[Nfbmt] President Riccobono's op-ed urging the release of Internet regulations

[Breslauers]

Dear fellow Federationists:
 
The following op-ed by President Riccobono appeared last week on the Congress
Blog of the influential Washington newspaper The Hill. The text is pasted
below. You can also access the article by browsing to
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/civil-rights/266943-inequality-and-ind
ifference 
 
Please consider sharing the above link with your contacts. Also, please sign
and share our petition to President Obama to release the regulations
referenced in President Riccobono's piece. The petition is located here:
 
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/direct-us-department-justice-prompt
ly-release-ada-internet-regulations 
 
Thanks for your continued advocacy and tireless work to build the Federation.
 
Warmly,
 
Chris Danielsen
Director of Public Relations
National Federation of the Blind
 
January 26, 2016, 11:00 a.m.
Inequality and Indifference
By Mark A. Riccobono
 
The recent decision by the Obama administration to delay issuing new
regulations under the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is
outrageous. The regulations would have provided guidance on how businesses
can meet their legal obligation to make their websites accessible to people
with disabilities. These regulations have been in the works for over five
years, but the Obama administration now proposes further delaying them until
2018, effectively washing its hands of the matter. This move is particularly
shocking in light of the president's correct observation, made when he first
announced his intention to issue the regulations in 2010, that such rules are
"the most important updates to the ADA since its original enactment." The
urgent need for these regulations has only increased, so why has the
administration's position inexplicably changed? 
 
Thanks to today's technology, people with all kinds of disabilities can
access computer information, including websites, with tools such as
text-to-speech screen readers that verbalize what the computer is displaying,
connected devices that can display the content in Braille, and alternative
input devices for people who can't physically use a mouse or keyboard.
Despite this advanced technology, however, most of us, especially blind
people like me, struggle every day to perform routine internet-based tasks,
including paying our bills, examining electronic health records, and making
hotel reservations. That's
because improperly designed websites can block our ability to effectively
access all of the information. For example, if a website uses images to
convey important information without also providing "alt tags" that a screen
reader can read, then the screen reader will spit out gibberish because it
can't "read" a picture in the way it can read text. And the inability to
access websites is not merely an inconvenience; it is a barrier to education
and employment. For example, the college graduation rate for people with
disabilities is just thirty-four percent; inaccessible online technology used
by today's colleges and universities undoubtedly contributes to this dismal
statistic. 
 
All of this is not due to hostility towards Americans with disabilities.
While a few businesses simply refuse to provide equal access to their
websites until a legal settlement or court order forces them to do so, many
others simply don't know where to turn for guidance on how to make their
websites accessible. Organizations like the National Federation of the Blind
are doing all we can to educate business leaders and programmers, but by
issuing clear and legally binding guidelines, the Obama administration could
quickly bring reluctant businesses to the table and show other
well-intentioned but uninformed players a clear path to providing equal
service to their clients and customers with disabilities. The
administration's continued refusal to do this is irresponsible. Its failure
to act not only leaves disabled computer users on the wrong side of a real
digital divide, but ensures that litigation, which is costly both for
disability advocates and businesses, will continue for the foreseeable
future. 
 
Recently, the National Federation of the Blind and several other
organizations representing Americans with all types of disabilities urged the
immediate issuance of the proposed regulations in a letter sent directly to
President Obama. From the business perspective, Microsoft and other business
leaders have also written to the president calling for the release of the
regulations. If the president ignores these requests, the inescapable
conclusion will be that he is indifferent to the inequality that is part of
everyday life for me and millions of other Americans. This indifference has
an intolerably high cost: we are denied equal access to services that are
readily available to everyone else, denied educational and employment
opportunities, and denied first-class citizenship in twenty-first-century
America. If the president is serious about the civil rights of all Americans,
a recurring theme in his rhetoric, then he must not renege on the commitment
to equal Internet access for Americans with disabilities that he made in
2010. Fortunately, he still has time to honor that commitment. I, along with
millions of other people with disabilities, fervently hope that the president
will do so immediately. 
 
Mark A. Riccobono is president of the National Federation of the Blind.  He
lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife and three children.
 

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