{"id":1193,"date":"2019-05-21T16:05:58","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T20:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.umaine.edu\/userguide\/?p=1193"},"modified":"2019-06-14T16:09:05","modified_gmt":"2019-06-14T20:09:05","slug":"accessibility-myths-and-misconceptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/userguide\/2019\/05\/21\/accessibility-myths-and-misconceptions\/","title":{"rendered":"Accessibility myths and misconceptions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Web accessibility has always been a requirement for 91±¬ΑΟ websites, and Digital Communications has been increasing efforts to improve the accessibility of web content on umaine.edu. The term “accessibility” refers to our efforts to remove barriers that prevent access to websites by people who have a disability. This month, we acknowledge some myths and misconceptions around this topic.<\/p>\n

My class\/program isn’t a good fit for someone with disabilities, so why worry about accessibility?<\/h3>\n

Honestly, it’s hubris for us to decide pre-emptively that someone isn’t capable of the career an education prepares them for. There are constant innovations occurring that are making accommodations for disabilities that we thought were not feasible just a decade ago.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the number of potential students who have a disability is larger than you may think. According to a 2012 study by the U.S. Census bureau<\/a>, nearly 1 in 5 people have a disability in the U.S. (about 56.7 million people). These disabilities range from profound difficulty seeing and hearing, to situational disabilities where the text may not be their primary language. Traits such as color blindness or vision problems addressed by eyeglasses mean color contrast or glare on a screen can interfere with their learning. Some disabilities are temporary, and some (motor skills) affect the use of a mouse or touchscreen but their keyboard use is strong.<\/p>\n

I only add content to the website Digital Communications set up for me, accessibility is their issue not mine.<\/h3>\n

It is true that our team here in Digital Communications is responsible for the website design you use (theme in WordPress terms), and we are routinely finding minor improvements we can make to enhance accessibility. By making use of the tools we provide, there are a number of accessibility issues you do not need to address (the navigation menus at the very top, the way site search operates, and the way lists of articles and events behave, for example).<\/p>\n

At the same time, our websites would be useless without the content you provide between the top and bottom of the page\u2014 and the content you create in that space will benefit from a focus on accessibility.<\/p>\n