Disheartening as H.. :: ADA, on your 17th Anniversary, meet Reality.. Sigh..

Hopefully this comes out right.. My gray cells aren't functioning so well at all again today.. :(

PS, by the way.. Everyone with a Yahoo! group needs to please check your spam buckets.. My copy of this to you all from my desktop never made it to the lists.. Next post: The Conspiracy behind effective advocacy posts regularly finding themselves being thrown down the cyber incinerator.. :wink:

Now, about yesterday's 17th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the real Reality of the human factor behind seeking any kind of accessibility accommodations.....

Don't know why I looked at an email bearing a subject referencing a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) IRC chat log yesterday, but I did.. Guess I'm glad I did.. Ran off at the fingertips at first glance, too..

The email was a cross-post to several W3C-associated working (wg) or interest group (ig) listservs.. It was about the most recent realtime talk some members had very literally regarding rewriting how we all design our web page coding so that the Internet is accessible for absolutely everyone..

The email I responded to was by a "Joshue O'Connor" who caught what my mind just completely did not grasp on the first run through of the IRC archive.. What caught my eye most from Joshue's now archived post (w3c-wai-ig, public-html) was the following:

This section is frankly kind of amazing. In several fell swoops the entire efforts of the accessibility people on the list are dismissed as almost Pavlovian responses and then an absurd dialogue about smell-o-vision ensues. This is trivializing the efforts of people here who are concerned about the needs of people with disabilities.

He was commenting on the following block from the log:

# # [15:01] This is orthogonal to fallback/alt content for images, though

# # [15:05] oh well, the legal stick of accessibility has been waived again :-/

# # [15:05] why is it that when accessibility advocates can't come up with a rational argument, they always fall back to the legal stick?

# # [15:08] Well, maybe they realize there are no carrots available?

# # [15:25] If the Web had smell-o-vision, would accessibility advocates fight for longdescs of odors on behalf of those with no sense of smell?

# # [15:27] A perfume site that made use of smell-o-vision would probably provide a description of the smell anyway for all users, so they can know what it's like before sampling.

To put it into some kind of perspective, these are the folks, among others, who are re-creating THE Internet for the rest of us'ns.. My no-regrets and also now archived (w3c-wai-ig, public-html) response was:

More amazing to these fingertips is that this became publicly disclosed, surfaced today, July 26, 2007, the 17th Anniversary of the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act..

Obviously a long, long way to go before those who seek universal access for *ALL* are not publicly ridiculed by others..

Peace and best wishes..

Cindy Sue

If you've a mind to, please have at it.. These sentiments were left literally for the World Wide Web to meander regarding the acceptance of universal accessibility, let alone the actual implementation of the same..

Ever.........

To those who participated to this level in that chat, do you all honestly think this is what Tim Berners-Lee wants associated with his vision of Reinventing HTML towards a New Net..?

Very personal to Tim.. Please tell me from the bottom of your most visionist of visionary Hearts this isn't..

Cyber hugs..

NCD :: DOJ Issues New Installment of ADA Technical Assistance Materials..

Quickly forwarding along as this type of change has a snowball effect on whom it ultimately touches.. When you hear mention of key phrases such as "accessible design" and "universal design", this is one of the places to turn for insight..

PS.. This early arriving email is a sign your NCD has hit the ground off and running this morning.. Don't forget they are a public entity to whom you may email your concerns and suggestions for their considerations: NCD@NCD.gov..

Tool Kit For State and Local Governments (new chapters 05/07/07): "On December 5, 2006, February 27, 2007, and May 7, 2007, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued installments of a new technical assistance document designed to assist state and local officials to improve compliance with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in their programs, services, activities, and facilities. The new technical assistance document, which will be released in several installments over the next ten months, is entitled 'The ADA Best Practices Tool Kit for State and Local Governments'. The Tool Kit is designed to teach state and local government officials how to identify and fix problems that prevent people with disabilities from gaining equal access to state and local government programs, services, and activities. It will also teach state and local officials how to conduct accessibility surveys of their buildings and facilities to identify and remove architectural barriers to access."

So a funny thing happens on the way to the BBB Online website..

Still trying to resolve the issue where my former web hosting provider, iPowerWeb (BBB Online reliability report), refuses to quit abusing my various hard-earned virtual identities and instead continues to use my web positioning to sublimally redirect traffic to itself under the identity, VDeck..

Have now given iPowerWeb more than a week to comply with my, what had been to this date, anyway, "request" that they cease and desist abusing my very public self-identifying disability self-advocacy virtual identity for their own financial gain.. I play with a personal server such as it is (Windows 98, Cygwin, Apache, Perl, PHP).. I know how many flicks of a switch it takes to shut down a virtual domain..

Sooo, as promised privately to iPowerWeb, AND, again, after allowing ample time for human intervention, just took a trip over to Phoenix's BBB (Better Business Bureau website) as the first of several intended steps should this continue any further..

Four QUICK questions later and where do I find myself, at the Department of Justice's ADA website of all places.. Guess it was the "yes" answer to the "Did I feel this was violating my civil rights..?" question that unexpectedly flipped that particular switch on..

Oy, goodness.. Wanna come with..?

PS.. Beyond that they have the same person doing their billing and they exhibit the same physical address location, anyone have any idea of iPowerWeb's relationship to Startlogic, Inc (reliability report)..? Startlogic was the only thing I could initially get to come up is how it even came to mind to ask..

Tried using the search engine to see if there were any others listed at that same location and bearing same-named employees and/or contractos through BBB's site, but it kept coming back empty, completely empty even though other ways yielded the initial two companies.. Gotta love technology..

Notable is that it is easier to read into that these are not completely the same or immediately related as Startlogic's showing no unresolved issues while iPowerWeb, well, not so much.. Oh, and not to mention that Startlogic and its no unresolveds showing record ARE a BBB member, while, well, you guessed it.. Surprise, not.. :\

PPS.. Gotta give iPowerWeb that, as of last contact, they were trying to resolve this.. They keep saying, "Now that we've shafted you and your websites' visitors by shutting down your domain and thus subdomains, give us money, and we'll power it right on back up.."

I don't think so, and I've politely told them so.. No, ma'am, no way, not ever..

They had 100% go-ahead, they had payment in hand as the email that started all of this states explicitly.. The subject line says something along the lines of, "Your payment has been approved", and the body says something like, "We look forward to the next two years with you".. SOMETHING like that..

Still a little bit more to how this came about (next time), but, yup, it was THEIR Choice, not mine, to shut down my suicide survival tip website after explicitly stating payment had been received in full..

My traffic might have been a miniscule guppy in the big fish sea of sites, but those some 13,000 page turns meant something to someone out there.. I know they meant the World to me as they indicated Value and constantly encouraged digging deeper for more leads, more answers to mental health and disability advocacy out there on the World Wide Web.. That's why it feels so incredibly quite convenient they won't let it go so my identity belongs to me and me alone, not serving as a blatant potential direct lead into their bank account..

Huge cyber hugs to those who did come by to visit.. Whoever you all were, you always made my day.. Gave horrendous Life-garnered experiences some sense of explanation for their existence at the end of Day.. :)

SteveGoldADA: 2005 Census Data Regarding People With Disabilities..

Not many national newsletter lists I know of that are worthy of very excitedly saying, "You really need to receive this one firsthand." Steve Gold's Nuggets is definitely one of those few.. For those interested, subscribe information is included at the bottom of this latest forwarded piece of his..

SteveGoldADA Information Bulletin # 186 (12/06).

Many disability advocates need up to date statistics by State or county for people with disabilities. The 2005 American Community Survey which can be found on the web factfinder.census.gov provides a lot of useful current data. Here is a national summary of the data:

Nearly 15% of the population 5 years and over (i.e., 40 million people) have one or more disabilities.

For the population 16-64 years, 12% of that population (i.e., nearly 23 million people) have one or more disabilities. Of all people 16-64 years, nearly 3% have a sensory disability, more than 7% have a physical disability, and 4.5% have a mental disability. [Remember people can have more than one type of disability and show up in two categories.]

For the population 16-64 years, only 37.5% of the people with a disability are employed. That is, more than 14 million people with disabilities who are unemployed.

For the population 65 years and over, 40.5% of that population (i.e., more than 14 million people) have one or more disabilities. Of all people over 65 years, 16% have a sensory disability, 31% have physical disability, 11.5% have a mental disability, nearly 10% have a self-care disability, and 16.6% have a "go-outside-home disability."

For the population 5 years and over who have one or more disabilities, 21.1% are below the poverty level (which is about $9,200 for a single person). That is, more than 8 million persons have a disability and are below the poverty level. Of all people 5 years and over who are below the poverty level, 18.7% have a sensory disability, 21% have a physical disability, and 26.4% have a mental disability.

As a comparison, for the population 5 years and over with no disability, 11.3% are below the poverty level, while for the same age group with one or more disabilities, 21.1% are below the poverty level.

This data is available by State and county at the above Census Bureau's web site.

Advocates should use this data to hold accountable public officials with respect to "Annual Plans" [for public housing and vouchers] and "Consolidated Plans" [for HOME and CDBG funds]. Make sure the public officials note the correct percentage of persons with disabilities who are below the poverty level. That information informs (or should inform) their planning processes. Without the correct data, people will disabilities will be shortchanged.

Steve Gold, The Disability Odyssey continues

Back issues of other Information Bulletins are available online at www.stevegoldada.com with a searchable Archive at this site divided into different subjects.

To contact Steve Gold directly: stevegoldada@cs.com or 215-627-7100.

To Subscribe to Steve's mailing list: Address a new email to majordomo@stevegoldada.com. In the body of the message include ONLY: subscribe stevegoldada