"Accessibility" - Google News - Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 1:28 PM
Google Launch Puts Spotlight On Digital Accessibility Issues -
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The release of a new Google app development tool is among the latest steps to
try to bring more mobile accessibility to people with disabilities — a push
that’s been going on in the background of digital retail and associated areas
almost since the beginning.
Here’s the news announced this week (March 13) by
Google<https://opensource.googleblog.com/2019/03/ios-accessibility-scanner-framework.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+GoogleOpenSourceBlog+(Google+Open+Source+Blog)&m=1>,
via a blog post from Sid Janga of the company’s Central Accessibility Team:
Google has launched an open source project called Accessibility
Scanner<https://github.com/google/GSCXScanner> for iOS. “This is a developer
tool that can assist in locating and fixing accessibility issues while an app
is being developed,” Janga writes.
More specifically, the tool “lives in your app process and can perform
accessibility checks on the UI currently on the screen simply with the touch of
a button,” according to the blog. “The scanner’s UI which is overlaid on the
app can be moved around so you can use your app normally and trigger a scan
only when you need it.”
So what does that actually mean in plain English?
According to an analysis of this Google
launch<https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/13/google-releases-open-source-tool-to-make-ios-more-accessible/>,
the new tool is “designed to make it easier to develop iOS apps that
accommodate visually and hearing-impaired users,” adding that “Accessibility
Scanner for iOS, or GCSXScanner, helps discover, debug, and fix common
accessibility issues in iOS codebases.”
The move also would seem to be a bit like Pepsi offering to help Coca Cola by
letting them have slots in their vending machines, given that Google operates
Android and Apple has iOS. Sure, Chrome is an app in the App store and Google
powers Safari search, but this still stands as an interesting example of
collaboration across operating systems to help make web and apps more
accessible.
According to that report, new Google launch comes “a day after Google released
Lookout<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.accessibility.reveal>,
an app for Pixel smartphones that uses the same underlying computer vision
technology as Google Lens to help visually impaired users ‘see’ by pointing
their phone at objects, contributing to the Mountain View company’s growing
library of accessibility apps.” In January, for instance, Google launched two
other apps “that use machine learning algorithms to transcribe speech and
amplify sounds.”
ADA Compliance
It’s difficult to say exactly how accessible digital retail, mobile commerce
and smartphone apps are to consumers, but the issue of accessibility has been
part of the digital economy since its birth in the late 20th century. Not only
that, but just before people really began to warm up to the idea of emails and
the concept of sharing their credit card information with online operations in
order to buy products, the U.S. enacted the Americans with Disabilities
Act<https://www.ada.gov/>, a 1990 federal law that prohibits discrimination
based on disability, and which is commonly known as the ADA.
Even almost 30 years later, though, there is a significant lack of clarity
about how the ADA applies to web and mobile commerce and payments. “Before the
internet became so ubiquitous, it was assumed that the ADA applied only to
physical structures,” reads one roundup of the
ADA<https://www.3playmedia.com/2019/02/26/ada-video-requirements/> and its
impact on the digital economy. “But because the law doesn’t specifically state
whether it applies to brick-and-mortar vs. digital ‘places,’ it is open to
interpretation.”
Still, there has been a “string of lawsuits brought against private companies
for inaccessible websites, web services, or digital communications,” which in
turn “has created a precedent that the ADA applies to the internet although the
precedent is not entirely consistent across all jurisdictions,” that report
said.
Netflix and Target Cases
Such lawsuits have involved Netflix, which was sued in 2010 by the National
Association of the Deaf over allegations that the company “was discriminating
against deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers because not all their streaming video
had closed captions,” the report said. “In October of 2012, Netflix decided not
to go to court and instead to settle with a legally binding consent
decree<https://dredf.org/captioning/netflix-consent-decree-10-10-12.pdf>” in
which the company promised to provide captions for 100 percent of its content.
Another
suit<https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2368363/national-federation-of-the-blind-v-target-corp/>
that is noteworthy was the one brought by the National Federation for the
Blind<https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324373204578374483679498140>
against
Target<https://corporate.target.com/article/2016/09/accessibility-team>. The
advocacy group said the retail chain’s eCommerce site was not usable by blind
people. The case was settled out of court with Target promising to make its
site fully accessible in large part by making sure its website and apps are
properly updated to ensure they work with assistive technology (such as voice
recognition software) that helps blind and deaf people to fully access online
retail offerings.
Making online and mobile sites and apps accessible to consumers with
disabilities is a task that never really ends, but as the digital economy
approaches middle age, it’s safe to say awareness of the problem has increased.
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