done for the tons to proceed because focus was not given to appropriate element by accessing either the link the modal.

4 Results • 33% had either missing or improperly associ- ated feld labels Between last year and this year’s tests, we saw a • 15% had invalid ARIA usage signifcant improvement in sites that were acces- sible on all three screen reader platforms tested. Last year, 29% of sites tested were accessible 52 Had 15 Had without error. This year, that number jumped to Constant Invalid 40% of sites accessible without error. Errors ARIA Usage Alexa Top 100

33 Had 13 Were Missing or Missing a Incorrect Lang Field Attribute Labels

40% Accessible Causes of Failure There were varied reasons for 39% Inaccessible failure. In 3 cases, inaccessible “Terms of Ser- 21% Accessible vice” (“ToS”) caused the failures. There were 6 with Difficulties inaccessible captchas, 12 problems with ele- ment focus, 8 form element problems, and 18 We saw a decrease in sites that failed the tests. problems with :focus states. Last year, 43% of sites failed. This year, 39% Web Technology Accessibility - What failed. While not a huge improvement, at least it is better than last year. We Learn from the WebAIM Million By Jared Smith, WebAIM Last year, 28% of sites tested were accessible The WebAIM Million is an annual accessibili- “with difculty” as defned above. This year, that ty analysis of the home pages for the top one number dropped to 21% of sites accessible “with million web sites. It provides great insight into difculty”. We consider this to be an improve- the current state and trends of . ment only because the 7% diference went to In February 2019 and February 2020, nearly 200 sites that have improved from the “with difculty” accessibility and technology characteristics of category to the completely accessible category. the one million home pages were collected. In Drilling Down Of the phases tested are registra- 2020, accessibility data for over 100,000 interi- tion, login, logout. or pages for the top 1,300 web sites were also collected. These data points provide a deep For Logins: perspective on the accessibility of home pages • 23% failed on all three screen readers across the web. This article focuses on trends • 25% failed on at least one screen reader from 2019 to 2020, and how the data from the WebAIM Million research can inform web acces- Other Accessibility Metrics Tested Of the top sibility improvements for users with disabilities. 100 Alexa websites: • 13% are missing a lang attribute Overview • 52% have contrast errors WebAIM conducted these analyses using the WAVE web accessibility evaluation tool. While

5 no automated tool can detect all accessibility 3. Empty links and buttons - 66% of home pag- issues, the detectable issues are often among es, 8.4 instances per page the most impactful for users with disabilities. 4. Missing form input labels - 54% of home pag- es, 1.9 instances per page 5. Missing document language - 28% of home Average Number of Errors pages Per Home Page 60.9 Cause of Most Common Accessibility Failures In February 2020, an average of 60.9 errors were detected per home page. Each introduc- Percentage of Average Failures es a barrier to users with certain disabilities and Home Pages Per Page refects non-conformance with the Web Content L Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). This is up from Contrast 36 Text 86% 59.6 errors in February 2019. 98.1% of home pag- es had at least one detectable WCAG 2 failure, Missing up from 97.8% in 2019. Image At 66% 12 Tex

Interior pages within the most popular websites Empty had 53 errors on average. 97.8% of these interior Links and 8.4 Buttons 66% pages had detectable WCAG 2 failures. Missing These data suggest that accessibility for users Form Input 1.9 54% with disabilities is slowly getting worse over Labels time. This pervasive inaccessibility is a crisis for Missing the web design and development feld. Owners Doument 28% - Language of inaccessible web sites are subject to lawsuits and formal complaints under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Inaccessible web sites are All of these issues are readily preventable and less usable, more difcult to maintain, and less fxable. They refect a fundamental failure in use search engine compatible than those that have case development and an inattention to design been built with accessibility in mind. Despite and usability best practices. Focusing on and the bleak picture of accessibility on the modern fxing only these 5 issue types would result in web, the WebAIM Million does show that atten- signifcant accessibility improvements for end tion to specifc accessibility issues and technolo- users. gies could have a notable positive impact. The WebAIM Million data also show other Accessibility Issues troubling technology and accessibility trends. Perhaps most concerning is a 10.4% increase in The vast majority of the accessibility issues and home page complexity over 12 months, from WCAG conformance failures detected by the 782 page elements on average in February 2019 WebAIM Million analysis fall into the following 5 to 864 elements in February 2020. Newer pages categories: (as identifed by those using a modern doctype) 1. Low contrast text - 86% of home pages, 36 had signifcantly more elements and accessi- instances per page on average bility errors than other pages. If home pages 2. Missing alternative text for images - 66% of are increasing in size and complexity at such a home pages, 12 instances per page staggering rate, it may be difcult for accessibili- ty to keep up.

6 64.6% of the one million home pages used ARIA For example, governmental home pages fared (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) mark- the best with an average 51.1 errors, whereas up. ARIA allows additional accessibility features, news and weather sites fared the very worst with over twice as many errors - 112.4 on average. The better accessibility of government web sites likely refects legal requirements that are not as 64.6% clearly defned for news and weather sites. This Of Pages Used ARIA is further evidenced by the fact that pages from Attributes .gov, .us, and .edu sites fared much better than those from other top-level domains. primarily for screen reader users, to be added to HTML. However, analysis of ARIA usage shows that pages with ARIA have 26.2 more detectable 112.4 accessibility issues than those without ARIA. Average ARIA Errors on ARIA code is often implemented incorrectly News and Weather Sites and in ways that harm accessibility. As an exam- ple, 54% of ARIA menus did not provide proper structures to allow those menus to be optimally Signifcant diferences in accessibility of pages accessible to screen reader and keyboard users. in various languages were also found, with Farsi, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, and Italian pages being much worse than the average.

26.2 The presence of certain web technologies also More Accessibility Issues correlated with notable diferences in measured on Pages with ARIA accessibility. Pages with high element counts and error rates strongly align with the use of most major JavaScript frameworks or libraries. Web Technologies and Site Categories In other words, pages that use third-party code The WebAIM Million analysis also collected de- almost always have worse accessibility. While tails on the technologies used by home pages, such tools can provide immense value to devel- as well as metadata that was used to categorize opers and end users, they also correlate with in- home pages based on content. This allows inter- creased complexity and decreased accessibility. esting comparisons between home pages, as Home pages that use Lazy.js, Underscore.js, well as deeper analysis of characteristics of sites Slick, Select2, Fingerprintjs, FancyBox, Moment. that align with better and with worse accessibil- js, Vue.js, and Prototype, for example, all had no- ity. tably more errors than average. Some of these diferences were very signifcant - pages with Lazy.js, for example, had three times the errors as the average home page. 51.1 Average ARIA Errors on A few technologies, such as Gatsby, MooTools, Governmental Home Pages TweenMax, and YUI corresponded with fewer than average errors. Pages using Gatsby are of particular interest - they fared among the very When comparing sites based on category, best of all pages analyzed with nearly half as top-level domain (.com, .org, etc.), and page many errors as pages with React, the framework language, signifcant disparities were identifed. upon which Gatsby is based. Despite being a

7 complex and robust framework, Gatsby has es- over time. Those of us that are the stewards of tablished strong supports for and a culture that the web must do more to consider the needs of supports accessibility. Gatsby not only proves users with disabilities and implement efective that signifcant accessibility diferences can be and immediate improvements. made, but that education and accessibility-sup- ported tools are a key to success. It is hoped The State of Accessibility in EdTech for that this can serve as a model for other technol- K-12 ogies. by Knowbility Perhaps nothing will have as signifcant an impact on end user accessibility as major - works and libraries actively embracing, sup- porting, and perhaps even requiring accessible output.

The full WebAIM Million report provides much more detail and insight into the current state of web accessibility. Accessibility in the Age of COVID-19 93 Million Student-aged Worldwide Children with The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have brought digital inclusion to the forefront as many Disbilities of our daily activities have quickly transitioned to Overview online systems. Consider the millions of educa- tional courses that have moved online in just a A series of civil rights complaints beginning few short months. When one contemplates the in 2016 brought attention to the inaccessibili- inaccessibility of online content detailed above, ty of K-12 school and school district websites the impact of this shift is certainly impactful on throughout the United States. This raised aware- the lives of individuals with disabilities. ness of district websites but neglected to bring broader attention to the use of digital technol- An analysis of U.S. state COVID-19 web pages ogies in the classroom itself. As educators seek and portals shows notable accessibility barriers. to provide inclusive classrooms for more than While these pages fared much better than the 93 million student-aged children with disabilities average home page, notable difculties remain throughout the world, they increasingly rely on for the disabled to access this highly critical technology to enhance the learning environ- information - especially acute considering that ment. International commitments, including the many with disabilities are among the most prone UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with to signifcant illness with a COVID-19 infection. Disabilities, promise equal access to education Moving Forward for students with disabilities. To truly realize the potential for inclusion, however, we must move While the WebAIM Million report shows perva- away from the notion of “alternative formats” as sive and unacceptable levels of inaccessibility, the sole solution for students with disabilities. it also highlights areas where progress is clearly Schools must create systems in which learning being made and identifed potential models for materials are natively accessible to the greatest improvement. Education, outreach, and change number of students possible. must become more widespread if we are to change the trend of decreased accessibility Until accessibility is systematically prioritized, it

8 will continue to be unrealized. Most education- cess needs of students with disabilities are over- al systems throughout the world lack explicit looked or ignored. Schools chase “innovation” accessibility policy that is tied to an implementa- and fail to consider diverse student user needs. tion plan and supported by training and resourc- It is difcult to categorize teaching and learning es. Policies that do exist tend to be stated in high practices as innovative when they categorically level language of inclusion. Rarely is the stated exclude a signifcant group of students due to commitment sufciently supported by clear . As schools transitioned to distance guidelines and the training needed to integrate learning in response to the COVID pandemic, the technical and legal aspects of accessibility millions of students with disabilities were left into school system operation. Educators and with no educational services at all. Even before technology leaders must be given clear guid- this extreme situation however, students with ance and up-to-date accessibility knowledge disabilities did not have equal access to the to realize the enormous inclusive potential of digital classroom. the digital classroom. There are indications that Accessibility Relies on Integrated Systems some educational leaders are beginning to understand accessibility as an opportunity to In order for students with disabilities to experi- realize a commitment to inclusion and to serve ence equal access to digital learning environ- diverse learning needs. Unfortunately, we still ments, two conditions must be met. have a long way to go. The frst of these is the legal requirement for Technology Transforming Education students with disabilities to be assessed for and receive the appropriate Educational systems for students in primary (AT) they need to learn. Access to AT is often and secondary schools have been transformed neglected, however, due to a lack of training by the Internet and digital curriculum products. for primary and secondary general education These resources can be accessible - or not - teachers. This lack of knowledge and aware- for students with disabilities. The great majority ness, while a critically important contributing of them are not designed to be accessible by factor, is beyond the scope of this report. default. There is great disparity between what is required by law and what is realized in the The second requirement, and one that is very classroom, including the digital classroom. In the much a part of the global State of Accessibility, United States, for example, students with dis- is the failure of schools, school systems, and abilities are ostensibly protected by the Ameri- government educational agencies to give seri- cans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act ous consideration and priority to the accessibility (specifcally Section 504 of that legislation) and of the digital products and services that they the Individuals with Disabilities Education Im- spend billions of dollars developing or purchas- provement Act. Requirements include access to ing. Without accessibly designed materials, the the general curriculum, education in the most best AT in the world will be inefective in pro- inclusive setting, and the legal right to a Free viding equal access to the general curriculum. Appropriate Public Education (called FAPE). Without development and procurement pro- cesses that prioritize accessibility, schools will These legal guarantees fade as schools adopt continue to fail to provide accessible materials. digital technologies and rely on Learning Man- agement Systems (LMS), 1-1 computing, online In short, the digital classroom provides unprec- or blended systems, digital curriculum products, edented opportunities for inclusion of students and free tablets and software provided by big with disabilities - IF - they are provided with the tech companies. Usually no serious thought is assistive technology tools they need and -IF- given to accessibility, and the technology ac- schools create or purchase accessible learn-

9 ing materials that are usable by that assistive Defcits include lack of keyboard access for AT technology. Those conditions are not currently operation, lack of descriptive text of graphic being met because institutions have failed to elements, no captions or transcripts for audio develop and implement efective policies. Such content, ambiguous or missing identifcation of policies would encourage and even require the function of interactive elements, inability processes and procedures to train and prepare to resize text, issues of contrast and color, and people in all educational roles to prioritize stu- more. Additionally, as students are expected to dent learning needs over institutional habit and use digital authoring tools to create and sub- convenience. Educators – from administrators to mit school work, the inaccessibility of authoring teachers to IT staf and instructional designers tools is a signifcant barrier to equal use. The – rarely learn even basic accessibility principles. outcomes should not surprise us. Inclusive design thinking is therefore not inte- grated into educational material development Lacking equal access to learning materials and and purchasing processes. tools, just 32% of disabled students complete 12 years of school in the UK, compared with 62% Outcomes for Students of students without disabilities. In China, the rate of school dropouts for these children is close to When so many are systematically excluded, 35%, with more than half having never attended students with disabilities continue to fall behind school at all. In the US, while there has been their non-disabled peers and to experience legal action against school districts and K12 higher dropout rates. They are disproportionate- campus web sites, little attention is paid to the ly represented in the school-to-prison pipeline. provision of accessible instructional materials. This is despite the important fact that more than A 2018 study of US State Technology Educa- 80% of students with disabilities do not have tion Plans found that only 27 of the 50 states intellectual disabilities and should be as able to had such a plan in the frst place. Of those, only learn as any other student. 10 mentioned accessibility. When those plans became law, only 2 states included K-12 schools Studies show that despite legal requirements in the accessibility mandate. Instead, institu- for equal access in countries all over the world, tions are allowed to fall back on the provision of students with disabilities are often excluded. Re- alternative formats that lack the immediacy and ports from Australia, Japan, Canada, the Europe- inclusive experience of shared digital resources. an Union, China, the UK and others indicate that access to digital curriculum is far from equally For example, the National Center for Accessi- provided. This failure is largely due to curriculum ble Educational Materials (AEM) emphasizes product design features that are not accessible. alternative formats as a way to provide equiva-

UNITED KINGDOM CHINA

68% 50% Of Disabled Students Fail to Of Disabled Students Never Attend Complete 12 Years of School School At All

10 lent access. It takes valuable time and creates comes into stark relief. Lacking even the minimal the sense of “other” and “diferent” for the child supports they receive at school and faced with with a disability when teachers must identify the inaccessible learning systems, how can they be need for alternative formats and then produce expected to make progress? and distribute them. When our institutions prior- itize minimum compliance over their obligation What is Needed to educate all students, the results are dismal Educators are learning to use digital tools more for students with disabilities. Typical is the title efectively, to get beyond the “wow” factor and of the accessibility guidance section of the UK assess the usefulness of digital tools to impart government that applies to public sector sites, knowledge and skills. Accessibility must be in- including schools. It is called “Things you might tegrated into that ongoing assessment. Studies not need to fx.” There follows a list of resources show that when tools and information are de- that could very well be useful to students but signed to be accessible, they are more efective have been deemed irrelevant “because they are for all users. An important frst step is to ensure exempt from the accessibility regulations.” that stakeholders - students with disabilities and their parents - have meaningful ways to be UNITED SATES heard. Additional recommendations are:

Develop Educational Technology Plans that include requirements to purchase and develop accessible instructional tools and provide the requisite training and funding to support acces- sibility as the Plans are implemented.

Integrate accessibility and inclusive design thinking into training for instructional designers (similar to the physical understanding architects must have for the built environment).

Apply rubrics and support for procurement ONLY: staf to ensure that purchased, open source, or donated curriculum products meet accessibility States Have Technology standards as an absolute requirement. 27 Education Plans As part of their digital skills development, pro- Mention Accessibility vide teachers with pre-service training and 10 ongoing professional development that includes an understanding of digital accessibility princi- 2 Mandate Accessibility in K-12 ples and techniques. This will inform their teach- ing to include accessibility as students learn to use digital tools to create content. In 2020, we have the ability to produce educa- tional tools and materials that are natively ac- Creating policy around accessibility and imple- cessible and usable by all. Our institutions sim- menting the training and accountability metrics ply lack the institutional will and commitment to to support it will change the landscape of digital do so. In a time of global pandemic, as students inclusion in schools. Most importantly, students are sent home to shelter in place and engage with disabilities will have improved access to in distance learning environments, this issue educational equity.

11 In Conclusion

Although we haven’t spent a lot of time in this As we have learned with our collaborators, report talking about ADA lawsuits, the reality is Jared Smith and Sharron Rush, we have a lot of that a lot of companies come to accessibility by work to do in order to equalize the opportunities way of compliance. Lately, this was caused by for PwD. For too long, PwD had to wait in line as a growth in accessibility lawsuits that peaked in new technologies were developed that didn’t 2018 and stabilized in 2019 with just slightly fewer support them. With the Coronavirus making the cases fled. The cause for this growth is that entire world go online, we have the opportunity lawyers realized that accessibility falls under civil to include PwD. This is when society must step rights laws. This means that in states like Califor- up. We must fatten the curve of inaccessibility. nia, New York, and Florida, defendants must pay the plaintif’s fees if they lose. Now that we have covered the current state of accessibility, let’s turn our attention to improving the State of Accessibility in the next year. How to Improve the State of Accessi- Acessibility Lwsuits bility

Number of Lawsuits Per Year In the year since our frst report, we have had time to refect on how to approach improving accessibility in a meaningful way. To change developer culture requires engaging with the tech leaders that developers look up to. Today, that entails partnering with the core developers of the most infuential open source projects.

Our approach is multi-tiered. 262 814 2,258 2,256 • We will strategically pick out some open

2018 2017 202 source projects, engage and inspire them to 2018 get involved in accessibility. An alarming trend we’ve seen frsthand are • We will invest some of our own time, energy “drive-by” lawsuits extorting a settlement out of and money to improve these open source companies with little concern of improving ac- projects. cessibility. They typically demand that the com- • And we will open the door to the community pany install a plugin to “fx” accessibility, which to engage. invariably makes their website LESS accessible, It is incredible the impact of a little friendly out- slower, and more insecure. Even worse, if they reach to the core developers of an open source fnally get around to fxing their accessibility project. I hope people emulate this outreach to problems properly, they have a contract in writ- the projects that Jared’s report has highlighted. ing that requires they leave a solution in place that causes more problems than it solves. It is key that outreach begin friendly. If you try and shame developers on social media, it is It is Time to Flatten the Curve of Digital then much harder to inspire them to become Inequality for People with Disabilities knowledgeable accessibility advocates.

12 What is the #GAADPledge

Diamond Launches the GAAD Pledge

When Global Accessibility Awareness Day was founded by Joe Devon and Jennison Asuncion, one of the most astonishing events to observe was the magnitude that the #GAAD hashtag went viral. Last year, we achieved a “Twitter reach” of 195 million unique users.

The power of the hashtag is that it unites humans with common missions. With this in mind, we are using #GAADPledge as the hashtag around this mission.

This year, Diamond launched the GAAD Pledge, a commitment made by organizations and develop- ers to make accessibility a core value of their digital products. Facebook Takes the GAAD Pledge

In celebration of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Facebook is pleased to be the frst company to take the pledge, committing to making the React Native framework fully accessible. Facebook built React Native and made it open source so it could be used and further developed by anyone. FACE BOOK

“We hope this pledge makes it easier for developers using React Native to create fully accessible mobile apps and inspires other organizations “ to make similar commitments to a more accessible future.”

Mike Shebanek Head of Accessibility at Facebook

Diamond Invites You To Take the GAAD Pledge

Take the GAAD Pledge to make a long-term commitment to accessibility. Diamond is working with several other projects who will be taking the GAAD Pledge as well. We will make announcements about these eforts monthly, during our Diamond Accessibility Webinar series, the third Thursday of each month. For the most up to date information, visit diamond,la/GAADPledge. Be a part of posi- tive change by joining Diamond in the #GAADPledge today. Until Next Year

We enjoyed putting together this report. We are hopeful, nay determined, that all these activities will efect a change in the accessibility of Digital Products globally.

If you do nothing else with this report, we urge everyone from coders to designers to the core devel- opers of open source projects to take the GAAD Pledge.

Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day!

13 Appendix A

Annotated Bibliography

Bringing Disability into the Discussion: Examining Technology Accessibility as an Equity Concern

Type: Research article

Authors: Natalie L. Shaheen and Sarah Lohnes Watulak

Summary: Literature review of technology accessibility in K-12 schools in the United States, in order to bring technology accessibility into conversations about equity in instructional technology.

Coronavirus School Shutdown Has Been Particularly Tough on Kids with Special Needs

Type: Online news article

Authors: Hannah Leone and Karen Ann Cullotta

Summary: Students who normally receive special education services at school, have seen them severely cut back since schools closed due to the coronavirus.

Disability and the Right to Education For All

Type:

Authors: Amer Hasan, Elaine Ding, Ning Fu, Yilin Pan

Summary: Despite international commitments students with disabilities continue to face signifcant barriers when it comes to attending school. Recommendations to address the issue.

For Persons with Disabilities in Canada, Education is Not Always an Open Door: CHRC Report

Type: Canadian Government Human Rights Commission Report

No cited author

Summary: People with disabilities in Canada are facing overwhelming barriers and challenges within the school system.

K-12 Technology Accessibility: The Message from State Governments

Type: Academic Research

Authors: Natalie L. Shaheen and Jonathan Lazar

Summary: Examination of state education technology plans and technology education statutes.

People with Disability in Australia

Type: Government Report

14 Author: AIHW

Summary: Compilation of information from a range of national data sources to contribute to a greater understanding about disability in Australia.

Policy on Accessible Education for Students with Disabilities

Type: Canadian government information site

No cited author

Summary: Government policy on inclusive education for students with disabilities

School Accessibility

Type: UK Government information service

No cited author

Summary: An overview of institutional responsibility to students with disability in the UK

Sink or Swim: Barriers for Children with Disabilities in the European School System

Type: Online report

Author: Human Rights Watch

Summary: European Schools do not do enough to accommodate the needs of children with disabil- ities.

Special Needs Education in Japan

Type: Online news article

Author: Kirsty Kawano

Summary: Overview and resource list for parents and educators

Students with Disabilities Could Lose in COVID Stimulus Package

Type: Online news article

Author: David DeMatthews

Summary: Exploration of provisions that allow Secretary DeVos to implement wavers to IDEA re- quirements.

Understanding Accessibility Requirements for Public Sector Bodies

Type: UK Government Information site

No cited author

Summary: Guidance for government digital publishing and services

15 Website Accessibility: Ten Things School Districts Should Know

Type: Article, Education Week

Author: Christina Samuels

Summary: Guide for school districts to what you need to know to proactively address accessibility issues.

16 Contributors

About Diamond About WebAIM

Diamond is a premier digital agency based in WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind) has provid- Los Angeles that builds inclusive, scalable, ed comprehensive web accessibility solutions high-performance web and mobile applications. since 1999. These years of experience have Founded in 2012, Diamond has decades of col- made WebAIM one of the leading providers of lective experience building digital solutions at web accessibility expertise internationally. We- the intersection of innovation and inclusion. Our bAIM is a non-proft organization based at the work spans from the backbone of the internet Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State to search engines, AmericanIdol.com, Fox.com, University. NFL, Viacom, and others. Our years of experi- ence in design, development, quality assurance, About Knowbility and project management in the media and Knowbility, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonproft organiza- entertainment industry sets us apart from other tion based in Austin, . An award-winning agencies. Diamond’s Accessibility Practice is pioneer in accessible information technology, world class. From discovery to implementation, Knowbility created the Accessibility Internet Diamond’s experts will integrate themselves Rally (AIR) program in 1999 as a way to engage with your team to identify and execute solutions technology professionals in accessibility is- to meet industry accessibility standards. sues as a creative design challenge rather than primarily a regulatory mandate. In that spirit, Knowbility programs and services have grown to include the delivery of assessment, consulting, usability studies, and more for organizations of all kinds throughout the world.

17 #SOAR STATE OF ACCESSIBILITY REPORT

To learn more visit: diamond.la/SOAR

To contact us email: [email protected]

Published on May 21st, 2020 18 https://diamond.la