It’s Thursday, and I have to keep reminding myself of that. I’ve been chronically one day behind all week, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why.
Today is also the third Thursday in May, which means it’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), which aims to raise awareness about the need for digital access and inclusion for the more than one billion people with disabilities and impairments.
Last year was GAAD’s 10th anniversary, so this movement has been around for some time. And yet, accessibility challenges when it comes to accessing online content persist.
If you are NOT disabled, you probably don’t give a second thought to the manner in which content is presented. You just click and go, click and go.
But imagine if you weren’t able to actually use all that information at your fingertips so easily, but you KNEW it was there. How frustrating would that be?
Who are we talking about here? Everyone from those who have vision impairment or are completely blind (requires screen reader capabilities), to those with ADHD, seizure disorders, motor difficulties (makes it hard to navigate the keyboard), cognitive, language, and learning disabilities and more.
The World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has established Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which recommend how to make the internet more accessible.
The 2022 WebAIM Million Report, which assess the accessibility of the top 1,000,000 home pages, detected 50,829,406 distinct accessibility errors – an average of 50.8 errors per page. That’s a lot, but it’s actually ever so slightly better than in 2021 (about 1.1 percent better, to be exact).
Some examples of these errors include low contrast text and missing alternative text for images, among many others.
About about 368 million people of working age around the world have a disability, and many of those individuals want to work. But unemployment rates for this group can be as high as 80 percent in certain countries – more than twice as high than for people without disabilities.
There is a misconception about the accommodations that an employee with a disability requires – namely that all of them are very expensive. Not true.
Oh and for the record, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits employers from discriminating against applicants and employees based on their disabilities, and ALSO requires them to make reasonable accommodations to allow applicants and employees with disabilities to apply for and do their jobs.
It’s worth noting today’s Google Doodle, which is somewhat aligned with the aforementioned day. It honors Stacey Park Milbern, who was a queer, Korean-American disability justice activist, who co-founded the disability justice movement and dedicated her life to advocating for marginalized communities. She would have turned 35 years old today. She died on her 33rd birthday from surgical complications.
So, it’s going to rain today, and it will be kind of cold – only in the mid-60s. And that’s kind of a bummer. But this weekend??? We’re jumping right to August with temperatures in the 90s. THE NINETIES. Saturday AND Sunday, though more rain is likely as the weekend progresses.
Dig out those bathing suits, people.
In the headlines…
North Korea appears to be preparing for a possible intercontinental ballistic missile test within the next 48 to 96 hours, just as President Joe Biden is scheduled to travel to Asia, according to a US official familiar with the latest intelligence assessment.
Biden is expected to arrive in South Korea on Friday and hold talks with his South Korean counterparts over several days before visiting Japan. The White House said Biden was considering a trip to the Demilitarized Zone on the border with North Korea.
The Democrat is headed to South Korea, then Japan on Sunday to hold summits with the leaders of both countries, as well as joining a regional summit of the Quad – a grouping of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – while in Tokyo.
It’s a slightly delayed play for regional influence from an administration that came into office determined to focus on China as the pacing threat to the United States. But the collapse of Afghanistan and a land war in Europe occupied attention over the past year.
Biden dismissed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s opposition to Finland and Sweden joining NATO, telling reporters: “I think we’re gonna be okay.”
The United Nations has warned that the war in Ukraine has helped to stoke a global food crisis that could last years if it goes unchecked, as the World Bank announced an additional $12 billion in funding to mitigate its “devastating effects”.
Russia’s near-total conquest of the city of Mariupol this week renewed concerns that supplies of grains could be further disrupted by the Kremlin’s blockade of Ukraine’s southern ports, a crucial link for exports from one of the world’s biggest suppliers.
Russia said another 694 Ukrainian troops “surrendered” at Mariupol’s besieged Azovstal steel plant in the past day, bringing the total close to 1,000 this week, in a fresh sign the months-long battle for control of the territory is coming to an end.
Google has moved the bulk of its employees out of Russia, according to people familiar with the matter, ending the company’s commercial presence in the country for the near future.
Biden invoked the Defense Production Act in a major step to boost the supply of baby formula.
The announcement means the federal government will prioritize key ingredients for formula production and compel suppliers to provide the needed resources to formula manufacturers.
The Biden administration is working directly with infant formula manufacturer Reckitt and retailers, including Target, to provide logistical support as it works to help alleviate a nationwide formula shortage.
Biden is also authorizing the Defense Department to use commercial aircraft to fly formula supplies that meet federal standards from overseas to the U.S., in what the White House is calling “Operation Fly Formula.”
There are signs Elon Musk may be getting cold feet a few weeks after he agreed to buy Twitter Inc. for $44 billion.
Almost half of Biden’s current 22.2 million followers on Twitter are fake accounts, according to an audit tool provided by software company SparkToro.
Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar and Sen. Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill to provide $20 billion in federal funding to help states and localities to administer elections, train poll workers and eliminate barriers to voting.
A short reprieve for investors ended abruptly as stocks had their worst day yet in a series of already ugly drops after shrinking profits by major retailers reignited Wall Street’s fear of high inflation.
U.S. stocks fell sharply, with two of the major indexes suffering their worst day since 2020, as the latest set of disappointing earnings from large retailers raised investors’ fears of a recession.
Inflation is catching up with some of America’s biggest retailers, as their recent quarterly results were pinched by higher costs on everything from products to fuel.
Federal health officials warned that a third of Americans live in areas where the threat of Covid-19 is now so high that they should consider wearing a mask in indoor public settings.
They cited new data showing a substantial jump in both the spread of the coronavirus and hospitalizations over the past week.
More than 32% of people nationwide live in areas with medium or high Covid-19 community levels, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said. That breaks down to 9% living in areas with high Covid-19 community levels and 23% living in medium areas.
The CDC’s forecast now predicts that nearly every U.S. state and territory is projected to see increases in new hospitalizations over the next two weeks.
“We’ve got to do what we can to prevent infections,” said Ashish Jha, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator. “We’ve got to do what we can to ensure that infections don’t turn into severe illness.”
Governments around the world are no better prepared today to address a new global disease threat than they were just before the coronavirus outbreak began in late 2019, a World Health Organization panel concluded in a report released yesterday.
The locked-down Chinese metropolis of Shanghai will reopen four of its 20 subway lines Sunday as it slowly eases pandemic restrictions that have kept most residents in their housing complexes for more than six weeks.
Apple paused plans to start bringing employees back to the office an extra day a week, amid an increase in Covid-19 cases in the San Francisco area and complaints from some workers, unhappy with the proposed increase.
Xavier Becerra, the U.S. secretary of health and human services, tested positive for the coronavirus, his department said, hours after the White House announced that Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter, had tested positive.
Ashley Biden is no longer joining first lady Jill Biden on a trip to South and Central America, according to the first lady’s press secretary, Michael LaRosa.
More than three-quarters of Americans diagnosed with long Covid were not sick enough to be hospitalized for their initial infection, a new analysis of tens of thousands of private insurance claims reported.
More than 70 New York City judges descended on a Long Island resort last week to enjoy an annual three-night retreat. In the days after, 20 tested positive for the coronavirus.
“I can only speculate that people are tired of this, I’m tired of it,” state Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett said. “But the virus, unfortunately, doesn’t get tired.”
New York made so much of the “NYS Clean” hand sanitizer — a whopping 11 million bottles, to be exact — that it still doesn’t know how to get rid of it.
Mayor Eric Adams of New York City said that he does not plan to bring back mask mandates now, after the city entered the high alert level for the coronavirus this week.
“I’m proud of what we are doing and how we are not allowing COVID to outsmart us,” Adams told reporters at City Hall. “We’re staying prepared and not panicking. When I look at the hospitalizations and deaths, the numbers are stable.”
New York Times Co. has delayed its plan to have employees return to the office a few days a week starting in June due to a Covid spike in New York City, the latest company to make adjustments in the face of a rapid surge in cases.
The House passed legislation aimed at bulking up the federal government’s efforts to combat domestic terrorism, acting over the opposition of Republicans days after a gunman motivated by white supremacist ideology killed 10 Black people in Buffalo.
Gov. Kathy Hochul declared domestic terrorism to be public enemy No. 1 while announcing moves to prevent future massacres like the racist-fueled rampage that left 10 innocent people in Buffalo dead last weekend.
“Domestic terrorism is the most significant threat we face as a state and as a nation so we’re fighting back with a statewide approach,” Hochul told reporters at a press conference in Manhattan.
Hochul announced that she is signing an executive order, establishing a unit within the Department of Homeland Security focusing exclusively on domestic terrorism, as well as a threat assessment management program to identify a threat.
Hochul pledged to confront head on white supremacy and domestic terrorism, study violent speech on the internet, investigate any social media companies that facilitated the suspect’s actions and broaden oversight around guns.
The governor announced the state’s Division of Human Rights has filed a complaint against Amazon alleging it discriminates against pregnant workers and workers with disabilities at its facilities.
Amazon also allegedly forces pregnant workers and workers with disabilities to take unpaid leaves of absence, rather than providing them with reasonable accommodations, according to the complaint.
Hochul grew up in the Buffalo suburbs and lives with her husband in the city’s downtown area, less than four miles from the East Side, the mostly Black neighborhood where a white gunman orchestrated one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent memory.
A 911 operator accused of hanging up on a caller inside the Buffalo supermarket where a gunman allegedly shot and killed 10 people Saturday has reportedly been taken off the job. She may end up getting fired.
Fed up with being assaulted and spat at on the job, New York City bus drivers demanded the NYPD and MTA do more to keep them safe.
Angered by the lack of workplace flexibility and facing a strong job market, city workers appear to be exiting en masse.
Bullets buzzed past Bronx Council Member Pierina Sanchez’s office for the second week in a row, sending the pol and her team ducking for cover.
For years, Adams has promoted an unconventional police tool called BolaWrap. It turns out his friend, political benefactor and current chief of staff, Frank Carone, had a significant financial stake in the company that makes it.
Six left-leaning members of the City Council are teaming up with a group of visual artists to launch a citywide public art campaign calling on Adams’ administration to earmark more funding for housing and other social services in this year’s municipal budget.
Adams filled the last seat on his administration’s education policy panel late yesterday – a post that has been vacant since March, when he ousted a member of the body after her homophobic views were exposed.
The state Senate passed the “Rap Music on Trial” legislation, a bill which prevents song lyrics from being used as evidence in criminal cases, creating protections for all artists and content creators, including rappers.
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called into question the motivations of the special master assigned to draw New York’s new congressional and state legislative districts, as well as the judge who appointed him.
Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres accused fellow Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the DCCC chair, of racism following reports that his suggested that incumbent Black Rep. Mondaire Jones is not ideologically suited to represent his newly redrawn district.
The mayors of five Capital Region cities sent a letter to the court-appointed special master tasked with drawing New York’s new congressional districts, urging him to ensure all of them remain in the same district.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed he’s mulling a run for an open Congressional seat that’s drawn big interest from several politicians looking to take a step up into federal government.
Our neighborhoods need help as we recover from Covid,” the former mayor said in a tweet. “Our nation needs help as democracy is threatened and working people struggle. I am ready to serve to continue the fight against inequality.”
“Bill de Blasio is the most qualified progressive candidate who I believe can win this diverse seat,” Assembly Member Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, chair of the Kings County Democratic Executive Committee, said in a statement.
Former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer is planning to run in an open state Senate seat on the West Side of Manhattan, according to a source familiar with his plans and confirmed by multiple other sources.
Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple is planning to run for the new state 43rd Senate District, which was just created under maps drawn by a court-appointed special master.
Yesterday’s performance of the Broadway tour of the musical “My Fair Lady” at Proctors was canceled because a member of the crew tested positive for COVID-19 and could not be replaced in time, CEO Philip Morris said.
The City of Albany is forming an advisory committee to help implement recreational marijuana regulations.
A debate over whether Albany High School girls’ track and field athletes can wear sports bras without jerseys during practices has resulted in suspensions, disrupted the team’s season and soured the relationship among students, parents and school officials.
RIP Ken Screven, the first Black man hired to work as a reporter for a Capital Region television station and an esteemed figure in TV news for more than three decades, who died in a hospital following long struggles with multiple health problems. He was 71.
An attorney for an animal civil rights group told New York’s highest court that an elephant at the Bronx Zoo should be released into a spacious sanctuary based on ancient common law and the elephant’s right to bodily liberty.
The US Soccer Federation has reached landmark collective-bargaining agreements with its men’s and women’s national teams that align the teams’ pay and create a unique mechanism to share prize money from their respective World Cup competitions.
A lawsuit seeking class-action status alleges that both McDonald’s and Wendy’s have wrongly advertised the size of their various cheeseburgers. The suit alleges that the ads make the burgers appear much larger than the ones customers are actually served.
