• What Powers Us
  • AAPD Mission
  • Our Team
  • Our Board
  • Our National Partners
  • Annual Report
  • Work at AAPD
• What We Do
• Resources
  • Press Room
  • Power Grid Blog
  • Publications
• Take Action
  • Speak Out
  • Share your story
  • Become a Member
  • Ways to Give
  • Leadership Awards

What We Do:

Website Accessibility

Knowing Who Needs Inclusive Communications Technologies
Central to reducing barriers for people with disabilities in communication technologies is knowing the needs. This knowledge is important for several reasons:

• People with sensory disabilities — such as hearing, vision and speech — will encounter the most immediate barriers to using information and communication technologies. If they are organized as consumers of phone and television services, they can collectively impact manufacturers and services providers.

• The types of changes to communications technologies that make it work for those with sensory disabilities may often also make it work for people with intellectual disabilities, and for people who are aging.

• Government officials will want to know the numbers of people with disabilities, and advocates must marshal these statistics to support their arguments.

• The companies providing telecommunication and technology products and services will want to know these population statistics.

• To know the numbers of people with low incidence disabilities is especially important — those, for example, with speech disabilities, or those using a non-native language and having a disability, such as people who are Spanish-speaking and hard-of-hearing, or people who are deaf-blind — or their needs will never be addressed.

Login