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On Wednesday of last week, I published an article on disability statistics in Practical eCommerce magazine. Although there’s nothing particularly wrong with the article, I find myself wanting to publish a follow up article with more detail on the statistics. Statistics are complicated beasts, and I feel that detailed explication of sources and statistical problems is well worth while.
First, sources:
Americans with Disabilities: 2005
The primary source for statistics in the Practical eCommerce article was a report called Americans with Disabilites: 2005, produced by the United States Census Bureau. The data dates to 2005, but the report was released in December of 2008, so it’s not far from the most current information available which is based on truly extensive research.
This report was released from data gathered in the Survey of Income and Program Participation in 2005, updating the information from a 2002 report of the same name. The report is limited to the civilian, non-institutionalized population of the nation, and estimates that the overall percentage of the population demonstrating disabilities would rise to 15.7 percent from 15.1 percent if that population was included, referencing information from the 2006 American Communities Survey.
The American Communities Survey
The ACS is a continuous data collection effort by the U.S. Census Bureau used to produce annual estimates at the national, state and local level on the characteristics of the United States population. In 2005, the ACS collected information from approximately 3 million addresses in the United States and 36,000 addresses in Puerto Rico. In 2006, it will also include 2.5 percent of the population living in group quarters, (U.S. Census Bureau, 2003).
Given the rapid pace of technological development, access to ongoing current statistics is of inordinate value to internet-based businesses, although the data is not currently detailed enough to be fully appreciable in web accessibility.
There is a more recent report, from the 2006 American Communities Survey, but the data collection is organized differently, so I elected not to mix the two to avoid introducing errors caused by relating data sets which are not a definite match. Regardless, both sets of data include valuable information, and are well worth consulting.
The primary flaw in this period of American Communities Survey data is that it does not break out separate types of sensory disabilities; blindness and deafness are collapsed into a single category. Although both of these issues have a bearing on web accessibility, the response to the issues is so radically different that this is a major flaw in the data when it comes to web accessibility analysis.
More recent American Communities Surveys have broken this information down further. As of the 2008 questionnaire (downloadable from the Census website), sensory disabilities are separated between blindness/low vision and deaf/hard of hearing.
Cornell University: Disability Statistics
A third fabulous source for disability statistics (with easily the best interface of the group) is the Disability Statistics project at Cornell University. The data is sourced from the American Communities Surveys and the 2000 United States Census, along with a few additional sources, so the base data is the same, but a greater variety of perspectives are available.
The Cornell database requires an account to access statistics, but they do provide free access using a public “guest” account. The email and password entered for the guest account are both “guest.”
Issues with the Data
It was necessary, of course, to summarize the data used for the report. However, each of those numbers should be viewed in context, as well. All of the data referenced is accessible as a Excel download from the U.S. Census Bureau (linked above).
The data is excellent for gaining an overview of the disabled population of the United States, but is not specific enough to give a clear sense of whether these disabilities will impact your web site. The statistics from the American with Disabilities report clearly state, for example, that 3.4% of individuals over 15 years of age have difficulty seeing; a total nearing 8 million people. However, exactly what is included in the data is hard to specify. The information was gathered by asking a series of questions, gathering whether the person had difficulty reading newsprint, etc. It doesn’t specify anything about the nature of the problem.
In general, my assumption is that the data may include some individuals who struggle with reading due to dyslexia, dependent on the exact phrasing of the questions, but not all, and presumably includes no or very few individuals with color blindness.
Download the reports (all in PDF format):
The Cli.gs URL shortening service is due to be closed down on Sunday, October 25th. At this time, the service will stop accepting new short URLs and generating statistics, but will continue to forward visitors at least through the end of November.
What does this mean for WP to Twitter?
Shortly before October 25th, I will release a very important update to WP to Twitter which will encompass the following changes:
- I will remove support for new Cli.gs shortened URLs.
- To continue offering choice, I will add support for at least one additional shortener.
- Users with Cli.gs as their selected shortener will be given a choice what shortener they’d like to switch to.
- If no choice is made, users will be switched to un-shortened URLs
Additionally, I aim to add support for custom shortened URLs – URLs shortened on your own domain. However, this may not happen by October 25th.
Somehow, I’m never fully satisfied when I’m posting notification about a new column elsewhere and see that my last post was also a notification about a column elsewhere. It becomes clearly evident to me that my posting frequently here at Accessible Web Design has gone down a bit.
Granted, I was on vacation for a big chunk of the last four weeks, so we’ll call that an excuse.
The new column is Accessibility and the Checkout Process, summarizing a few of the key issues to be aware of when you’re trying to make sure that people with disabilities can get through your store — and succeed with your ultimate ecommerce goal.
In the final release of WCAG 2, the acceptable minimum color contrast ratio was changed from 5:1 to 4.5:1. I’ve updated both my color contrast tests — Color Contrast Comparison Tool and the Color Contrast Spectrum Tool to reflect the change in contrast ratio.
What does this change mean?
Essentially, this means that the working group decided that color combinations with lower contrast (more similar colors) were acceptable for general use on the web. This is certainly good news for designers, since it will provide for a greater variety design voices than previously.
The contrast ratio of 4.5:1 was chosen for level AA because it compensated for the loss in contrast sensitivity usually experienced by users with vision loss equivalent to approximately 20/40 vision. (20/40 calculates to approximately 4.5:1.) 20/40 is commonly reported as typical visual acuity of elders at roughly age 80.
Understanding WCAG 2.0; Understanding Success Criterion 1.4.3
While the previous higher ratio requirement may have accommodated for an even larger audience, the decision of the committee appears to have been that it had crossed a line of diminishing returns, and that the lower requirement is sufficient for most common use.
This effects the minimum ratio to accommodate at Level AA, and the minimum ratio to accommodate at Level AAA for large print.
Still — don’t get carried away!
It’s been a long time coming, but as of today the standards of accessibility expressed in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are officially updated.
A W3C recommendation is the most final state a document can reach in the W3C standards system, and should now be considered the standard document for accessibility, superceding WCAG 1.
A W3C Recommendation is a specification or set of guidelines that, after extensive consensus-building, has received the endorsement of W3C Members and the Director. W3C recommends the wide deployment of its Recommendations. Note: W3C Recommendations are similar to the standards published by other organizations.
Although there has been a great deal of controversy over the past few years concerning the validity of the WCAG 2 revision, the final document has managed to deal with the greater proportion of problems. Not everything, certainly — but expecting perfection in such a vast area of concern is, frankly, an unrealistic concern.
Jared Smith recommends reviewing the original draft from January 2001 to make comparison — could be entertaining! However, if you’ve got limited time to spend, now is definitely the time to make certain you’re thoroughly familiar with the new standard for web accessibility. It’s actually final.
So, Joe Clark — web accessibility guru, now retired from the field — is publishing a new book. The new book is on what could be considered an obscure field, except for the minor detail that approximately 33,383,245 people deal with the subject every day.
The name of the book is Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours: How to Feel Good About Canadian English, and the subject is the peculiarities of English spelling in (you guessed it) Canada.
The number referenced above was modified down for the French speaking population who don’t know English (3 people) and modifed up for the number of non-Canadians concerned with Canadian spelling (3). 
I’m sure that there are people out there who will buy the book because they are truly concerned with the intricacies of spelling in Canadian; for myself, I’m going to buy it because it sounds entertaining.
The book isn’t available yet, but I’m sure it will be before I publish a new post (September 25th, according to certain sources), so I’ll update this post with an appropriate link at that time.
No legal definitions established today, I’m afraid to say. Although this is a victory on behalf of the claimants, who were awarded substantive damages on their claim, there was no establishment of any kind of legal precedent.
This is primarily due to one singular item in the settlement:
- No Admission of Liability. By agreeing to and voluntarily entering into this Agreement, there is no admission or concession by Target, direct or indirect, express or implied, that Target.com is in any way inaccessible or that Target has violated the Unruh Civil Rights Act, California Civil Code §§ 51 et seq., the Disabled Persons Act, California Civil Code §§ 54 et seq., the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12181 et seq., or any other federal, state, or local law, regulation, order, or rule.
National Federation of the Blind vs. Target Corporation, Final Settlement
This statement clearly delineates a complete denial that there were any contradictions of law involved in the Target.com suit.
Ah, well. It is still a victory!
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