How Accessibility Challenges Drive Innovation

August 2022 marks a milestone in the history of accessibility. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended in 1998, was passed 24 years ago. On Aug. 7, 1998, amendments to the Rehabilitation Act expanded and strengthened access requirements for electronic and information technology developed, procured, maintained, or used by the federal government.

Today, accessibility is a continuously improving field. Federal agencies strive to make websites and documents fully accessible to all. Section 508 experts help ensure users with vision, hearing, and mobility differences can access, navigate, understand, and interface with all content.

Diverse minds have driven the evolution of accessibility for a long time—and many technologies we take for granted have their origin in these accessibility challenges. Here are a few trailblazers who used machines to improve our lives.

The first working typewriter

Countess Carolina Fantoni, who was blind, inspired the invention of the first working typewriter. The inventor was her brother, Agostino Fantoni, or her friend and suitor, Pellegrino Turri. Documentation suggests that her brother invented the typewriter in 1802, and Signore Turri improved it with his invention of carbon paper in 1808.

The punch-card tabulation machine system

Herman Hollerith, who was neurodivergent and likely dyslexic, invented a punch-card tabulation machine system while he was teaching mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His inspiration came from his previous position with the U.S. Census Bureau, where he had witnessed the painfully slow tabulation of 1880 census data.

Hollerith received the patent for his invention in January 1889 and a contract to process and tabulate 1890 census data. His machine wildly improved its tabulation. With his invention, Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company (TMC) in 1896. TMC was one of five companies that became IBM.

The first commercial electronic mail system

Dr. Vint Cerf, who is hearing impaired, is one of the “fathers of the internet.” He and Bob Kahn developed TCP/IP, the architecture of the internet, in 1973. TCP/IP was implemented on the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) in 1977. It enabled communication between different networks.

By then, Ray Tomlinson had already invented ARPANET electronic mail in 1971, and Cerf was a big fan. He used it often to communicate with his wife, Sigrid, who is deaf. From 1971 to 1989, electronic mail was limited to ARPANET users—the government and academia. Cerf changed that.

In the early ‘80s, he created MCI Mail. This became the first commercial electronic mail service to connect to the internet in 1989. Other electronic mail services quickly followed.

The first screen reader

Dr. Jim Thatcher and Dr. Jesse Wright, who was blind, created the first screen reader in 1986 to support colleagues with low vision at IBM. The IBM Screen Reader was an audio access system for DOS.

It was soon followed by JAWS in 1987, which stands for Job Access With Speech. Engineer turned software programmer Ted Henter, who lost his sight in a car accident, designed the program. He founded Henter-Joyce with partner Bill Joyce, a businessman who was blinded in an industrial accident. Originally developed for DOS, JAWS for Windows was released in 1995. It remains the world’s most used screen reader.

What does the future of assistive technology and accessibility hold? There’s only one direction to go—up.

• In the 2022 WebAIM Million Report, an annual accessibility analysis of the home pages of the top one million websites, 96.8% of home pages had detectable errors when tested by the WAVE web accessibility testing tool.
• Mobile apps have a ways to go as well. For example, in accessibility testing performed by Diamond, screen readers were able to help people use the core functions of 80% of leading free apps in Apple’s App Store, compared with 10% of paid ones.
• The voice control functions for browsers continue to evolve along with many other speech-to-text apps, with free controls built into Chrome and Firefox.

As technology evolves, so will accessibility requirements. Section 508 is just one step in a long process of innovation that truly supports all users and improves their lives.