Chairman's Accessibility Award To Focus on Cognitive Disabilities

This year’s Chairman’s Awards for Advancement in Accessibility will focus on innovations that address the telecom needs of people with cognitive disabilities, FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Acting Chief Alison Kutler said in a blog post Wednesday. The commission is looking for “solutions that focus on the telecommunication needs of people with differing functional requirements, using design principles that are mindful of users’ attention focus, problem-solving and comprehension issues to achieve accessibility in ways that are simple and clear, consistent, multi-modal and error-tolerant,” she said. “Advances in accessibility make technology more useable for all people,” Kutler said. ”We are certain that advances in telecommunication accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities will help every user of these technologies.” Nominations for the Chairman’s AAA awards are due March 31. More on the nominating process is at www.fcc.gov/chairmansaaa. The FCC held a summit in October on communications difficulties faced by people with cognitive disabilities (see 1510280037).