Road Closed sign

It's been said that in the 21st century, every industry is an IT industry. Indeed, nearly any activity you can name has some degree of technology associated with it. In education, commerce, entertainment, transportation, public safety, and other fields, technology is an essential requirement for participation.

Despite the many benefits of technology, many people find themselves unable to participate fully in such activities. Barriers prevent participation when technology is designed and deployed without accessibility in mind. Such barriers occur in web sites, applications, and digital documents; here are a few examples:

Missing image alt text: Images or graphics without alt text convey neither context nor information to people who interact with data using a screen reader.
Captions and transcripts: Media without captions or a transcript is inaccessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Requiring a mouse: form fields, buttons, links, and other "clickable" elements become useless if they can't be activated using only the keyboard. This issue is often compounded for screen reader users if the purpose of these elements isn't apparent through meaningful text or labels (e.g. links that read only, "Click here")
Poor contrast: poor contrast in a document can make it difficult or impossible for users to read the text

Accessibility doesn’t only apply to the World Wide Web. Operating systems and software, kiosks and digital signage, websites and applications, even ATMs, elevators, and automatic doors. Any of these, intended to boost productivity, facilitate activity, and generally make life easier, can be inaccessible and frustrating to users when accessibility is not included in the design, development, and implementation.

A piece of technology is only as accessible as its least accessible component. Users with disabilities are frequently able to progress most of the way through a process, only to find that the end product--such as an inaccessible table, PDF, or online form—is unavailable to them because it lacks accessibility features. Unless technology is created with accessibility in mind, users with disabilities will continue to experience such barriers.