The Older Dad's ADA Accessibility Statement!
We here at the Older Dad Show want you to know that we take the disabled very seriously. We don't know what it's like to live as a blind person or one that needs a screen reader or special contrast of colors because they're color blind. We try to record a video for most of the post and pages so that at some level the hosted video can play our voice so that the blind and hearing impaired can read our lips or subtitles to know what we're saying. We try our best to make the Older Dad Show website accessible to our audience. We're also new to website building so we feel we have a good start on becoming more accessible in the future. Later on when we get our show on youtube going and a bit of money flowing, we want to hire out a professional to make our website great for all disabilities. Right now we are using the User Way plugin, Web Accessibility plugin and a few checking tools like the WAVE toolbar.
Here is a note from our founder Michael;
I must make a few concessions here that I am not a professional in ada compliance and to be honest, I don't even know a person in my circle of friends who is disabled. I went about my data structure presuming a screen reader and contrast for those with weaker eyes. I understand very little about color blindness but I have tried to make sure our colors don't conflict with those who are red weak or green weak. Where I was able, I included videos with closed captioning to give an added amount of detail to those who can hear and read or those who are fine but didn't get the education to read well. I just want everyone to know that I care very much about the older dad community and I am trying the best I can with the funds I have to make the older dad show an accessible site for all people coming to this website! Below is some of the information we used to plan our accessibility strategy for furthering our accessibility goals. This webpage acts as our accessibility statement and our website is still a work in progress!
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
This rule updated and reorganized Section 508 Standards/Section 255 Guidelines because of innovations in technology. The update would meet requirements with other guidelines of the European Commission, and with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) this group is recognized as the standard for web content and ICT. The Section 502 and M-17-06 has all government websites to be compliant so we believe we should be compliant as well since we feel it is wrong to discriminate based on a disability.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1
The (Wcag) 2.1 is the update to version 2.0 guidelines that will make content more accessible to people with disabilities like blindness/reduced vision, deafness, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and some accommodation for learning disabilities and cognitive limitations. These guidelines address accessibility of web content on desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. The wcag 2.1 guidelines will make web content more usable. We are using the wcag 2.1 guidelines to help make our websites compliant and accessible.
WordPress Plugins and Accessibility testing tools!
Testing is the key to accessibility and plugins have the a place of functionality. You must understand that achieving accessibility takes time and it is hard to make a website that is 100% accessible and functional and enjoyable by today's standards. We try to blend the visual elements well enough to make a pleasing design, but not so much that the web page becomes overly complex. We are continually trying to make our websites compliant and accessible but we must understand that the older dad show doesn't own or make any of these programs or tools. With each update to the software or policy from a plugin, we risk our content falling out of compliance. We also need the liberty to try out products or software that may make accessibility better. So there may be a time when we are experimenting with new tools and plugins, that a user may not be able to access our content. Just know that we are trying to make it better but sometimes that makes it worse. There are different methods of accessibility between desktop and mobile. We had to figure out how to have the same functionality from desktop to mobile but we're sure it works (we're just bad at testing) We are striving for the best products in our budget and IT stack of software. Below is the list we currently use!
We have a comment section if you'd like to tell us if anything is wrong with our accessibility or you know of better programs then please tell us in the comments section!
