The U.S. Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (Access Board) is required by the Act to develop guidelines for accessibility of telecommunications and to review and update the guidelines periodically. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires that "providers of telecommunications services" and "manufacturers of telecommunications equipment and customer premises equipment" make their services and products accessible to and usable by people with disabilities when it is "readily achievable" to do so. If it isn't readily achievable to make telecommunications products and services accessible, then the are required to make those products and services compatible with "existing peripheral devices and specialized customer premises equipment, if readily achievable."
The Access Board's Market Monitoring Report on Accessible Telecommunications has just been released. the report reviews the access features of 15 categories of telecommunications devices, such as pagers, cell phones, modems, and fax machines. A searchable database is also available on this web site, so that you can search for devices with specific features.
The report is extremely detailed, so I will summarize the most interesting findings here. The 1017 individuals with disabilities surveyed cited both positive and negative aspects of using communication technologies
People with disabilities were found to be either "very" (29%) or "fairly" (37%) satisfied with the telecommunications they used. However, several indicated that they would like to use wireless telephones, modems, voice mail and audiotext/IV, cordless telephones, and business telephones, but they considered them inaccessible. Further analysis showed that some people with a specific disability considered certain telecommunication devices accessible, while other people with the same disability did not considered them.
Several of the respondents demonstrated misunderstanding of the accessibility of cordless and wireless phones for people who use hearing aids and the accessibility of email for people with blindness. The report noted: "It is important to understand that for most consumers who gave us comments on modems, 'modem' was largely a stand-in for 'email and web browsing.' Their subsequent comments were about these applications, not the ease or difficulty of installing the modem."
This suggests the need for individuals with disabilities to receive more accurate information concerning the access features of telecommunication products. The report also noted that salespeople were not helpful in helping people with disabilities select telecommunications devices. Therefore, manufactures need to provide more details about the access features of their products on the packaging, so that people with disabilities and sales people can determine its usefulness.
The most interesting aspect of the report was the comments of individuals with disabilities explaining how they use telecommunication devices. Both individuals with disabilities and those who assist them in finding appropriate assistive technology can learn from the experiences. Here some examples:
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