With the 34th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act, we remind ourselves of its continued importance and of how far we still have to go to achieve its promise and full implementation. CommunicationFIRST chose to reflect on this anniversary in part within the context of the digital world. We explored these four key themes in an internal brainstorming session: Innovation Can Lead to Decreased Accessibility; Barriers to Accessing the Internet and New Digital Technologies; Assuring Digital Inclusion, Access, and Equity for All; and Online Meetings: Seen But Not Heard.
In 2023, as part of its Technology for Equitable Communication (TEC) Project funded by Borealis Philanthropy and the Ford Foundation, CommunicationFIRST held a brainstorming session to begin to identify some of the “good, bad, and ugly” ways technologies can uniquely impact people with speech-related disabilities. The purpose of this discussion was to determine how technologies such as apps, artificial intelligence (AI), broadband, chat, video conferencing, speech recognition software, machine translation, and other online tools can both improve and harm the lives of people who need and use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Over a 90-minute Zoom conversation, a group of five AAC users discussed the following questions:
- What are three things that frustrate you about online meetings and webinars?
- What are three ways that technology has improved your life?
- What is it like when you first use a new app, software, or hardware?
- What are the biggest obstacles you experience when navigating the Internet?
- What’s one piece of technology you wish existed that would make your life better?
- Can you share an example of when you’ve been frustrated by technology?
- Can you share an example where it seemed technology was the barrier excluding you?
Several major themes and recommendations emerged from the discussion.
I. Innovation Can Lead to Decreased Accessibility
On this theme, participants raised two key observations: (1) As technologies (like text-to-speech and speech-to-text software) have become widely available and mainstream, some have become less customizable; and (2) As technologies (such as cell phones) have changed, some have become less accessible, especially for many with motor and speech disabilities. Accessible hardware and accessible software may diverge.
- Participant: “In the old days, I remember the people who made Dragon [Naturally Speaking]. They came to meet with Ed Roberts, and they taught the machine to recognize the sound of his respirator. And they taught the program to ignore it. You can’t do that now. You can’t teach it to learn a sound… When the technology came to the mainstream, it lost that customizability.”
Participants noted many devices, like older model cell phones that could be used without difficulty, are either no longer on the market or not being updated. Phones of many shapes and sizes with all kinds of buttons have been replaced by phones that each look the same and require fine motor dexterity to use touchscreens and near-perfect speech to use voice commands. This is just one example of how the speed and scope of digitalization are worsening digital access and exacerbating the societal exclusion of people with speech-related disabilities from important facets of 21st-century life. This need not happen.
Policy Recommendations
Policymakers should amend laws and regulations to:
- Require the U.S. Access Board to work continually with the disability community to examine both new technologies to promote and existing technologies to retain, emphasizing maximum flexibility of human/machine interfaces and on input and output hardware.
- Ensure technology developers align customizability and accessibility to any changes in hardware and software; and
- Require new digital technologies to adhere to accessibility and customizability guidelines issued by the U.S. Access Board and enforced by the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and other agencies.
II. Barriers to Accessing the Internet and New Digital Technologies
On this theme, participants reported that it can be difficult or impossible to reliably access the Internet and digital technologies without some kind of support. Purchasing equipment without adequate testing leads to expensive mistakes. Participants reported needing clear and reliable information, advice, and assistance on how to select, purchase, set up, learn to use, troubleshoot, sync, and make the best use of digital products, processes, and services. Most of the time, they noted, this vital support is either non-existent or extremely difficult to obtain. As long as this remains true, those who need AAC will face obstacles when entering and participating in the digital world. People who need AAC often have sensory, movement, fine motor, and information processing disabilities that make accessing and navigating the web difficult to impossible. The following are some common barriers AAC users and others with motor disabilities experience accessing the Internet and digital technologies:
- Difficulty using a mouse, trackball, or trackpad to navigate websites;
- Recalling and entering passwords correctly and often repeatedly (password managers can be helpful, but can also be inaccessible; two-factor authentication and Captcha verification present additional barriers);
- Filling out forms that are timed to expire more quickly than those with motor difficulties can complete (e.g., providing only five minutes to fill out multiple boxes to buy concert tickets); and
- Using QR codes requires the ability to steadily hold a mobile phone or tablet camera.
While facial recognition, voice recognition, finger scan, machine translation, cell phones, and other current and emergent technologies create access, they can also pose insurmountable barriers to AAC users, those with other disabilities, non-English speakers, and others. When this happens, these barriers exclude multiply-marginalized individuals and communities from society, given that such ubiquitous technologies have become the default means of accessing, navigating, and living in the Digital Age.
- Participant: “I definitely need help setting up new tech. For hardware, sometimes the physical stuff is impossible. For software, sometimes I don’t understand the tech stuff.”
- Participant: “Choosing and finding [tech] is hard. Features I need may exist, but I can’t tell… Sometimes the needed features might not be described so I can’t find them.”
- Participant: “Sometimes meeting links aren’t clickable.”
Technology Programs
We need policies that make it easier to find technology options, assess their utility to any individual or group in specific environments, and make their acquisition, learning, maintenance, and upgrading clear and affordable.
Coaching Options: Technology companies, the government, and government-funded entities (like the state Assistive Technology Act Programs) should establish an easy-to-access and free IT helpline for people with various disabilities. In-person coaching programs and courses (like The Arc’s Tech Coaching Centers and similar resources) should be subsidized and expanded. Evidence-based peer coaching strategies should be emphasized.
Policy Recommendations
Disabled Consumer Technology Development Input: The FCC, in coordination with other federal agencies, technology developers, and the philanthropic sector, should seek the insights, knowledge, and assistance of people who require AAC to identify the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to the digital divide. As recommended in a 2003 Senate bill, the FCC, DOJ, Access Board, and other federal agencies should aim to eliminate barriers to digital equity by: (1) identifying barriers that specifically impact people who need and use AAC (including concerning communication technologies like synthesized speech, AI, voice recognition, machine translation and learning); and (2) adopting policy solutions to ensure that existing and emerging communications and digital technologies and services are accessible to people with communication disabilities.
III. Assuring Digital Inclusion, Access, and Equity for All
Research and lived experience suggest that Black, brown, multilingual, and other multiply-marginalized individuals are both more likely to need AAC at some point in life and to experience harsh and compounding forms of societal oppression and discrimination as a result. There is every reason to believe the same is true concerning the disparities and discrimination such individuals experience in attempting to access the web and All Things Digital.
Technology and Policy Recommendations
Identify and Remove Oppressive Exclusions: Concerted efforts should be taken by federal agencies, states, localities, technology companies, and others in the private sector, to eliminate these widening disparities. Actions should center in particular on identifying and eliminating digital discrimination and exclusion rooted in multiple forms of oppression: racism, ableism, ageism, speechism, classism, LGBTQ+ hate, and nativism.
Prioritize Disabled User’s View: Information/communications technology and AI developers and firms should widely consult with, compensate, and co-create with AAC users, developing strategies to ensure such technologies are designed and deployed in ways that liberate. The Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice, as well as the FCC, should gather information on the extent to which people who need AAC experience digital exclusion, including by being denied assistive devices and support; seek insights from people who use AAC on ways to identify, prevent, and remedy digital forms of discrimination; issue guidance on how all must avoid and remedy digital discrimination under federal laws; and offer technical assistance on such matters to people who need AAC and others.
IV. Online Meetings: Seen But Not Heard
The final key theme that emerged from the forum is that video meetings create special hurdles for AAC users. Different platforms have similar and unique problems. Many of these are behavioral in how the platforms are used. This presents a whole different set of issues. Some of the problems identified below could be resolved by more user choice. However, more flexibility comes with a need for better management skills. Assuring online meetings are equitable is not easy. In recognizing the problems, it is time to stop assuming that one synchronous meeting is the standard for group decision-making.
Participants remarked:
- “Sometimes the speakers talk too fast, and I can’t catch everything. I get frustrated, but nothing is there to do about it … my frustration will be always there, regardless, as long as I can’t speak with my voice. I wish to be able to say something, while a webinar/meeting is going on, but because I can’t speak, even if I have a way to communicate, and give my opinion. It is nothing like being able to talk and say it with your voice.”
- “Because I type very slowly, … sometimes [when] I finish, the question or comment is no longer relevant... There are some occasions when I prepare my answers in advance, but when the meeting/webinar begins, they discuss something else.”
- “I usually prep a comment related to an agenda item and stick it in the chat so I can hit enter at the appropriate time. This works great until someone says something before the item that I want to comment on. I need an easily accessible parking lot for comments.”
In addition to issues with the chat function, auto-captioning remains highly inaccurate for many who use AAC or have unintelligible speech. It is also difficult to notify others in the meeting that you want to communicate something, as the hand raise function requires too many motor movements.
Technology Recommendations
Prioritize Disabled User’s View: Zoom, Microsoft, Google, and other companies that offer video conferencing services should consult with, compensate, and co-create with AAC users to design, name, and describe features that will make these platforms more user-friendly, including promoting needed behavioral changes such as:
- Improving voice recognition technology so that it recognizes all types of voices;
- Improving this technology so that it recognizes when someone is typing and cues other participants to wait according to how a moderator sets up the meeting rules, using the mute function as appropriate;
- Using AI or other technology to speed up and privilege AAC users’ real-time participation to level the communication playing field;
- Allowing multiple chat windows to be opened and used by participants at the same time;
- Adding tools like word prediction and abbreviation expansion capability to the chat function and all text entry;
- Preventing the accidental erasure of chat text or its premature send—common, vexing problems; and
- Creating shortcuts to reduce taxing mouse movements.
Policy Recommendations
Both as a major purchaser of video conferencing services and the enforcer of civil rights laws, the federal government should use its authority to encourage these innovations promptly. Changes are critical in light of broadband and its use in 911, 988, telehealth, suicide prevention, disaster response, banking, law enforcement, and other high-stakes decision-making contexts. The FCC must fully enforce Section 504 and the Telecommunications Act to ensure the nation’s broadband infrastructure—the gateway to 21st-century life—is universally financially and technologically accessible to all people who use AAC. It also must help subsidize the purchase of AAC technologies that afford vital access to broadband services.
Many groups are required by law to have their governing meetings synchronously. During the pandemic some rules were relaxed to allow virtual meetings. Given that these meetings may have dramatic disability access needs that cannot be fully accommodated, we need to have serious conversations about what constitutes full access to decision-making in the future. A timed meeting may not always be best. Both custom and law may need to change and grow.
V. FINAL THOUGHTS
Communication is interpersonal, and how and how well it takes place will vary by the identities, personalities, relationships, and motor abilities of the actors. In evaluating the impacts and utility of technological change on people with different speech-related disabilities, we also must consider the role of cultural and behavioral factors. And of course the utility of any technology depends on how it is used and how much knowledge the user has about the technology. Technology developers and regulators must take into consideration that the way the technology is presented to highly diverse groups will impact its usability. Features seen as extra or premium may facilitate access. But is the additional cost for accessibility features equitable and just? When is the extra cost for access fair or unfair? Similarly, if the same access can be accomplished without extra features but with extra labor, is that fair and equitable?
The TEC Project will continue to examine how new policies and developments in technology address equity concerns, and how industry must evolve to integrate concepts of equity and social justice in the development of new technologies.
Thanks to Borealis Philanthropy and the Ford Foundation for making our work in the TEC Project possible, and of course, to our discussion participants: Pancho Ramirez, Devva Kasnitz, Melissa Crisp-Cooper, Bob Williams, Jordyn Zimmerman, Erika Prado, and Tauna Szymanski. Comments about this project should be directed to Bob Williams, Policy Director, at bwilliams@communicationfirst.org. Download in PDF format here.