dankeck

This is a gifted article and temporarily free for you to read.

The hotel moved to dismiss the case, saying that Ms. Laufer had not suffered the sort of direct and concrete injury that gave her standing to sue because she had no intention of visiting. The trial judge agreed.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, reversed, saying the situation was akin to one in a 1982 Supreme Court decision that allowed Black “testers” to sue for race discrimination over being denied access to housing despite not actually looking for a place to live.

SignUp was founded because many young people from the Deaf community find written captions indescriptive, or even absent from media sites.

A 2017 study showed that 80% of children who signed face challenges with reading - making written captions inaccessible.

Via LyraChang@universeodon.com

Quote from Matthew Shifrin, creator of legofortheblind.com:

For blind people LEGO sets act as miniature 3D substitutes for real-life buildings in lieu of two-dimensional photographs. LEGO allows me to see things that are impossible to explore by touch, such as the arches of a Middle Eastern palace or the towers of the Tower Bridge.

I would like to get my instructions out to the blind community. I would like every blind person to be able to download the instructions, buy a set, have a sighted person sort the pieces, and feel on par with a sighted builder.

via @dennisl@mastodon.social

Learn about assistive technology enabling more people to do software development, such as:

• Typing using only the eyes with OptiKey
• Using software without sight with NVDA
• The use of AI tools for coders with dyslexia, cerebral palsy, or trouble communicating

The use of these tools reflects the Social model of disability which says that if a disabled person is prevented from their job because the tools are not accessible, it's not a deficiency with their body; it's a deficiency in their environment.

Via @odbol@vis.social

Great news for users who are fans of FOSS and also are blind, have low vision, have various cognitive disabilities, or otherwise have a critical need for screen reader software.

Via Robert Kingett

In the mid-90s, around the age of eleven, I saw a television show on PBS about old asylums that would do horrifying things to people society deemed insane. It scared me, especially since it didn’t clarify what happened to those same people in modern times.

I asked my mother, who took some time before she answered...

“Well, there’s definitely still improvements to make,” my mom finally said, “but those awful torture-like treatments don’t happen to people with mental health issues anymore.”

While she was right about most things, she was sadly wrong about this.

via @baruch@babka.social

A study in the journal Current Biology predicts that year-round daylight saving time could prevent 36,550 deer deaths, 33 human deaths, 2,054 human injuries and $1.19 billion in collision costs annually.

Her doctor advised her parents to institutionalize her when it was clear that she would never be able to walk. “Institutionalization was the status quo in 1949,” she wrote. “Kids with disabilities were considered a hardship, economically and socially.” When Judy attempted to enter kindergarten, the principal blocked her family from entering the school, labeling her a “fire hazard.”

20 Fonts, 2022 test participants, each font evaluated 16,800 times each over 7,000 study hours.

seeing Times New Roman performing better than any of the fonts recommended for dyslexia casts doubt both on their accessibility claims and also the common belief that serifs are bad news.

One last thing to note is that Helvetica never found itself anywhere near the top 5, which shows 2 things. Users were not clicking on what they see every day, and as it performed particularly badly with both dyslexic and vision impaired participants, maybe as a font we can finally say for certain that it is not fit for any digital environment.

For now, a moon mission runs on the time of the country that is operating the spacecraft. European space officials said an internationally accepted lunar time zone would make it easier for everyone, especially as more countries and even private companies aim for the moon and NASA gets set to send astronauts there.

H/T @makeworld@merveilles.town

Medieval texts, from Islamic medical treatises to Christian books of miracles, reveal surprisingly varied and complex experiences of blindness. But when medieval scholar Jude Seal experienced visual impairment themselves, they gained an even deeper understanding of the lives that they were studying.

H/T @JudeSeal@historians.social