Social Media and Accessibility

By Debra Ruh, CEO of Ruh Global Communications

I am a big communicator and to be honest it got in trouble a lot in school for chattering.  In High School, teachers said that I couldn’t stop talking and my Mom often got notes about this issue.  I remember in 5^th grade my teacher saying if one more person talks or laughs you will be staying after school.  You guessed it that made me giggle and yes – I stayed after school and then stay in my room that weekend on restriction.  I love to talk, sing, write and just chatter.  My family and friends understand and usually appreciate this about me.  Sometimes I think my husband wouldn’t mind gagging me but after 29 years of marriage he would never openly say that because then we would have to “talk” about it.  He says that I even talk in my sleep.

So I bet you have guessed it – I LOVE social media.  Social Media allows me to chatter with people all over the world.  Plus I can get instantaneous chatter back, I remember when Virginia had our earthquake (okay California- no wise cracks) it was traumatic for us.  I couldn’t believe how many aftershocks we felt.  One night we had a 5.3 aftershock and it woke everyone up in the house.  My husband and daughter went back to sleep but I was shaken and started thinking scary thoughts like what if a really big one comes and what if a tree falls on the house.  I have a great imagination and sometimes I don’t appreciate it late at night.  So I got up and got on my social media to chatter about it and calm my nerves.  I chattered with people all over Richmond and it really helped calmed me down and made me feel safe knowing others were feeling the same way.

I also use social media to chatter about the community of people with disabilities (PwD) and accessible Internet, Communications and Technology (ICT).  I believe that the community of PwD is starting to find our voices via social media.  However, there are some significant accessibility problems with social media.   We find that many social media tools and applications are not blending accessibility into their products.  So PwD are often left out of the social media conversation and movement because they are inaccessible

Really – come on – can’t everyone be allowed to participate?  If we don’t make social media accessible than we continue to widen the “Digital Divide” and according to the World Health Organization (WHO) one in seven people are impacted with disabilities worldwide.  Plus 1 out of 3 households in the U.S. are impacted by disabilities.  Worldwide, this group numbers 500-750 million people and is a key influencer of the public’s perceptions.

The Internet has opened many opportunities and has greatly improved the quality of life for these users, but they still face barriers. You might think of disabilities in extreme terms such as blindness and deafness, but it also includes many others with visual or hearing impairments that are increasingly common in our aging population, and other challenges such motor and cognitive impairment.

Can an organization really afford to lose this audience?  I don’t think so and this community is really chattering on the more accessible platforms so if social media tools are not accessible those platforms stand to lose out on major benefits.

Sometimes we hear that it is too hard to make an application or platform accessible.  How ridiculous – accessibility should be built into the system just like you would build in privacy, security or usability.

There is NO excuse to not make your Social Media applications fully accessible so that everyone can use them.   In years past, developers were afraid that making the application accessible would make a system less usable or “dummy” the system down.  Once again, ridiculous – we have seen amazing strides with accessible social media and now it is BAD design if you do not blend accessibility into the process level.

Want to know more?  Join our free webinar on Accessible Social Media or download a free trial version of our Accessibility Management Platform (AMP) it is a knowledge platform that has tons of tips, online training and suggestions for making applications fully accessible.

For further information about TecAccess and their current endeavors, visit their website at SSB Bart Group

The ROI of Hiring Technologists with Disabilities

By Debra Ruh, Founder of TecAccess, CEO and Founder of Ruh Global Communications

Employers looking to gain a strategic edge may find that hiring technologists with disabilities provides an attractive return on investment.  Technologists with disabilities give everyone from private industry to educational institutions a way to improve the accessibility of their technology, hire a diverse workforce, and drive in more business by focusing on social responsibility and inclusion.

Individuals with disabilities represent a huge market segment and a large untapped workforce.  Additionally, with the recent amendments to the ADA and the updates coming soon to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, technological accessibility needs to keep pace with the new legislation.  These developments will require employers to address accommodation issues in the workplace, something that can be helped by having employees with disabilities in high tech and management positions.

However, disability related myths can impede this process.  I worked with one large company that basically said, “We are going to decide what jobs can be done by persons with disabilities and then direct individuals with disabilities to those positions”.  But it’s not the place of the employer to determine what jobs people with disabilities can do.  An employer simply need to make sure that its HR systems and processes are fully accessible, and if a candidate applies and is qualified for the job, interview them and hire them to do the job.  Period.

Employers can make a wise investment in hiring technologists with disabilities.  A recent Department of Labor report indicated that workers with disabilities consistently meet or exceed the job performance of coworkers without disabilities.  One good example can be found in a Canon facility outside of Chicago that began refurbishing cameras.  They hired people with intellectual disabilities and the first year the program saved over $19 million.  They also noticed that the plant’s overall productivity increased at a higher rate than other locations.  Employees at the plant also reported increased morale and pride to work for the company.  Such intangibles can be valuable to employers seeking a competitive edge in the marketplace.

What type of mobile phone user are you?  Are you a Blackberry, Android, iPhone or another device?  I am still a Blackberry user and fairly happy but peeking over the fence at iPhone and Androids.  At first I stayed with the Blackberry because I travel internationally and they seemed to get better coverage.  Plus I work all the time (bad habit of mine) and Blackberry really met my needs.  However after I started using an iPad in May 2011, yes I was a slow adopter but thanks to Tim Springer I went to the other side and I really love my iPad.  I like it so much that now I am considering moving to the iPhone to replace my Blackberry.  Now I am not willing to give up my windows based Laptop but using all these devices together is sublime.

I have a lot of choices however many people have very few choices because there are still a lot of accessibility problems with mobile phones not to mention the Digital Divide where many consumers cannot buy the latest device available.  It is discouraging to see my friends and family not having the same choices that I do because of accessibility issues.

In February CBS News did an article stating that the number of mobile phone subscriptions had reached 4.6 billion and was expected to hit 5 billion in 2011. It is critical that everyone have access to communications and technology and that includes people with disabilities.

“Mobile phone providers in rich countries offer advanced services and handsets, while people in developing countries increasingly use the mobile phone for health services and banking, said the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).  “Even during an economic crisis, we have seen no drop in the demand for communications services,” said the agency’s Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure.”  (1)

Mobile devices are being used to access all kind of data including financial data.   “Between 500 million and 1 billion people will access financial services by mobile by 2015, depending on estimates. The MFS market will be dominated Asia, driven by mobile operator-led initiatives in developing nations to bank the unbanked. Remittance/transfers by mobile is growing three times faster than m-banking.” (2)

So what needs to be done to assure everyone can participate.   A good first step is to design the device following Universal Design and Accessibility Standards.   Blind, Vision Loss, Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Mobility Impairments, Intellectual Disabilities and the Elderly are impacted by inaccessible devices.

According to the W3C:

“More concretely, many of the mobile devices’ limitations match a number of well-known disabilities:

• the small screen can easily induce pages with very small characters,
• the limited viewport makes layout and browsing context changes as disturbing as for someone with limited vision,
• the sometimes difficult lighting conditions (e.g. from using a phone screen under the sunlight) can make colors and contrasts as difficult to identify as for a person with colors perception problems,
•  the lack of mouse matches the inability of some persons to use a mouse due to motricity difficulties,
• likewise, the very limited and often hard-to-use keyboards available on mobile devices is evocative of the difficulties some persons with disabilities can have to interact with a keyboard
• the social and mobility context of some mobile users make the use of some modalities (sound, video) for multimedia content inappropriate, matching the inability for some people to hear sounds or see images
• in a mobile context, a user might have a very limited or patchy attention span, as someone with a cognitive disability might have
• on mobile networks where time and cost are often limiting factors, being able to determine what an image is before it gets downloaded matters — at having such a description would help a blind user
• the use of some technologies (plug-ins, scripts) might not be possible on a number of mobile devices, like they wouldn’t be usable with a number of assistive technologies” (3)

Everyone needs access to the internet, communications and technology.  I applaud companies that have made accessibility part of the development life cycle.  In the future, I will be blogging about some of these amazing best practices.

References and Footnotes

(1)    www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/15/business/main6209772.shtml

(2)    http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats

(3)   http://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/

Why Is Apple Embracing the Community of People with Disabilities?

By Debra Ruh, CEO and Founder of Ruh Global Communications

Apple is said to be taking steps to make its iPhone and iPad more user-friendly for people with disabilities. Since the products all use touch screens, some with visual or mobility impairments can have trouble with the devices; however, in a recent filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple has said it is seeking to patent a method for connecting its products to accessories that could act in place of a touch screen. I know their products have always been thoughtfully designed, with assistive technology included in all of their devices as a standard feature. Now it looks like they are planning to take it a step further – raising the bar for accessible mobile technology.

So why does Apple care so much whether or not people with disabilities can use their products?

I recently joined the legions of Apple users by buying and falling in love with my iPad2. My son, a senior in VCU Arts College, has been a long-time fan of Apple products and encouraged me to give them a try. At first I was all thumbs and couldn’t even figure out simple things like cut and paste. I was a programmer for many years, and because of that I think the problem was that I was trying to make everything so complicated. I had been training myself for many, many years to navigate around my Windows based PCs, and I wasn’t expecting my iPad to be so intuitive. Don’t get me wrong I am still a big fan of my PC and Windows, but I do adore my iPad2.

I didn’t have to go to Apple to get a tablet – there are some amazing tablets on the market that use Windows based operating systems. Still, I am a technologist and I have been reading all the amazing articles about how accessible the iPhones and iPads are for my community – the community of people with disabilities.

My husband and I have two children, Kevin 23 and Sara 24. Sara was born with Down syndrome and she has inspired me every day of my life. Sara took to the iPad2 like a fish to water. I was so surprised because as I fumbled along trying to make my PC brain work on the iPad she was just zooming along. Flipping on movies, eBooks, podcasts and music, and let me tell you she is an expert at purchasing items from iTunes. It was amazing to watch and I wondered how much better her education would have been if she would have had access to a device like the iPad.

As a parent, I am grateful to Apple for including her in the wonderful digital movement. She is saving her money to buy her own iPad so she can have full access. Now if only I could figure out how to lock her out of iTunes! (Guess I will have to ask Sara how to do that…)

Okay, so why does Apple care about someone like me – a middle aged, working mother of two children-one of which happens to have Down Syndrome?

Well, according to She-conomy, an online guide for marketing to women, women account for 85% of all consumer purchases, including everything from autos to health care.

Plus, like my own, 1 in 3 households in the US are impacted by someone with disabilities. Likewise, the 2000 U.S. Census reported that almost 42% of older adults (65+ years) have one or more disabilities. In fact, the percentage of people with disabilities is larger than any single ethnic, racial, or cultural group. At 19.3%, the number of people with disabilities exceeds the next largest group – Hispanic people (14.9%) – by a fairly wide margin.

In the UK, the numbers are also equally as large. For example — CSR Europe, a European business network of Corporate Social Responsibility, estimates that 8.6 million people (aged 16 and over) self-identify as having a disability, which translates into 15% of the population. Those over 50 years of age currently account for one fifth of the UK population, and they own more than 80 percent of the country’s asset wealth and are the group most likely to vote in general elections. Surprising to some, 33% of 50-60 year olds now have a disability.
In all of Europe it is estimated that at least 39 million people have a disability. It is also estimated that in every country 10 to 20 percent of the population has some form of disability, a number that is expected to grow.

On a global scale, the National Organization on Disabilities says that this powerful group controls over $3 Trillion in discretionary income worldwide, and the numbers are growing.

Why would a company as smart as Apple care about this segment? I would say that it’s because it is providing them a solid return on investment and they are making a profit for their efforts. My family will certainly continue to buy their products – not only because they are convenient and easy to use, but because we choose to support companies that make their products and services accessible to ALL people.

Kudos to Apple – I wish them huge success in all of their future endeavors!

For further information about TecAccess and their current endeavors, visit their website at SSB Bart Group

With special comments from Sam Joehl, SSB Senior Accessibility Specialist.

I was perplexed when I read about a class action lawsuit against Walt Disney Parks & Resorts.

“On June 29, 2011, the United States District Court Central District of California certified a nationwide class of blind persons in a class action pending in Los Angeles against Walt Disney Parks & Resorts. The Plaintiffs expect to establish that thousands of patrons with visual impairments visit Disney’s parks, restaurants and hotels each year, and that the three named Plaintiffs’ claims are common to those of the much larger class. The Complaint does not seek money damages, but only compliance with ADA and other laws which require Disney to accommodate the needs of, and not discriminate against, its patrons with visual impairments.”

Why the surprise? The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) just awarded Disney with a 2011 Access Award. “Walt Disney Parks & Resorts in 2010 introduced a new device at its U.S. theme parks that provides audio description for its many spectacular—and hugely popular—rides and attractions. Guests with visual impairments who visit Walt Disney World® Resort in Florida and Disneyland® Resort in California can explore the parks with unprecedented freedom with the help of a 7.2-ounce wireless device. Disney’s Handheld Device provides audio descriptions of park surroundings and rides for guests with visual disabilities, closed captioning for guests who are deaf, as well as other access features at over 51 attractions domestically. Disney’s Handheld Device also lets guests choose the type of information they would like to receive about outdoor areas, from architectural elements to the location of the nearest restroom via an interactive audio menu.”

Sam Joehl had these comments on the subject:

“In the late 1990’s I visited Disney World’s Epcot Center with my family. They provided us with a Braille guidebook listing the countries and the cuisine served by the restaurants which allowed me to independently select where I wanted to dine for lunch. Disney was accommodating people with disabilities even back in the 1990s by providing guidebooks in accessible formats.

I think lawsuits like these have the potential to hurt the disability advocacy community more than help it just as the ADA lawsuit against Southwest Airlines did. The Disney suit falls into the same category of frivolous lawsuits as the NAD complaint against Netflix (who plan to caption 80 percent of their streaming content by year’s end and has offered subtitles on iOS devices since May of this year) and the NFB complaint against SSA which has one of the best Section 508 programs in the U.S. Federal Government.

All of these organizations obviously employ individuals who are deeply committed to ensure that their products and services are accessible, but they may have gaps in their accessibility policies, lack overarching corporate accessibility policies or lack enforcement of these policies across the entire organization.

Last month I went to a talk at Accessibility DC in which Dr. Chris Law presented his doctoral thesis about the business case for accessibility. Dr. Law studied organizations in Australia to determine why some were more successful at implementing end-to-end accessibility solutions than others. He came away with seven success factors which were present in every organization that implemented accessibility across their culture and their entire enterprise, and were not present in organizations that fell short of this objective in some area. More research needs to be done in this area to identify the criteria that results in effective end-to-end accessibility programs.

We need to work with organizations to get these seven success factors implemented across their entire enterprise. Instead of attacking or threatening organizations which are making a concerted effort to implement accessibility, positive relationships should be formed with the individuals spearheading these efforts to increase their influence and fill in the gaps in their accessibility policies and their implementations.

The numerous accessibility successes which were borne out of structured negotiation agreements demonstrates that companies can be convinced to provide accessible solutions by fostering positive relationships instead of taking the route of litigation. Filing lawsuits against companies for not doing what they are already doing brands us accessibility advocates as the unreasonable hysterics we are often seen to be. Litigation should be saved for the companies who are unwilling to cooperate or who fight their legal requirements. The companies who are trying to do the right thing should be encouraged to do what they’re doing even better.”

So what can be done? How can we avoid sending mixed messages from our community of people with disabilities (PwD)? What can a company do to better understand and include PwD?

There are some logical steps: make inclusion a part of your company’s culture, include accessibility in your policies and procedures, add compliance language to all IT procurements, and make accessibility part of your service and product life cycles and development.

Focus on all human touch points, HR systems, Intranet, Internet, Service Centers, Kiosks, eLearning, Online Services, Software applications, shareholder reports, marketing communications, PDF and other reports. Anywhere that you intersect with a person should have accessibility built into the process. Train your developers, testers, QA, programmers and anyone else adding content. Make inclusion and accessibility part of your organization’s culture.

Walt Disney Parks & Resorts has spent millions of dollars to include people with disabilities in their parks. They offer wheel chair rentals, services for guests with mobility, hearing and visual disabilities, lighting sensitivity, and special parking for guests with disabilities. To learn more about Disney efforts to provide accessibility visit http://www.Disneyland.Disney.go.com/help/access.

I am not here to argue the merits of the lawsuit but do think many will be confused by an award for excellence from AFB and then a lawsuit by members of the blind community.

For further information about TecAccess and their current endeavors, visit their website at SSB Bart Group

By Debra Ruh, Founder of TecAccess and CEO & Founder of Ruh Global Communications

Do you believe you were born for a purpose?  I believe we all have many things to accomplish in our lives.  Since I was a little girl I dreamed of being a Mom.  I used to think all little girls dreamed of being a Mom but then I learned that some of my amazing friends had other dreams and realized that was okay because we each get to have dreams and then take steps to fulfill those dreams.  I played with Barbie dolls at an early age and my Barbie would get married and have babies.

When I got older and met my husband to be I told him that I wanted to have a baby.  He was 6 years older than me and was also ready.  I was 24 when we started “trying” to have a baby.  We did not do anything special we just did not use birth control.  It took us several years but finally we learned that I was pregnant.  I was so thrilled and terrified—oh wait, maybe I am not ready—but ready or not we were pregnant.

I am an optimistic person and it never occurred to me that something could go wrong with my pregnancy.  I had a wonderful pregnancy, feeling the baby grow inside me was a beautiful experience and I could not stop smiling and feeling like the luckiest person in the world.  I remember we were going to wait to learn the sex of the baby and when we went to get the sonogram we told the technician we did not want to know. To be honest, I already knew in my bones that our baby was a boy.  I knew because I consider myself very intuitive and a little bit psychic.  So for months I had known it was a boy.  After the sonogram we went into the lobby to leave and my husband Ed looked at me and said, “I know the sex of the baby.” I said, “What? How?”  He said that when the technician looked at the baby she had referred to it once as a gender instead of a neutral term.  I demanded that my husband tell me what he knew but he laughed at me and said, “No. You wanted to wait, so wait.”  Well, being the mature adult that I was…I ran back into the room and demanded that the technician or doctor tell me the sex because I could not wait for 5 months to know if my husband Ed knew.  They laughed at me and told me that we were having a girl.  So much for my psychic powers.  A girl?  Really, a Girl? But I had known for months that this baby was a boy!  It was funny how many plans and dreams I had already made based on the fact that she was a boy.  I readjusted my dreams to have a girl play the main part.  I was thrilled to be having a girl, just not as cocky about my psychic abilities.

Sara was born on Easter in the late 90’s.  She was born about 3 weeks before we had all projected her arrival, but she was not premature.  The poor little thing looked pretty rough.  She was bloated from being in the birth channel for many hours and had forcep marks on her cheek; she looked like a little Sumo wrestler.  When they did the Apgar test they gave her 6 out of 10 because they thought she had poor muscle tone.  I remember looking at my precious baby after I had given birth and they had given me morphine. The weirdest thought quietly floated through my mind, “The baby looks like she has Down syndrome.”  I immediately rejected that quiet whisper!  I had never known anyone with Down syndrome and had no idea what those babies looked like; plus, wouldn’t the doctors know?  I did not mention that whisper to anyone.

We named our precious gift Sara Renee.  I wanted to be fancy and make it Renée, but the nurse asked my husband and he decided the fancy way was not necessary.  So we brought our Sara Renee home and fell madly in love with her.  She was the best thing that had ever happened to our family.

For months, we enjoyed this miracle of being parents.  We dressed her in amazing outfits, took her to the park and the zoo, and threw ourselves into parenthood. We showed her off to anyone that would glance our way.  What an amazing time.  A male friend asked me one day, “Can you believe how much you fall in love with these babies?”  The depth of my love for her was surprising.  I knew that I would love her but the depth surprised and delighted me.  We would do anything for this baby.

I took her in for her regular checkups.  During her 4 month checkup one of the doctors became concerned because she was not gaining weight.   He called it “Failure to Thrive,” and blamed it on breast feeding.  I loved breast feeding her and refused to give it up completely so we agreed that I would supplement with a bottle.  He told me that we had two weeks to show she could gain weight or he was admitting her to the hospital and I had to stop nursing her.  So for two weeks we pushed food on Sara.

Ed took her back to the doctor and she had gained weight.  However, the doctor wanted to do some tests because he was still concerned.  Ed took Sara for additional testing and a few weeks later the nurse called me and said the doctor wanted to see us in his office that day at 2pm.  I asked he why and she would not tell me.  I figured it couldn’t be good news when a doctor demands you and your husband in his office.  I started praying and I asked that small voice inside my head if everything was okay.  That whisper came back saying, “Yes, everything is fine.”

Still, my head told me that when a doctor calls you into his office to talk about test results it’s going to be a scary meeting.  The doctor quickly announced that Sara had a chromosomal syndrome called Down syndrome or Mongolism.  He said, “Don’t worry, she’ll be easier to raise than a child with ADHD.”  We thought, “What?  Seriously? We are comparing disabilities and deciding which child is the easiest to raise?”  He also said we could check into institutions but most people raised their Down syndrome babies at home.  On our way home, my husband started to cry and that scared me more than the doctor’s office.  I had witnessed my wonderful husband cry twice at that time; once when Sara was born and after the office visit.  Marrying this man was the BEST move that I had ever made.  He was and still is the love of my life and the gentlest soul I have ever met.

Our doctor sent Sara to be tested for other issues like heart problems.  We were told she had the strongest heart that they had seen in a long time.  Next we headed to the geneticist.   The geneticist had a team of student doctors with her hovering all over Sara and it was unnerving to say the least.  During the examination she told us that she would probably never walk or talk and that she might get pregnant at 16 because girls with Down syndrome tended to be promiscuous.   I looked down at our precious baby sleeping in my arms and stood up and said, “Okay, we are done!” and left the room.

We told our parents but did not tell others for many months because we wanted to have time to come to terms with the news.  I had to once again reset my dreams for this baby.  Maybe she wasn’t going to grow up get a PhD, marry and have 5 children and find a cure for cancer. Darn my daydreams.  I remember driving through a fast food restaurant a few weeks after the diagnosis.  The teenager leaned out of the drive through window and said, “Does your baby have Down syndrome? She is so cute. My brother has Down syndrome.” I smiled at her and said yes and then drove away like a crazy woman.  I did not want her to have Down syndrome and certainly did not want people to be able to look at her and see she had Down syndrome.  What a dumb name anyway—Down syndrome.

My husband and I had to walk the stages of grief and learn to accept the diagnosis.  Plus we still had the cutest most amazing baby in the world.  Nothing had changed, she was still Sara Renee.  We enrolled her in a wonderful early intervention program run by Easter Seals.

Life proceeded on, and 15 months after Sara was born we had a new blessing, her brother Kevin.

When Sara entered middle school (6th grade) she was not reading or writing.  We met with a transition team to plan out the last years of school and consider future employment options.  Since she was not reading Sara had few options.  Someone suggested a job bringing in shopping carts at a grocery store.  I was shocked. Seriously? That is the goal for her to reach for?  Those words haunted me and propelled me to create an IT firm that understood the value of employing people with disabilities.

The company was named TecAccess and the majority of the team members were technologists with disabilities.  Sometimes over 80% of our team were represented by people with disabilities.   We focused on ensuring Internet, Communications and Technology (ICT) Accessibility.  When ICT is not accessible to everyone including people with disabilities the digital divide widens.  According to a World Health Organization (WHO) 2011 Study, 1 in 7 people in the world have a disability.  According to the National Organization on Disabilities (NOD), 1 in 3 American Households are impacted, and this community is the largest minority community after women.

TecAccess worked with multi-national organizations, federal, state, local and foreign governments, universities and non-profits.  Sara speaks at conferences all over the world with me about why people with intellectual disabilities add value to the workforce.  She also chatters on social media using Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.  She is now in her twenties, can walk and talk and has not made me a grandmother.  She has taught me many life messages and touched the lives of many people.  TecAccess merged with SSB BART Group, a former competitor that offers the same type of services and is also committed to employing people with disabilities.  Sara has become a spokesperson for them and continues to add value in the lives of the people that she meets.  She is a global leader and advocate for people with disabilities.  She has spoken in Qatar, Germany and all over the United States.  She has also won awards for her work including the Top 40 under 40 in Richmond, Virginia, the Award of Excellence in Advocacy from NorthStar Academy, and the Raby Award for most improved special education student in Hanover County, Virginia.

I have been blessed to be Sara and Kevin’s Mom and with them in my lives all my dreams have come true.  I have also been able to find great love in my life with their father and my husband of over 30 years.  Plus, I have had the pleasure to follow my passion to help include people with disabilities in the global workforce and to be a Thought Leader in the ICT Accessibility field.  I took my passion, joy, heartbreaks and opportunities and helped start a new industry.  Sara is my North Star and she blesses me every single day.

For many, the ability to telework — working remotely, usually from home, via computer — is viewed as a pleasant convenience, a benefit offered by progressive employers to enhance the work environment. But for the employees of TecAccess, it is a necessity of professional life.

“Commuting to work is annoying for many of us,” said TecAccess founder Debra Ruh. “But for most of my employees, it’s impossible.”

TecAccess, an electronics and information technology (E&IT) company, employs more than 30 associates, nearly all of whom have disabilities ranging from quadriplegia to cognitive disabilities. Many TecAccess employees, including market analyst Rosemary Musachio, require access to assistive technologies or personal care assistance that makes it difficult to work outside the home. Musachio, who has cerebral palsy, cannot speak or use her hands, but uses a word board and headpointer to communicate, both in her work for TecAccess and as a regular columnist for Sun Newspapers.

According to a 1997 U.S. Census Bureau report, the employment rate for adults aged 25 to 64 with a severe disability is just above 30 percent (and has hovered at this level for the past 12 years), with median earnings of $13,272, compared with an 84 percent employment rate for adults without disabilities, who also draw nearly $23,000 in median earnings. But constantly improving assistive technologies and a global telecommunications infrastructure have made access to higher paying, flexibly scheduled jobs more achievable.

And broadband, said Ruh, has made it practical.

About 70 percent of TecAccess associates use broadband to telecommute, collaborating with one another and with their clients. The remaining 30 percent, including Ruh herself, are dialing up and waiting not-so-patiently for broadband to become available in their areas.

“Broadband is so important to where we’re going. Some people think broadband is trendy, that it’s a nice convenience, but not really necessary,” Ruh said. “But not for TecAccess associates and for the millions of other people with disabilities.

“Broadband isn’t a luxury. Broadband is the difference between quality of life or not. It’s about being able to work and being able to interact in ways that haven’t always been possible for people with disabilities. One of our associates said to me, ‘You gave me my life back. You gave me my respect back.’ “

TecAccess specializes in information technology (IT) accessibility as well as compliance solutions for Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and 1998, providing accessibility testing and assessment, training, engineering, policy review and consulting. Section 508 requires federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. The quickly growing company’s clients include some well-known corporations, including Avaya, Wachovia, Verizon, Canon and Circuit City, not to mention U.S. government bodies, including the Navy, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Agriculture.

Ruh, who started TecAccess in the late 1990s, was inspired by her daughter, Sara, who has Down Syndrome. Ruh, a former telecommunications and IT professional, realized that the future employment options for Sara were limited, so she decided to create an IT company that would hire mainly people with disabilities.

“People said, ‘Oh, open up a bakery, open up a T-shirt shop,” said Ruh. “But what do I know about cakes or clothing?”

Instead, Ruh created a company with a specialized mission and a compelling logic: evaluation and development of disability-accessible technologies by people with disabilities.

Originally, the company’s focus was on building accessible Web sites for companies, work that is clearly a perfect fit for the telecommuting model. But as the company expanded, they found an increasing number of their clients were looking for assistance in Section 508 compliance and the accessibility of technologies beyond the Internet. From there, growth has been rapid and exciting.

For example, one corporation that was working with TecAccess on various accessibility projects asked the company for its recommendation on the “dream copier.” If money were not a consideration, what would a totally accessible copier look like? Sean Stapleford, a TecAccess associate who is paralyzed from the neck down, came up with 15 pages of ideas, from symmetrical voice automation (the copier both responds to voice commands and provides voice prompts to assist users with tasks) to a copier that senses when it needs to be repaired and automatically contacts the technician, or in some cases, repairs itself.

“The client brought Sean’s ideas to their engineers in Japan, who were really excited by what he suggested,” Ruh said. “They are actually building some of his ideas into their next design.”

Ruh is counting on broadband to continue to open doors for people with disabilities. True high-speed connectivity not only supports a “virtual office,” by allowing video conferencing and transmission of large files and applications between locations, but provides people with disabilities — typically a more isolated and under-served population — with more opportunities to interact socially, learn marketable skills and achieve increasing fiscal and social independence.

Ruh is excited about the possibilities for herself and her employees with fiber to the home. For now, she’d settle for access to a DSL line (she estimates that she’s contacted her local carrier no fewer than 30 times in the last year or so to see if broadband is available in her area yet!), but for the long term, she knows her associates, and millions of other individuals with disabilities, will need as much bandwidth as they can get.

“The technologies that assist people with disabilities are constantly improving, offering more options, more independence and more accessibility,” said Ruh. “If telecommunications can’t keep up with our technology, we might as well just slow down our technology. And that’s not going to happen. That can’t happen. So let’s make sure the telecommunications can keep up with us.”

As for TecAccess, Ruh and her associates continue to draw big corporate clients, with the dual goals of both improving technology accessibility as well as growing the employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Ruh has set her sights on developing a curriculum for training people with disabilities for information technology professions.

“It’s time for more companies like this, don’t you think?” said Ruh. “And without broadband, without the Internet, we could not have this company. We would not exist.”

For further information about TecAccess and their current endeavors, visit their website at SSB Bart Group

Community Catalyst Award

Organization: TecAccess LLC 

Name: Debra  Ruh
Title: CEO & Founder

1.  What do you feel has been your most notable contribution to catalyzing positive tech-related community action or access in RVA in recent years?

TecAccess’s continuum of effort to make technology and technology-enabled access available to everyone in our society, particularly wounded warriors and the aging, is our contribution, and our business mode.

TecAcces got some significant national attention in 2009, including being named a Trailblazer in Dell’s “Take Your Own Path” campaign, helping shine light on Virginia as a center for innovation in technology access. Bringing positive national media attention to Virginia is our latest accomplishment, driven by our continuing work to make technology available to everyone. One example of that work is Virginia’s DVETS program, started several years ago and now a nationally-recognized platform.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: disabled citizens in Virginia, and across the globe, want to participate, be taxpayers, have a voice. We help them achieve that.

2.  Describe the impact of that contribution on the RVA community.

We’ve put the region on the map as a successful example of the power of employing and engaging the disabled community. Best practices for the entire country are being developed and demonstrated by a Richmond company.

In the last three years, Virginia has gone from near the bottom in services to the disabled to a solid middle-of-the-pack, which is really aggressive progress. TecAccess has helped make that happen. We won a grant for Virginia’s Office of the Sr. Advisor on Disability Policy (Kaine administration) for career development for the disabled, which came about because of our efforts to establish best practices. Another achievement was getting Virginia recognized by the National Technical Assistance & Research Center at Rutgers University.

Our biggest impact is the public/private partnerships we help create, where we work to develop  best practices for global technology-access efforts.

3.  What motivated you to create or get involved in this program?

We wanted to demonstrate how a small for-profit company can make a big impact in an important global effort, particularly in hiring the disabled. That was our spark. We turned on a flashlight, and now it’s become a floodlight.

4.   What risks have you seen with your involvement?

The risk is that we won’t achieve our mission. We’ve had to tighten our belts in the recent downturn, along with everyone else. Reinvention, opening new markets, re-tooling our processes, all of it became part of our daily work. We’re a risk-management IT company, with a new focus on how to both manage risk AND get recognized for being a market leader.

5.  What are the future plans for this program?

We are looking to build TecAccess into a scalable business model that can be adopted by companies globally. Helping our disabled fellow citizens fully participate in the economic growth of our local, national, and worldwide economy is our goal.

6.  Explain why you believe you should win this award.

The work that we do is incredibly powerful. Social entrepreneurship is our model, with both social good and the profit motive having equal weight. We’re doing things here in central VA that have global impact, demonstrating the positive impact of fully including everyone in economic growth, and the growth of human potential. We’re changing the world from right here in central Virginia.

7.  50-words-or-less

TecAccess makes technology accessible for all as a global leader in access for the disabled, including wounded warriors and the aging. Working to build public/private partnership to further its technology-access-for-all mission, TecAccess has been recognized internationally in the media, and by industry leaders like Microsoft and Dell.