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Centering Accessibility

11 August 2024 at 10:56

Siding with love means we center accessibility in all our programming and events.

Rev. Amanda Schuber, Disability Justice Associate on the Side With Love Organizing Strategy Team, offers some guidance for congregational staff and volunteers on how to center accessibility in programming.

Centering Accessibility

Sound systems for churches

28 September 2011 at 10:51
By: Yewtree
I recently spotted this article, Sound Systems for Better Sunday Worship in UU World and notice that Oldham Unitarians have just installed a video screen.

I thought it would be a good idea to improve sound systems in our chapels and churches, so I asked if there was a fund to support this.

Apparently the Millennium Fund is still in existence and could be a source of funding support. It does cover “fittings, furniture and equipment following developmental work eg audio loop systems” Any congregation interested in making an application should contact Derek McAuley.

Reasonable contrast on web pages

8 August 2011 at 08:25
By: Yewtree
For accessibility reasons, it's best to have high contrast text on a non-patterned background.

However, if you must have a fancy background, or you need a widget to turn off the styling of other people's sites, here's a neat bookmarklet that you can drag to your browser toolbar.

B on W

(via 456 Berea Street)

There are also browser add-ons for accessibility that you can get to help you test the contrast of a page.

Accessible graphics

4 December 2009 at 04:00
By: Yewtree
Most people know that you must add alt text to images, for example:

<img src="http://www.blogger.com/myphoto.jpg" alt="The Nightingale Centre" />

But there are other things you need to add for full accessibility and usability.

You should set a height and width for your image (and this should be no greater than the actual height and width of the image).

<img src="http://www.blogger.com/myphoto.jpg" height="240" width="360" alt="The Nightingale Centre" />

If an image is very high resolution, it will take a while to download, so you should resize it to a smaller size in your graphics program before uploading it (don't just set a smaller height and width in your HTML).

Internet Explorer uses the alt text as a tooltip, which is actually incorrect. Firefox uses the title attribute as the tooltip text, which is correct. So, if you want the title of your image to be displayed when a Firefox user rolls his/her mouse over the image, you need to add a title attribute.

<img src="http://www.blogger.com/myphoto.jpg" height="240" width="360" alt="The Nightingale Centre" title="The Nightingale Centre" />

You should also ensure that you use the correct format for your images. JPG format should always be used for photos. PNG or GIF formats should always be used for other graphics, such as logos.

Accessible video

3 December 2009 at 04:00
By: Yewtree
So you have produced a shiny new video for your website - but is it accessible?

Deaf viewers require captioning; blind users require audio descriptions, and mobility-impaired users require keyboard shortcuts for video controls.

The best free tool for making videos accessible is Media Access Generator (MAGpie) from NCAM.

Another option is to provide a transcript of your video content.

Accessible tables

2 December 2009 at 04:00
By: Yewtree
If you're using a table to present information, you need to make it readable from left to right so that it won't be inaccessible to people using screen readers.

Here's an example of a good table:
NamePhoneEmail

Joe Bloggs

0208 123 4567

jbloggs@gmail.com

Ann Other

0208 234 5678

annother@gmail.com

Fred Smith

0208 345 6789

fsmith@gmail.com

Accessibility

1 December 2009 at 03:59
By: Yewtree
Making your website accessible is very important. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are the definitive guide to making your site accessible. There is also a checklist based on the guidelines produced by WebAIM.

Making your site accessible helps everyone, but especially users with visual or hearing impairments, and people with slow web connections.

A useful resource for understanding accessibility issues is Dive into accessibility, which presents a series of things you can do to make your website more accessible, and some case studies of people with disabilities.

There is also a selection of tools you can use to analyse your web pages for accessibility. These make the process very much easier - but they are no substitute for understanding accessibility and learning the basic accessibility guidelines.

Heal your church website

26 November 2009 at 04:00
By: Yewtree
Whilst Heal your church website is written mainly for evangelicals, it still has lots of great articles and information.
You can also feel really really smug that Unitarian websites don't have animated spinning gold crosses, or Jesus Junk. Though we probably do have some inaccessible features like using tables for layout.

When to use PDFs

24 November 2009 at 04:07
By: Yewtree
When not to use PDFs
  • If the information is intended to be read online
  • If another content type could be used instead, i.e. a normal HTML web-page
When to use PDFs
  • When a document needs to be downloaded, read offline or printed
  • If a document is more than 5 pages long. But consider whether it could be broken down into smaller sections and presented as HTML
  • When attaching a document to an email
  • As an additional alternative to online content - e.g. this set of tutorials could also be provided as a single PDF document
  • When formatting needs to be preserved - e.g. a PowerPoint presentation
  • Instead of Microsoft Office documents. But HTML is better most of the time
  • See the definitive list of when to use PDFs by Joe Clark
What else to include with your PDF document
  • An online HTML version or summary of the document
  • A link to download Adobe Acrobat Reader
  • A PDF icon to indicate that it is a PDF document (see an example on the BBC website)
See also

Why "click here" is bad

23 November 2009 at 04:15
By: Yewtree
Why "Click here" is bad linking practice (by Jukka Korpela)
  • "Click here" just looks stupid.
  • "Click here" looks especially stupid when printed on paper.
  • "Click here" is useless in a list of links or when in "links reading" mode, or whenever a link text is considered as isolated from its textual and visual context.
  • "Click here" is bad food for search engines. If you say "For information on Unitarianism, click here", search engines won't know that your document contains a link to a document about Unitarianism. Some important search engines use the link text in estimating the relevance of a link. Using descriptive link texts thus helps users in finding documents they're interested in, potentially including your document due to a link text with some key word.
  • There's usually a fairly simple way to do things better. Instead of the text "For information on Unitarianism, click here", you could simply type "About Unitarianism".
  • "Click here" is device-dependent. There are several ways to follow a link, with or without a mouse. Users probably recognize what you mean, but you are still conveying the message that you think in a device-dependent way.

Describing links correctly

Bad Good
  • Click here for information about Unitarianism
  • You can access information on Unitarianism by clicking here
  • More information on Unitarianism is here
  • More information on Unitarianism is available by following this link
  • More information on Unitarianism is available by following this link
  • Follow this link for more information on Unitarianism
  • www.unitarian.org.uk/
  • To book a place on this course click here
  • About Unitarianism
  • More information about Unitarianism
  • Find out more about Unitarianism
  • There have been a lot of news items about Unitarianism recently
  • Book a place on this course

Standing, Rolling, Dancing, Singing, Praying, Preaching, Acting on the Side of Love

29 June 2016 at 13:03
At our the preceding Ministry Days preceding the UU General Assembly, ableist language was used in worship to the extent that UUMA Board Member Josh Pawelek issued this response:

Clearly there is a problem with ableism in our public presentation. Public statements, music, stories and metaphors that perpetuate ableism have been hurtful to colleagues. As with any oppression, this ableism likely runs deeper than our public presentation. I remain grateful to all those who are willing to call it to our attention, and I am deeply sorry that such calling is still necessary. (The full response is here.)
The most prominent example of ableist language in our movement, however, is our social justice arm: Standing on the Side of Love.  And before you say, "It's just a metaphor," I invite you to watch this and read this by UU minister Theresa Soto.  The point here is not to convince you that ableist metaphors are a problem.  The point is that we often think, even if it is ableist, "Standing on the Side of Love" is a done deal and it would be too hard to change it.  I'd like to offer a different possibility.  I think we need to change this, and it's possible to change this.  The important part of the "Standing on the Side of Love" isn't the "Standing," it's that we're acting "on the Side of Love." 

Step 1: Start including our non-standing bodies in the message.  Without changing the name officially, widen the images and merchandise.  Start by offering "I Roll on the Side of Love" or "Rolling on the Side of Love" or "Sitting on the Side of Love" t-shirts, bumper stickers, and other items. Make it easy for people to get these items -- don't make them make their own.  Start making images that you share on your webpage with these words more and more frequently. 

Step 2: Offer more and more words as options -- we can dance, pray, sing, and act in lots of ways "on the Side of Love."  Start using all sorts of words more and more frequently until "standing" is just one word among many, used no more frequently than the others.  Do this on merchandise and images in particular.  Maybe ministers would like t-shirts that say "Preaching on the Side of Love" or "Serving on the Side of Love."  Maybe DREs would like "Teaching on the Side of Love" or "Growing on the Side of Love" or other ideas. 

Step 3: Drop "Standing" as the title of the organization in favor of "On the Side of Love" or "The Side of Love."  Start by using the shortened version on images and merchandise where no one verb will do.  Then as people get used to the new name, change URLs and official name and usage of the organization. 

I think it's time for us to recognize that while it's been a great campaign and done some really neat things, the title is ableist, and that is problematic.  Let's fix it, folks.  We're better than just throwing up our hands and saying, "Oh well." 

Walking Alongside: Remembering a Friend

30 August 2015 at 00:29
My friend the Rev. Laurie Thomas passed away this month. As I've been thinking about her and our times together, one memory that sticks out for a number of reasons is the time we traveled to Boston together for a weekend. I asked Laurie's permission, which she granted, to write up the experience as a blog post, but for some unknown reason I never did.

We encountered in the course of a weekend so many little, and big, accessibility issues and issues of injustice or prejudice, that my head was spinning. I was angry--furious--at the encounters. Laurie just shook her head at me. This was everyday life for her, and not out of the ordinary at all. Besides, she explained, she didn't have the luxury of being angry. If you're angry, people won't want to help you, and in some of these situations she might require help of people who don't know her. "Nobody likes the angry gimp," she said to me.

The first instance we encountered was before we even left Detroit. We were at the airport and decided to get some lunch before the flight left. We went over to the nearest restaurant to our gate, and the hostess looked at us and said -- to me -- "She can't bring that in here." I looked at the hostess incredulously. "What do you mean she can't bring it in here? That's ridiculous. She doesn't get out of that. It's like a wheelchair. You have to let her in here with it." Laurie just looked at me in amusement. The hostess backed down as I pointed out a table by the door that we could easily get to and from.

There were other small issues as we boarded and exited the plane. When we got off the plane, they had managed to switch some switch such that her scooter wouldn't work. They wanted to transfer her to a wheelchair, but Laurie wasn't having that. Eventually we got the scooter, and went out get our transportation to the hotel.

We were headed to stay at Eliot & Pickett House, the B&B that was then owned by the UUA. It was right off the subway line, but the subway stop there is not accessible, so that wasn't an option. The bus system will send buses that can accommodate wheelchairs and scooters, but apparently you have to have a special card with them, which as a non-resident, Laurie did not. The UUA had phoned around for us, and determined that a cab was the best way to go. They were assured that there were cabs that could handle the scooter, and that all we needed to do was go to the cab stand and tell them we needed an accessible cab.
So off we went, and they promptly ordered us an accessible cab. Well, accessible it was not. The back was too small to fit the scooter in. No problem, they said, we'll order a larger one. The next one came. This could handle the scooter, but not with Laurie on it. The scooter would need to be forced into the back. And it was a van, so a higher seat to get up into, which Laurie couldn't easily transfer into. In fact, she couldn't get into it at all. So they sent it off. And while we were waiting for a third cab to come, the cab stand manager got a good idea. He suggested we call two cabs -- one that the scooter would fit into, and one that Laurie would be able to transfer into. I would then ride with the scooter, to make sure it got there okay. We agreed that if the third cab didn't accommodate her, that this is what we would need to do. And so it was. We departed with me with the scooter, and Laurie in a second cab. The only problem then was that the second cab got lost trying to find Eliot & Pickett House. I sat outside on Laurie's scooter while the minutes ticked away, worrying about her. At last she arrived. The cab driver, having driven in circles, charged her outrageously. So we were there at last, having only spent triple what a cab ride should have been.

Eliot & Pickett House has a ramp that looks like an after-thought and takes you in a side door around the capitol side of the building. But the ramp was no obstacle, and the staff was prompt and friendly with help. I can't say enough nice things about the staff at Eliot & Pickett, in fact. The best thing about the trip was that Eliot & Pickett House was completely accessible for everywhere Laurie needed to go to. I could barely fit into the amazingly small elevator to get to my room, but the room Laurie stayed in was well-appointed for one on wheels. "It's the legacy of Helen Bishop," Laurie told me. Helen Bishop was the former District Executive of the Central MidWest District, and, indeed, responsible for many a church's accessibility improvements, as they struggled with making themselves a building their own DE could enter. As for Eliot & Picket House, its only problem was a lift that was required to get to one part of the building that the staff had forgotten how to work, or had to find the key for. But Segree Bowen quickly solved it, and showed us, and so we could move around the building freely.

Once we were settled in, it was time to find dinner. There are a number of restaurants within walking distance of the UUA, and obviously we didn't want to go anywhere that would require transportation, so we set off down the street. Some of the crosswalks in the area of Beacon Hill aren't ramped, surprisingly. Many of the buildings in the area had small steps at the threshold, making it difficult for the scooter, but the third restaurant we came to finally had a flat entrance, and so we ate there. It was a bit pricey, but perhaps everything was around there. At least the food was good. We ate there again the next day, grateful for a place we could enter and exit easily.

The next day, we went to visit the UUA. This visit is why I didn't shed a tear when the UUA moved to a new building. Because after this experience, it was clear to me that they needed a better building. It's a short flight of stairs to get into 25 Beacon from the front door. Wheelchairs have to go in through a narrow alley around the corner of the block. I went in the front door while Laurie went in the alley. This way I could alert the receptionist that someone was coming in that way. And so I did. I went in and told the woman at the front desk that I had a friend who would be coming in that way, and asked her to please help make sure that she got in successfully. I sat down and waited. And waited. Finally, I asked the receptionist, "Do you see her? Is she there yet?" The receptionist said, "Oh yes, she's been there. It looks like she's having trouble with the gate." And then didn't move. "Um, is there something we can do?" The receptionist said, "Oh yes, you can go let her in." "Um... I have no idea how to get there?" Finally, the receptionist got up, showed me through the building to a not-very-obvious side exit, which I think was through a side room to my memory, where there, indeed, Laurie was waiting on the opposite side of a closed gate. The gate had no call button or push button to open it or alert someone -- the call button was on the other side of the gate when you got to the building. Had I not been advocating for her, it felt like the receptionist might have been happy to watch her sit there all day. It was not a warm welcome to our religious headquarters.

And so we came into the UUA's barely-accessible building. We looked around the bookshop, which had barely enough space to maneuver. Parts of the building are inaccessible, so we didn't stray far inside, just meeting with the people we had come to see. And then we left by the narrow alley, off to lunch at the accessible restaurant.

Returning to the airport, we knew, would be a challenge. So we carved out much of our day for the return trip, anxious not to miss our flights. We decided to call a cab to get us about four hours before the flight would take off. We figured one hour to get to the airport, one hour to get to our gate, and two hours for hassle. The UUA helped again by calling ahead and finding a cab company that assured us they could handle a cab with the dimensions Laurie specified to them. The cab came. It was too small. We had that cab driver radio back to his headquarters, and they sent out a second cab. It arrived. It was too small. I think we did that again, and then it was the third cab driver that we then said to him that we would do what we did before, with taking two cabs. He wasn't happy about waiting around for us for a fourth cab to come, but by now time was ticking. Eventually he hailed down another cab from another cab company that was passing by on the small little street Eliot & Pickett is on. And off we went with our two cabs to the airport. I tipped him extra for the hassle, because he helped out a great deal, and lifting the scooter in and out of the cab alone is a struggle. And unlike last time, this cab driver was good about sticking with the other guy so that Laurie could get right on her scooter when we got to the airport. And we got to our flight barely on time. Two hours of hassle, indeed.

These are just some of the struggles I watched Laurie face while we were traveling together. There seemed to be a million little hassles and problems we encountered at every turn. It took a team of support between me and the UUA to make the trip possible. And throughout it, Laurie met the obstacles cheerfully, with good humor. It was me getting angrier, more frustrated, and irritable with every encounter. But this wasn't uncommon for her. She lived with these injustices and obstacles all the time. I only had to handle them for a weekend.

A Witness on Wheels: General Assembly Misses the Mark

12 September 2014 at 18:36
I wrote the following piece right after General Assembly this year, but left it unpublished for a few months to reflect on it.  Reading the UU World piece on "Fired Up: General Assembly Energized Unitarian Universalists with New Models of Ministry and Outreach" fired me up to finally publish it. 

At General Assembly this year, I was using a scooter. It’s not the first time I’ve been on wheels – I was using a wheel chair for a semester in college, due to broken bones. As for scooters, I’ve been using them there for the last several years, because it helps me with pain management. This year, newly diagnosed with various foot and ankle problems, it was more of a necessity than ever. As someone who is usually about on legs rather than wheels, every time I’ve been in this situation I’ve learned a lot. And I’m aware enough at this point to know there is still a lot more that I’m not aware of about how people on wheels experience the world.

This General Assembly was the most difficult one I’ve experienced in terms of accessibility. The problems included the facility, the planning, and even the theology. But one event stands out as the most painful for me because it went beyond facility and planning problems and became an event where the participation of other GA attendees made the situation worse and worse.

This year at GA, the big witness event was Providence’s “Waterfire.” The plan was for everyone to gather for worship, and then process to the Waterfire location, a couple of blocks away. I knew enough about how difficult the witness events on wheels can be to check in with the accessibility table, where they gave me a map of where was accessible and where was not, and told me the plan was for all the scooters and wheelchairs to exit worship first, directly behind Peter Morales and some other dignitaries and people on stage, and for everybody else to wait and let those on wheels go first. This sounded workable, so I decided to go.

At the “Dunk” – the Dunkin’ Donuts Center where worship was held – there were only two elevators that we had access to. While the lower level is at ground level, the main entrance is up a huge flight of stairs to the second level. With the dozens of scooters and wheelchairs in use at GA, this can cause quite a backlog when everyone tries to exit the lower level at once. We can stay on the upper level, but there’s a limited number of spots (I got the very last one for Sunday worship), and if you wish to participate in plenary (now called “General Session”), you need to go to the lower level to reach the microphones. After opening worship, they held everybody in for a few songs so the people on scooters and wheelchairs could exit first. Of course, some people had exited at the same time anyway, making the request moot, but then people were waiting for elevators for nearly an hour before the last ones were out. It was a nice gesture, but completely inadequate to the problem, to sing an extra few songs so that we could exit before the throng.

For the Waterfire event, therefore, they had planned another exit. We were to follow our President (along with our family or companions) out the zamboni entrance into the alley and then zip around to the front, which we did. That part went smoothly. I was about three scooters behind Pres. Morales, and the chaplains were keeping pace with me for a while, and then moved ahead and joined the people on foot at the front, as the scooters spread themselves out a bit, to get onto the single-file sidewalk, and give ourselves enough space between each scooter or wheelchair to see terrain and obstacles, and to stop if we needed to stop suddenly. The scooters have no breaks.

When we got to the front, some of the gathered UUs had filled up the sidewalk. We had to carve a path through, following President Morales, but the walkers who were escorting us called out for people to move to let us through, and most did. A few inserted themselves into the procession, taking up our spaces that let us see the uneven sidewalks and the curbs. We navigated through the crowd at the front of the Dunk, and got to the next curb. The crowd behind us started walking.

As we processed up the next block, dozens of UUs started walking around us toward the front of the procession. Our walking companions called out to them to tell them they were requested to let the scooters go first. Most ignored the calls to let us do so. As they would get in front of a set of scooters, they would start filling in the gap we were leaving so that we could see terrain and curbs. We got pushed farther and farther back.

On the next block, a steady stream of UUs started to pass me on the curb. We were held up by the crowd in front of us, having to stick to the sidewalk.  Sticking to the sidewalk, you can only go as fast as the person in front of you.  However, those who wanted to truck on by on the curb could do so easily and get up to the front. It’s much the same phenomenon of when a lane closes on the highway, and some cars have merged over and are going slow in the one lane that’s open, but other cars zip by on the shoulder, and then squeeze in the lane farther ahead.  I called out to some folks passing by to try to explain the situation, but was rebuffed or ignored. Admittedly, I may have sounded a bit frustrated by that point.

Why does it matter? Why should the scooters go first? First, it was an act of grace, an act of inclusion, a recognition that we’re often forced to the back of the line, the back of the bus. Second, it’s a necessity for us to have the space to see in front of us. In a crowd, that means you relegate us to the back, or you allow us to go first. The third reason has to do with getting us to a place where we can see the event, as I will get to shortly.

By the time we got to the Waterfire location, I was a full block behind Peter Morales and the chaplains,  despite staying dangerously close to the scooters in front of me. He held the crowd of UUs who had gotten ahead of us at the corner, while the scooters were all directed around to the ramp to get down to the water. The staff at the Waterfire location directed us over to a ramp that was full of UUs watching the water.

They had us wait for a few minutes, and at first were suggesting we park on the ramp. The woman who had been escorting us asked a fellow standing on the ramp railing videotaping if he could move for us. “No, I can’t,” he replied. Then we were told another woman had an idea of how to handle things. She escorted one scooter at a time down the ramp, and over to the area that had been roped off, presumably for us, full of standing people in Standing on the Side of Love t-shirts. She carved a spot out in the people for one scooter at a time, getting us each all the way up to the railing. And so I was carved out a spot by the railing, with clumps of UUs standing on each side of me, and could see absolutely nothing for quite a while, since with the nose of the scooter in front of me I was effectively a row behind, and seated, with people standing virtually in front of me.  I could see whatever happened directly in front, but no more. The women to my left and right, though, were gracious – more gracious than I, muttering under my breath – in helping me to eventually see when they understood the nature of the problem, and, of course, it was crowded and they wanted to see, as well. Another woman on a scooter told me later that she had one couple between her and the rail that refused to move to the left or the right, despite there being space to do so, and so she saw next to nothing.

It’s a different feeling of hopelessness for me being on a scooter in a crowd where you’re completely pinned in. On foot, you can always force your way out. On a scooter, I feel trapped, like I couldn’t get out if I wanted to. I remember feeling that way at the social witness event at Tent City at the Phoenix GA. But there, there was a feeling of such goodwill and generosity from my fellow UUs. Our bus chaplain, who is a friend of mine, stuck with me all night. She left her cases of water to distribute by me, and her backpack, so that she would know where they were, and I was her touchstone and she was mine for the evening.  When I needed to move around, the crowd helped. They lined a path and kept it clear. The UUs on duty made sure we were safe, and all was kept orderly. 

Waterfire was the opposite feeling. I felt isolated and abandoned in the midst of a crowd of people Standing on the Side of Love.

After the fires were all lit and some singing had happened, and the crowd thinned a little, it seemed like a good time to leave and try to explore some of the rest of the Waterfire event. My scooter got stuck on the cobblestones, and the friendly crowd of UUs did help me to get started and get out of the space. Trying to explore the rest of Waterfire, however, was a disaster on wheels, but I was on my own with my family and not with anyone from GA at that point – which was part of the problem. My little map was helpful, but getting anywhere on the wheels was nearly impossible. I accidentally took the sidewalk instead of the street at one point, and had to ask about a hundred people to move so I could get down it, as they were still watching from there down to the water. I forced my way miserably down to the love tent, my voice hoarse from asking people to get out of the way, found the tent and got a carnation, and tried to move beyond it to see what the tents beyond were. The crowd was so thick at that point that I couldn’t really maneuver at all, much less really see what was there. My family and I turned around in frustration and headed back to the convention center where I was let in to park my scooter for the night.

In the end, it just really wasn’t an accessible event. I got further than anyone else on wheels I spoke with did, and that wasn’t far, and didn’t encompass most all of the UU-sponsored spots. I think it would be more honest for the GA planners to say, “This big cornerstone event of GA just isn’t accessible,” and then for our gathered assembly to wrestle with the honest emotions of what it means to have a major part of GA that all of us don’t have access to. I think we could learn something from that exercise. What I’m hoping for the future is for the GA attendees to learn and understand why the scooters are being allowed to go first and why it’s not okay to just hop around us. I’m hoping for the GA Planning Committee to learn that choosing a location and events so inaccessible isn’t simply “a necessary trade-off,” it’s an act of oppression. And I’m hoping that for future GAs, we can show real improvement both through stronger planning and through educating our attendees further.

After GA, one of my colleagues posted on Facebook the question of whether we should change the name “Standing on the Side of Love,” because it’s not inclusive of those on wheels. People quickly responded that it’s a metaphor, not to be taken literally. I used to feel that way, too.  After this Standing on the Side of Love event, it felt like in Providence it was meant to be taken literally, after all. We can do better than this as a faith. We can do better than this for social witness. I’m hoping we will, and that I can feel included in "Standing on the Side of Love" again.
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