Digital accessibility is key to allow the full participation of those with disabilities in the workplace, the classroom, and society at large.

Your phone chimes softly, and you pick it up and read the screen without a thought. A restaurant server brings you a menu on an electronic tablet, and you scan down the list of choices. Your boss sends you a link to a report on the web that you need to read for tomorrow’s meeting. In the evening, it’s family movie night, and everybody wants to see the newest action film.

But suppose your vision is impaired so that you can’t make out what’s on these various screens. Is there any way to find out what that web page says, who is in that picture, or what is going on in the movie scene?

When technology is accessible, indeed there is.

You may have heard the term “accessible” in the context of disability and thought it meant having an elevator in a building or a wheelchair ramp at a curb. That is certainly part of what makes the physical world available to people with limited mobility, but the term “accessible” also applies to technology. And just as in the physical world, accessibility must consider the needs of a wide variety of sensory limitations.

Technology is accessible when everybody can use the exact same technology regardless of physical mobility, visual, hearing, or other limitations. This is not to say that the technology is used in the same way by somebody who is sighted and somebody else who is blind. For example. a screen reader or refreshable Braille display would let the blind person use the technology with the same outcome in terms of information gained or work produced as the sighted person.

So, what sorts of digital materials must be accessible? The list is long, but includes websites and apps of all types, from e-commerce to insurance, finance, and government portals. These have to be available to screen readers and easily operable across platforms. Social media and video sharing have the added element of images, which need to have text attached so those with vision loss can learn what the image contains. Classroom or workplace materials must be created in such a way that their content is available via assistive technology. And entertainment must be audio described and captioned so that those with limited sight or hearing can follow what is on the screen.

When technology is not accessible, people with disabilities must seek out the material in another format. For instance, when Braille was the only way the blind could read books, the number of titles available was vanishingly small. In an inaccessible world, separate and inferior access for those with disabilities costs society more, both in terms of lost individual potential and the need for more public support.

But in an accessible world, opportunities open up for those with disabilities. Children can be educated with the same materials as their peers. Workers with disabilities gain the same information and productive capacities as their colleagues. Businesses gain customers when their products and services become available to a wider audience. Those with disabilities maintain dignity and independence. And this is the world we are seeking. We ask only to have the same doors open to us as to our nondisabled peers. And fully accessible technology is one of the keys that will unlock these doors.

You can live the life you want; blindness is not what holds you back. The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) knows that blindness is not the characteristic that defines you or your future.

To contact the Missoula chapter of the NFB, email us at missoulachapter@nfbofmt.org .