The changing landscape of accessibility across the globe will be a huge factor that influences technology advancements. The World Health Organization has identified persons with disabilities as the fastest growing minority group. With the Baby Boomers reaching the age where mobility becomes tougher and tougher we will see a huge shift in accessibility. There is no way that things can remain the same, with such a large  part of the population needing accessibility in a way they have not before. We need to make our city streets wheelchair accessible, even this task sounds daunting.

While the changes may seem to be difficult to make, never the less, we need to make them and soon. This is just the tip of a very large iceberg that we are viewing from the surface of the water, unfortunately the hidden part is just as important as the visible part. With everyday changes and preparations we can be ready for mobility in the world even if our bodies have trouble with some difficult tasks. The world view on disability needs to shift into one that we consider in our day to day operations. With the world becoming more digital by the second and with things like the digital-divide to consider technology is under the scope for scrutiny. Technology is a part of life and has enriched life for most of the population. We simply need to consider who has been left out of thought, if anyone has, and then help them to join in. This can be done with simple technology like phone keyboards that are predictive and user friendly. User-friendly becomes very important and if we consider all different users it becomes easy to make accessible. ”Technology is accessible if it can be used just as effectively by people with disabilities as it can by those without.” Debra Ruh writes.

This is so true and accessibility is vital, but it should be part of our thinking while designing and not an afterthought. After all, we create minorities that are not represented when we leave some as an afterthought. We can be a prosperous global society that includes all communities, because everyone working together adds value in a way that working against one another we never could.

So many people are sad and have lost their ability to find the simple joys in life.  My Mom is one of those people and as she has aged she has become more and more negative and sad.  She has always been the half-empty type person but when we lost my Dad last year her filters went with him.  She struggles seeing the world as a good place and often gets lots in the darkness.

I try to gently remind her of all the joys and wonders all around her.  Instead she tells me that I am in denial about the sad state of the world.  She also thinks that I should lose the Rose Colored Glasses.  I love her and will always be there for her but her view of the world makes me sad.  I see the world as such an amazing place and as I get older want to continue to contribute to the world.

I have been blessed by a happy marriage for over 32 years and we have two grown children – Sara and Kevin.  Our oldest daughter Sara was born with Down syndrome and we named her after my mother.  Everywhere we looked we were told the dark, negative stories associated with raising a child with disabilities.  We decided the experts were wrong and proceeded to prove them wrong.

Our beautiful, loving, joyful and simply amazing daughter has been a great teacher to us.  She lives the great spiritual truths: “stay in the moment”, “see the good in everyone”, and “Life is about Love”.  I also practice these truths but it is truly a walk in faith sometimes.  If our intelligence was measured on how a person lives the greatest spiritual truths – Sara would be a great sage.

Sara’s brother Kevin has also been positively impacted by his sister.  Read his blog “Lessons Learned From my Sister” http://ow.ly/COnrj

Sara has inspired my work and I have spent the last twenty years in the disability field working hard to empower persons with disabilities (PwD).  I have worked with countries all over the world to create programs and policies to include PwD in every aspect of society with an emphasis on the workforce.  I have had the pleasure to work with huge corporations (national and multi-national) to help them understand how to include this segment of the population in their workforce and marketing efforts.  According to the World Health Organization (WHO) 1 in 7 people are impacted with a disability.  In the United States 1 in 3 families are impacted.  Source: NOD

Disability is part of life and we all will experience disabiity in our life times.  As we age more of us are acquiring disabilities.  I have worked hard to shine a different light on disabilities.  Instead of seeing it as a tragedy – we should realize it is part of life.  Obstacles allow us to find our greatest strengths and treasures in life?

My Mom has been a great teacher to me and she has been trying her entire life to manage her mental illness.  Life is tough for her and I try to be authentic with her and love her regardless of her negative view of the world.  I have heard experts say to stay away from negative people but at this time in my Mom’s life she needs me.  So I try to be authentic with her and try not to make her walk more difficult.

I view her negative lens of the world as an inspiration for me to always be grateful and see beauty in all things.  Maybe it is a defense mechanism but I have become a better person because of my Mom.

I also believe we can learn a lot from people like our daughter Sara Ruh.  She inately seems to understand the value of staying in the moment.  Eating when she is hungry, sleeping when she is tired (no matter where she is – smile), and staying 100% in the moment and fully authentic.  She is an amazing soul and I am so blessed to be part of her life.  Both the Sara’s in my world – my Mom and my Daughter have been great teachers and gifts to me.

To learn more about our work, please visit: www.RuhGlobal.com

I am an advocate of using social media to bring awareness 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 their voices via social media. However, there are some significant accessibility problems with social media. There are leaps in accessibility that have been made and are in progress. Yet we find that many social media tools and applications are not blending accessibility into their products and when they are, it does not seem to be a priority. PwD are often left out of the social media conversation and movement because the devices are less accessible.

We find that many social media tools and applications are not blending accessibility into their products. PwD are often left out of the social media conversation because they apps are inaccessible. This is difficult to deal with due to the fact that most don’t seem to have accessibility in mind until there is a problem, instead the devices and applications need to be thought of as opportunities for universal access.
Social media has to be accessible or we continue to widen the Digital Divide, it is as simple as that. As long as there are access problems we run the risk of alienating a portion of our community.
The Internet has opened up many opportunities as well as greatly improving the quality of life for these users, but there are still barriers. Many people 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. The spectrum of ability for all users is variable.

Can an organization really afford to lose this audience?

I think not, and this community is chattering on more accessible platforms, about the good and the bad. If social media tools are not accessible those platforms stand to lose out on major benefits, or risk being singled out as not worried about the less able part of the population and their advocates.

Sometimes we hear that it is too hard to make an application or platform accessible. This makes sense only if the organization wishes to put forth the message that their customers are not worth a re-tool of an app. Accessibility should be built into the system similarly to building in privacy, security or usability. The second thought of accessibility as “not an easy add on” and will be noticed by those left out.
The good news is that Social Media applications can be made fully accessible allowing everyone to use them; all aspects of use just need to be considered.

In years past, developers were afraid that making the application accessible would make a system less creative or innovative or other security issues. The good news is we have seen amazing strides with accessible social media and now it is innovative developers take pride in blending accessibility into the process level. This seems to be the future of technology and it should be our end goal to reach universal access.

Is participation for all out of the question? 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, there for this is an issue that affects family and community. Worldwide, this group numbers 500-750 million people and is a key influencer of the public’s perceptions.

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 “dumbing” 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.

Call for submissions! If you are a person with a disability or have someone close to you that is affected by disabilities then we want to hear from you! Do you have a tattoo? Whats the story behind it? Do you want to get a tattoo? Are you against tattooing? What is your opinion on people who have a disability getting tattooed? What kind of meaningful content do people want? We want to hear your opinion on the subject! If you are a tattoo artist we would love to hear about this topic from your point of view. Are you worried that the tattoo shop may not be accessible or maybe the staff will not be comfortable dealing with a client with a disability? My sister Sara was born with Down syndrome and is now a wonderful 27 year old woman. When she wanted to get her first tattoo at the age of 20 and a family friend expressed concern when our family mentioned that we would be 100% open to Sara getting a tattoo if she wanted one. Who is to say she should not be allowed to get a tattoo, and why? She understands that it will hurt, and not go away. But she is an adult and although she gets support from her family for day to day living she wants to be as independent as anyone would and wants to make her own decisions. After a lot of talk and presenting Sara with the idea that people may not think it was a good idea and may be judgmental. She had the same stance that most do when they have decided that a tattoo is in their future, Who cares what anyone else thinks, this is a tattoo for me and on me. How can I or anyone who loves and respects sara and her opinion say otherwise. The selection process for the Artist who would ink the design was shorter than we expected. The first Artist we visited was told by the shop owners that Sara had a disability and he said he was comfortable with that and would simply like to meet her before and discuss every aspect of the tattoo, this is not uncommon for any tattoo artist to do, you always want to know who you’re working with and it is important to do this on both sides. As an artist talking to a client and as well as someone who is commissioning artwork from an artist. Well thats my story in a nutshell, we hope to hear from you and yours about this, please take a few moments to submit your story to: Kevin@ruhglobal.com