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Advocating for Accessibility
Steve Hoad
As a disability advocate who happens to be blind, Steve Hoad has spent most of his life fighting to improve the lives of all people with disabilities. He first started working at Coastal Enterprises, Inc. (CEI) as an Americorp VISTA (Volunteers in Service To America). CEI is a private, nonprofit community development corporation located in Wiscasset, Maine that provides social and economic opportunities, such as Individual Development Accounts (IDA), for people with low incomes and/or at risk of poverty.
Steve came to CEI to work with their Housing Department to help create more opportunities for housing for persons with disabilities and low incomes. After completing a year as a VISTA, Steve continued working with CEI part time to form the People with Disabilities Center for Housing Information in Maine. This is an information and referral center located at CEI and formed with grant monies obtained through the Muskie Institute's "Quality Choices Access" work group. Steve often distributed IDA information as part of his work.
In an effort to save printing and paper costs, CEI began developing on-line versions of their materials. Printing large quantities of booklets that might change with the vagaries of Federal rules is costly. Creating these items electronically and printing them as needed proved more cost effective, as well as increased their outreach. The idea evolved into on-line training and became a useful tool for those who were unable to attend- for reasons of employment, childcare, transportation, or disability- scheduled financial literacy classes. The more Steve spoke to people in the disability community; it became obvious that many people with disabilities could benefit from this on line version of the financial literacy course. However, they could only benefit if the courses were accessible. Therefore, Steve began a campaign to ensure that the financial literacy programs were designed with people with disabilities in mind.
So, when they began to look at the IDA program with
access considerations, the PDF versions of the pages was one of the
first issues addressed. CEI received a grant through American Express
to create accessible financial literacy classes for people with
disabilities. Of course, this includes more than electronic products,
but the web site was a valuable place to start. As the course was
updated, it was converted from the PDF to more usable HTML. Steve
offers a few tips for programs wanting to develop accessible on-line
training programs:
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All text must be able to be read by any computer on the Internet
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Create forms with a software program that is screen reader friendly. If one cannot fill out the forms, one cannot communicate with the course instructor or coordinator
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Live courses offered need to use accessible software. Much of the new distance education today is done on the Web, so the "courseware" must be able to be used by anyone
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Note web links to outside sites. If your course links, for example, to forms on the Fannie Mae pages, it should be written into the text that this link will take a person to an external site
However, according to Steve, the most important advice is:
Trying to make a web site accessible after it is built is much harder than creating an accessible one from the start. There is a perception that accessibility has to be "clunky, not glitzy or hip", and this just is not true. There are many people with many different disabilities in the world. The U.S. census of 2000 shows about 20 percent of the population with some disability. Is that an audience anyone can afford to lose? If programs feel uncertain about their ability to create access, they should not feel alone. Start with simplicity; if there is not a lot of money to work with, simple is often the best remedy. A simple, low graphics, HTML site could be the best answer.
Currently, Steve works with a variety of organizations. He provides technical assistance on accessibility of materials, trainings, facilities, and meetings. He also consults and offers trainings on program development, strategic advocacy, and working with the media. Steve Hoad can be reached at mainefun40@hotmail.com
See our Resources section for more resources on web site accessibility.
Also, see CEI for an excellent example of an accessible on-line financial literacy program.
http://www.ceimaine.org/tops/Tutorial/IDA_home.html