This fall, Google won the ImageNet challenge for an algorithm used in classification and identification of images.  The Google researchers used two neural networks to identify objects in an image and create a natural description of the image.  I read about it on Tech Crunch, which has a much better explanation of the technical details about how they did it.

I am hopeful that Google is incorporating these advancements into its website accessibility efforts.  One of the more difficult parts of developing a website is making sure that it is accessible for "screen readers" so that it can be accessed by users who are blind or require assistive technology.  The U.S. Department of Justice asserts that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires companies to provide accessible websites.  The DOJ has had specific regulations in the works since as early as 2010, but has never released them.  In the meantime, it has intervened in a few lawsuits against online retailers whose websites were not ADA compliant.  As of yet, no significant decisions have been issued, but many settlements have resulted including one with PeaPod, a grocery delivery service, just this week. With any luck, technology will overtake the regulations soon and provide accessibility without additional web development costs.

Currently, website accessibility can be challenging and requires particular attention by your developers.  Probably the best resource is at W3C, which is a Web Accessibility Initiative.  Google also has a pretty good resource for developers.  Not to steal the punchline, but HTML5 seems to be a good way to go since most everything is native and you avoid many of the common plugins, etc., that tripped up screen readers in the past.  Enter automatic photo identification and you can see the world quickly becoming a friendlier place!

Special Canadian Bonus:

For those of you who have a Canadian presence, the applicable law is the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA).  A few of you will say, "but wait, Ontario is only a single province!"  Turns out that according to the last census, nearly 40% of all Canadians live in OntarioThe Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure has published a tool to figure out if you need to worry about AODA.  Fortunately, the standards for AODA are also the standards published by W3C that I mentioned in the previous paragraph.  The complete standards are known as WCAG 2.0.  Compliance information can be found here.  Unfortunately, while the AODA website may be optimized for screen readers, it isn't really optimized for traditional readers . . . .

If you are more interested in the (extremely) low budget video version, The Human Resources Professionals Association [of Canada] produced a video about auditing your website for accessibility:

And, of course, the sequel about developing an accessible website:

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