#accessibility experts

[accessiblemindstech]

Accessibility is not a privilege but a right remarked Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. Do You Love Our Reads Then Click Here:https://rb.gy/iej903 Click Here To Visit:https://rb.gy/uoyxqq

[sdettechnologies]

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits discrimination based on disability, and this extends to the digital realm. But this is where digital accessibility services come in to play a crucial role in ensuring digital accessibility. Click Here: https://rb.gy/lzuuh5

[adasitecompliance]

Accessibility Experts

Learn how to create inclusive and compliant PDF documents with our ultimate guide on PDF accessibility best practices!

[uncanny-tranny]

You know how some clay artists make a little kiln god to protect their pottery? I need to crochet a little yarn god to make sure my projects always have good omens near them because I think I need that 😭😨

[bananapudding752]

Throwback to these tadpoles I found, having a feast. I think this was like 2021 ish(?), but I need some pretty springtime photos to get me through the Chicago winter. It’s not gonna be as cold as usual which is good yet bad (yes I am aware that they should not be eating bread, I was not the one that fed it to them, but I didn’t know if it was safe to fish it out as they would be clamped on still.)

[repurposedmeatlocker]

Ok, so I've been watching Beavis and Butt-Head lately (I was born in 2001 with a mom who hated it. Give me a break), and while watching it with friends last night there was a part that I can't stop thinking about.

Basically, while watching a music video, Butt-Head exclaims something like: "I wish I could watch this over and over and over again." My gut reaction was "don't they have a VCR?" but then it dawned on me: "No! Of course they wouldn't have a VCR. What am I thinking!" For context, when I was growing up in the early 2000's, one of the cheapest and most cost effective ways of owning video content was by buying VHS' second-hand. I had a huge collection of movies growing up which my parents bought through a local re-seller. Others I would borrow from the library. A majority of homes had them as a part of their setup, often in tandem with a DVD player. This was the default I was familiar with for years before VHS fell completely from relevance. Meanwhile, this show came out in the early 90s and centers on what are clearly two low-income boys. Of course a VCR wouldn't be something just naturally available. You had to just hope something good would pop up on TV or in a movie theatre. If you're lucky you'll catch something you like getting replayed. I find this "dated" little throwaway dialogue so interesting because of the specific image it paints of the decade it came out. The limited accessibility of information and media, and how a large portion of it centered around the home television set. How exciting and invigorating it was seeing anything playing on there, because there was no telling when you will get an opportunity to see it again. I don't know. Maybe that is a little dramatic (especially for any one reading this who actually lived through the 90s), but it resonated with me a bit. It got me thinking about not only how much has changed in media-consumption, but how expansive and fast accessibility is now. How the television has diminished in relevance as a medium, and how little people seem to care about what they are watching.

[deservedgrace]

they should invent a doctor that is competent and listens to patients

[mariocki]

Honor Blackman guest stars as art expert Syd Lewis in Saber of London: Deep in the Heart of Chelsea (1.3, NBC, 1957)

[daisywords]

where's my meandering, character-focused, meticulously worldbuilt fantasy novel about a character being exiled from their homeland and forced to start a completely new life in a very foreign land. would love to write it but I have too many other things in line. I deserve to read it though

[coochiequeens]

Yes it's form a conservative source. But it's one of the few articles that doesn't focus on reproductive purchasers who felt entitled to a child.

by Emma Waters, @EMLWATERS

Olivia Maurel was 30 years old when an ancestry DNA test confirmed what she had known all along: she is the product of a costly commercial surrogacy contract. In Olivia’s case, the woman that her parents paid to gestate and birth Olivia is also her biological mother. 

In a recent article with Daily Mail, Olivia shared how “becoming a parent myself — entirely naturally, in my mid-20s — has only crystallized my view. The sacred bond between mother and baby is, I feel, something that should never be tampered with.” After going viral for her testimony before the parliament of the Czech Republic, Olivia now campaigns for the universal abolition of surrogacy. 

In the United States, only three states prohibit or do not enforce commercial surrogacy contracts. One of the states, Michigan, is poised to overturn their ban on surrogacy-for-pay through a nine-bill “Access to Fertility Healthcare Package.” Legislators are tying their efforts to the national conversation on in vitro fertilization in hopes of garnering additional support. I detail the concerns with this legislation in detail here, but suffice it to say it undermines motherhood by reducing the intimate relationship between a woman and the child she carries to a highly-lucrative rental agreement. 

Several well-respected researchers and pundits claim that surrogacy does not harm children. Yet we know very little about its long-term impact on a child’s psychological well-being. 

Most of those who assert that surrogacy is psychologically harmless rely on a longitudinal study by Susan Golombok, Professor Emerita of Family Research, and former Director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of We Are Family (2020), a synthesis of 40 years of research on non-traditional family structures—same-sex, single parent by choice, and the use of all forms of assisted reproductive technology, including third-party conception. She concludes that such arrangements pose no additional harm and can benefit children.

Professor Golombok’s “Families Created Through Surrogacy” study began in 2003 and assessed parental and child psychological adjustment at ages 1, 2, 3, 7, 10, and 14. The impact of this single longitudinal study on both public opinion and policy cannot be overstated. To date, it is the only study that specifically examines the surrogate-born child’s psychological adjustment, as well as the only study to do so over an extended period. It is also the only research on child psychological well-being that policymakers in New York used to argue for the legalization of commercial surrogacy. 

Professor Golombok’s sample of surrogacy families comes from the General Register Office of the United Kingdom for National Statistics (ONS) and from the UK’s “Childlessness Overcome Through Surrogacy” (COTS) agency. The original sample included 42 surrogate-born children but declined to a mere 28 children by age 14. The study relied on a group of families formed through egg donation and children born of natural conception to serve as the comparison groups. 

With such a small sample size, and some families participating inconsistently year-to-year, the study itself runs the risk of selection bias and non-representative outcomes. The study lumps both children born through gestational surrogacy and traditional surrogacy together, too. This means some surrogates are both the genetic mother and the child's gestational mother. 

Additionally, only altruistic surrogacy is legal in the UK, so these arrangements do not involve surrogates who legally receive an additional sum of money, beyond generous reimbursements. For context, surrogacy-for-pay brings in an additional $25,000 to $70,000 in the United States, which may affect how a child views his or her conception, gestation, and birth. 

In each study, the scholars rely on the mother’s own assessment of the child’s well-being. It is not until age 14 when scholars begin to directly ask children questions to assess their self-esteem.

Overall, Professor Golombok concludes that children born from surrogacy agreements of any sort do as well, if not better, psychologically than their natural-born peers. 

For ages 1, 2, and 3, Professor Golombok finds that parents in surrogacy families showed “greater warmth and attachment-related behavior” than natural-conception parents. One explanation for this, as Professor Golombok’s notes, is that “parents of children born in this way [may] make a greater attempt than parents of naturally conceived children to present their families in the best possible light.” Such a bias seems likely, given that parents may feel the subconscious desire to justify their uncommon path to parenthood. 

By age 7, both surrogate-born children and donor-conceived children in the control group were doing noticeably worse than their natural-born counterparts. This is the point when many children learned of their biological or gestational origins. The scholars note that this corresponds with adoption literature as the period in a child’s life when they begin to comprehend the loss of one or both biological parents. What goes unnoted, however, is that unlike adoption, surrogacy is the intentional creation of a child for the express purpose of removing the child from his or her gestational and/or biological parent(s). 

Beginning at age 10, scholars report that the child’s psychological adjustment returns to a relatively normal state compared to the natural-born children, but the study itself reports little data compared to previous papers. By age 14, when the study concludes, the remaining 28 children seem to fare about the same as natural-born children, despite slightly more psychological problems reported. 

Despite these methodological limitations, Professor Golombok’s data from this longitudinal study remains the basis of child psychological adjustment research on surrogacy. Examples of this may be found in prominent pieces such as Vanessa Brown Calder's review of surrogacy at the Cato Institute or Cremieux Recueil's widely shared Substack with Aporia Magazine. Their conclusions that surrogacy confers “no harm” to the psychological well-being of the child are premature, to say the least.

In Calder’s article, she cites three studies in her discussion on the psychological well-being of surrogate-born children. A quick review of each study shows that these authors rely solely on Professor Golombok’s longitudinal study data to draw their conclusions. 

In Recueil’s Substack, "Surrogacy: Looking for Harm," he primarily relies on Golombok’s work to claim that “psychological harm appears to be minimal.” Again, this statement is premature and formed on limited data primarily from her longitudinal study. The other five citations in the “Psychological Outcomes for Kids” section tell us little about the psychological well-being of surrogate-born children. 

Recueil twice cites “Are the Children Alright? A Systematic Review of Psychological Adjustment of Children Conceived by Assisted Reproductive Technologies,” from 2022. Of the 11 studies that examine the intersection between surrogacy and child psychological outcomes, they fall into three categories: 

the longitudinal study by Professor Golombok 

child outcomes compared with other children born from assisted reproductive technology, not compared with natural-born children 

studies that examine the impact of non-traditional parenting types, such as lesbian mothers or gay fathers, on the well-being of the child. The impact of surrogacy is not directly assessed; it is simply mentioned as a requirement for male-to-male family formation. Of these three categories, the only studies that directly address the claims that Recueil makes are the research of Professor Golombok, which he already cited before these additional studies. 

Hence, the widespread claim that surrogacy does not harm the psychological well-being of children primarily relies on a single longitudinal study of 42-to-28 surrogate-born children by the intended mother’s own assessment. That’s it. 

This isn’t to say we should discard Professor Golombok’s study. But honest scholars and lawmakers should be far more modest in claiming that surrogacy does not harm the psychological well-being of children. 

The most accurate conclusion regarding the psychological adjustment of surrogate-born children is that we do not have enough data to draw a conclusion either way, especially not in favor of surrogacy itself. When the well-being of children is at stake, lawmakers and researchers should employ the utmost scrutiny before advocating for any form of childbearing. 

Children rightly desire to please their parents, and there are few conversations more complicated than questioning the method one’s parents chose to bring one into the world. There is reason to believe that many surrogate-born children will not have the emotional or mental maturity to understand their conception and gestation until they are much older.

There is a huge difference between no harm and no known harm. Regardless of one’s stance on surrogacy, we should be able to agree that we need more data and reporting requirements to enable researchers to assess the impact of surrogacy contracts on the well-being of children. In my view, a single six-part longitudinal study does not justify this practice. 

Emma Waters is a Senior Research Associate for the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion and Family at The Heritage Foundation.

[accessiblemindstech]

Accessibility is not just a trend but it’s a fundamental necessity in today’s digital era. With over 1.3 billion people worldwide living with some form of disability, ensuring that your website is accessible to all users is both a moral and business imperative. Do You Love Our Reads Then Click Here:https://rb.gy/vwu7qb Click Here To Visit:https://rb.gy/uoyxqq

[saviourkingslut]

not to be about opera again but to be about opera again. as an art form it has the reputation of being super stuffy and something for snobs who don't know how to have fun only but honestly this was one of, perhaps even THE main theatrical entertainment for centuries. i wish people knew how hard these things can go and how engaging they can be. like characters kill and die and fight wars and (almost) commit human sacrifice left and right. characters fall in love they mourn they're ecstatic they cry they're furious it's an extremely dramatic and emotional art form! and i understand that opera does not appear approachable bc of the general conventions of the art form but i promise old works can be fun and engaging if you go watch them with some preparation beforehand (reading the libretto helps) - not to mention not all operas are old bc there are so many modern operas which engage with topical events! also the music slaps.

[sdettechnologies]

“Unlocking digital doors for everyone leads to inclusive growth and unmatched opportunities.” The significance of an inclusive online presence cannot be overstated in today’s competitive digital landscape. As e-commerce continues to dominate, ensuring that your website is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities, is not just a legal obligation but a strategic business advantage. Accessibility testing services play a pivotal role in this regard, helping businesses optimize their websites to cater to a broader audience, thereby driving growth and enhancing customer loyalty. Click Here: https://rb.gy/hutkjh

[adasitecompliance]

Create Accessible PDFs

The Ultimate Guide To PDF Accessibility: How To Make Your Documents Inclusive And Compliant

In today’s digital age, Portable Document Format (PDF) files have become an integral part of our information-sharing process. Whether educational materials, corporate reports, or government publications, PDF files with Accessibility maintain the original formatting and allow users to access information consistently across various devices. However, for PDFs to be truly effective, they must be accessible to all, including those with disabilities. Besides, as about 61 million adult Americans have some disability, you risk their not being able to access the ADA-compliant PDFs and content you create. And it’s not just those with visual impairments that are affected. Even people with a mobile or hearing disability may face problems accessing your web content or PDF.

This is why the ADA and Section 508 focus on making life for those people with disabilities much easier. They require that places of accommodation be accessible to users with disabilities. As PDFs are commonly used on the web, they also have to comply with these laws based on the criteria set by the WCAG. While web compliance is important, creating accessible web content can be challenging. PDFs are especially difficult to manage as they are complex files inaccessible out of the box. It’s only experts who know WCAG and ADA standards well who can take care of the task. We have provided some tips about PDF accessibility features in this article. However, don’t worry if the information overwhelms you. We at ADA Site Compliance can help if you don’t know how to ensure your website or PDF is accessible. Our team of accessibility experts will not only check your PDFs and website content for accessibility but also constantly monitor and update your website and PDFs based on the latest accessibility updates.

Overview of Portable Document Format (PDF)

PDFs, developed by Adobe, have transformed how we share electronic documents. The format was created to maintain document integrity while allowing easy sharing. PDFs are based on an image model that differs from the typical PostScript language commonly used. It is to improve interaction and accessibility that PDFs are structured differently.

What makes an accessible PDF?

As the name suggests, an accessible PDF is a PDF anyone with any disability can easily read and navigate through. And it can mean different things for users with different disabilities. For example, for those with visual impairments, an accessible PDF can mean any of these three. It can mean:

They can easily zoom into the texts if need be

The content has high contrast, making it easy to read

They can easily read the PDF using the help of screen readers

In the case of users with physical disabilities, it means ensuring users can easily navigate through the entire document with the help of a keyboard. These readers find managing a mouse for navigation difficult, so being able to use a keyboard is a welcome move for them. For users with hearing impairments, creating an accessible PDF will mean having captioned audio and video content. In short, the main aim of creating web-compliant PDFs is to provide them with an alternative means of accessing content. Most PDFs have some of these options as default, like zooming and keyboard navigation. However, it doesn’t mean that these PDFs are necessarily accessible. They can, however, be made accessible just by implementing some additional steps.

Characteristics of Accessible PDF Files

Accessible PDFs are a must to ensure inclusivity. Most importantly, they feature searchable text, which, in the process, makes content available to screen readers. Besides, unlike scanned images of text, accessible PDFs can be selected, copied, and edited. This can prove helpful to everyone requiring more clarity about the PDF. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology also plays a crucial role in making content searchable and thus accessible to all.

Navigating PDF Accessibility

Ensuring that your PDF documents are fully accessible can be a complex task, but it’s an essential one. This is especially required with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) having set the standards for digital accessibility. These guidelines encompass various aspects, including alternative text alternatives, navigation, and readability. Adhering to these guidelines is crucial to creating PDFs that are both legally compliant and user-friendly. Besides, ensuring that your website and the content you provide, including PDFs, are accessible is not just a legal obligation; it’s a moral imperative. By embracing accessibility, you not only comply with the law but also open doors for a more inclusive and diverse audience.

Accessible PDFs: A Key to Digital Inclusion

The importance of accessible PDFs cannot be overstated. They open up a world of information and opportunities for individuals with disabilities. Accessible PDFs offer text-to-speech capabilities, allowing screen readers to convey the content to visually impaired users. Moreover, they allow users to navigate the document efficiently, providing screen reader users with a seamless reading experience. When your documents are accessible, you broaden your reach and cater to a broader audience. This inclusivity can increase website traffic and customer engagement, benefiting your business or organization.

How to Remediate an Inaccessible PDF?

Making an inaccessible PDF accessible isn’t about perfection; it’s about improving and providing access for all. Whether you have the original source document or just a PDF, here is a rundown of the best ways to enhance existing PDF documents for accessibility with the help of the right tools and processes. Contact ADA Siite Compliance today so we can make ALL your PDF documents fully accessible.

1. Determining the Accessibility Path for Each PDF Document

As PDFs can be generated in various ways, there is no cookie-cutter accessibility solution. Each document has and needs a unique solution.  The good news is there are some tools like Adobe Acrobat Pro with multiple accessibility features, making the remediation process more manageable.

2. Starting with an Accessible Document

The journey to accessible PDFs begins with the source document. Whenever possible, it is always better to start the remediation process with the document title in native file formats. The reason is that any and all documents created in Word or desktop publishing software can be later easily exported as PDFs. This is a useful feature as it allows for adding additional text, headings, data table structures, other document structure tags, language definitions, and more.

3. Preventing Security Settings from Interfering with Screen Readers

Ensuring that screen readers can navigate your PDFs smoothly is an important step in remediating inaccessible PDFs in the form fields in the proper PDF format. It is always better to avoid copying, printing, extracting comments, or editing PDFs. The reason is that these actions can hinder accessibility. There are tools that can help you ensure that access permissions do not interfere with screen reading.

How to Make a PDF Compliant with Accessibility?

Achieving document accessibility in your PDFs is essential. It ensures that users with difficulties can at least use the help of assistive technologies like screen readers to interpret your whole document structure’s structure correctly. Besides, as mentioned earlier, compliance with ADA standards helps make your digital landscape more inclusive to reach out to more of your target audience and, in the process, generate more web traffic.

How do you make accessible PDF documents?

There are a few optimal practices to adhere to within reading order to make a PDF accessible documents, and they are to:

Make things simple; in other words, use simple language in the PDF

Ensure you include as many relevant headings and subheadings as possible

Including meaningful alt-text for all the images and graphics you have in your PDF

Ensuring the text in the PDF is not only readable but has sufficient contrast with the background for better readability

Not depending much on colors to convey information as it can be intimidating to users with color blindness

Always make more use of accessible tables and lists in PDF documents

Adding bookmarks where possible

Using a catchy and interesting title, and of course, specifying the language used in the PDF

Correctly tagging the different elements

Setting titles and metadata as and where appropriate

Adding captions to videos and other non-text content accessible

It is undoubtedly time-consuming to create accessible PDFs. However, the end result of a compliant, accessible PDF file, which increases your reach and reduces the chances of facing a legal lawsuit, makes the item invested well worth it. Besides, you can always use the help of PDF accessibility checkers for PDF document audits and verifications as per the latest accessibility standards. And if that’s too cumbersome, you can always have the experts take care of your PDF compliance while you focus on what you do the best!

Web Accessibility Provider

Ensuring web compliance is a multifaceted endeavor. It may seem to take lots of time and be confusing to many. It’s where web accessibility providers, like ADA Site Compliance, play a crucial role in ensuring your website and PDFs meet ADA standards. We have a team of accessibility experts who can help make web compliance so much easier and less time-consuming for you. With our expertise, we can ensure your site and all your PDFs are easily accessible to all, including individuals with disabilities.

In conclusion, the world of PDF accessibility and web compliance is multifaceted, but it’s a journey worth embarking on. By ensuring that your PDFs are accessible, you not only meet legal standards but also contribute to a more inclusive and diverse digital landscape. Together, we can make the Internet a place where everyone can access information and opportunities. Contact ADA Site Compliance for all your website accessibility needs today!

[lesbiancolumbo]

Hello hello! Just wanted to say I spotted the James Naremore minibook analyzing "Sweet Smell of Success" at the BFI shop last week and obviously had to get it because you have indoctrinated me into having this movie on permanent standby in my brain (many thanks for this). Have you read it before?

i haven’t read in depth any of naremore’s scholarship or listened to his commentary track - i’ve skimmed it enough to get the crux of his interpretations. to be fully honest, i don’t engage with most scholarship surrounding the film these days. my opinion/analysis is pretty fully formed by this point and unwavering. but i think it’s a good document to have for people who are interested!