Global Resources and Promising Practices for Building and Refining Accessible and Inclusive Smart Cities from Darren Bates LLC.
Over 116 000 shopping malls are spread in the United States of America and generate each year around 5 trillion dollars. But are they accessible for people with disabilities?
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Abstract Of the many features that smart cities offer, safe and comfortable mobility of pedestrians within the built environment is of particular importance. Safe and comfortable mobility requires that the built environments of smart cities be accessible to all pedestrians, mobility abled and mobility impaired, given their various mobility needs and preferences. This, coupled with advanced technologies such as wayfinding…
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Travelling to work, meeting friends for a catch up or just doing some shopping are often taken for granted by people with no known disabilities. For the visually impaired, these seemingly simple things can be a serious challenge. But imagine a city equipped with technology that enables the visually impaired to recognize people, places or even bank notes, helping them…
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If you asked a ballroom full of government leaders what keeps them up at night, what do you think they would say? According to our latest “What’s Next in Digital Communications for Local Government” survey results, expanding citizen engagement, increasing digital accessibility and minimizing cybersecurity risks top their to-do lists. Nearly 370 municipal and county government officials across North America…
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The city nearly drowned. In the warm days of mid-June, about 160 years after the old river town was incorporated, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was hit with the worst flood in its history. One of those 500-year floods that no one thinks they’ll ever see. The kind of flood that evokes allusions to Noah, or Katrina. The Cedar River swelled…
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Beginning Jan. 18, 2018, government agencies across the U.S. will be required by law to make their websites accessible to the more than 60 million Americans with visual, hearing or other disabilities. Yet more than 87 percent of 430+ local government respondents to Vision’s 2017 What’s Next Survey said they have moderate, weak or no knowledge of federal web accessibility requirements.
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Americans depend on more than 4,500 federal websites to access critical government services and information, but a report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation finds of 91 percent of the most popular agency websites are failing to perform well in at least one key performance metric.
The second edition of ITIF’s “Benchmarking U.S. Government Websites” report follows up and expands on the initial ITIF report released in March. The organization tested 469 websites using publicly available tools for page-load speed, mobile friendliness, security and accessibility.
“As more people go online for public services and as security threats continue to evolve, it is important for federal websites to be more convenient, accessible, and secure,” ITIF research fellow Galia Nurko said. “This report shows a significant amount of work left to be done to modernize federal websites and ensure that, as technology advances, federal websites improve in turn.”
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Auditors say city’s website needs improvement. The Office of the City Auditor has found that although the city’s website, AustinTexas.gov, offers residents numerous online services, the website does not meet accessibility guidelines, so it is difficult for people with certain disabilities to find and use those services The audit findings were released and accepted at Wednesday’s City Council Audit and…
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