Thursday night on A Cuppa At The Mosens, accessibility, the carrot and the stick

Jonathan and Bonnie Mosen are talking accessibility this week on A Cuppa at the Mosens, Mushroom FM’s live global call-in show looking at issues from a blindness perspective.

Haven’t we come a long way in a short time? The difference that accessible technology has made in our lives over the last 25 years is staggering.

Much of the initial progress was made thanks to enterprising engineers, often working for themselves or running small businesses. They would hack (and we use that term in its original, positive sense) operating systems to give us access via methods that often weren’t officially supported.

Now, the big three tech companies, Microsoft, Google and Apple, include free screen readers in all their products, with Apple having led the charge on this for some time. Back in the 1990s, Microsoft began including officially sanctioned accessibility tools in Windows, with technologies like Active Accessibility. Now, Microsoft are an active champion of accessibility in everything they do.

In other areas of life, books, banking and shopping are easier for us to do than ever.

While we should be grateful for all we’ve gained, we mustn’t let that lull us into complacency about how much is left to do. Too many apps in all the big three stores aren’t accessible, and none of the companies seem to want to enforce accessibility on third-party developers.

So this week, we’re asking for your thoughts on accessibility. If you’re of an age where you can remember a time before this massive technological acceleration, how has all this technology changed your life?

Most important, who is responsible for ensuring we continue to make progress? How big a role do you think disability legislation, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, has played in the progress that has been made to date? Should Apple, Microsoft and Google only allow an app into their respective stores if the app complies with their accessibility guidelines? When is it OK for individuals and organisations to sue as a means of trying to advance the cause, and when should the market be left to its own devices?

To share your experiences and opinions, tune in and call in live to a Cuppa at the Mosens, at 9 PM Eastern US time on Thursday. To find out when that is in your time zone, check the Mushroom FM Schedule page.

You can call in using phone numbers around the world, or via high-quality VOIP call if you use the Chrome or Firefox web browsers.

More details about how to participate are at: http://www.mushroomfm.com/cuppa.

Have an accessible day, and we’ll talk soon.