Digital technologies, applications, websites, and documents are often created without considering accessibility for people with disabilities. Often, a technology is built inaccessibly, and then either remediated for accessibility, remediated for accessibility only when there is a complaint from a person with a disability, or is never remediated for accessibility. Building inaccessible technologies or content and then remediating them for accessibility after-the-fact is not an effective approach. The time delay between when digital technologies and content are built and released and when they are made accessible can itself be a form of societal discrimination, as some people have access to the technologies and content while others do not until a later date. Furthermore, remediating a technology after-the-fact tends to cost more than accessibility built-in from the start, which unfortunately leads to the misperception that accessibility is expensive. While disability rights advocates often call for digital technologies and content to be built using a born-accessible approach, the research literature in HCI and UX does not define the details for a born-accessible model. This presentation will report on work being done by the Maryland Initiative for Digital Accessibility (MIDA) at the University of Maryland, in collaboration with partners Adobe and the U.S. Access Board, to help define methods, tools, and policies for the born-accessible design approach. The presentation will include information on methods for involving disability rights groups into the born-accessible design process, the shifting power dynamics that occur in born-accessible design, mockups of interface features that support born-accessible design, and three examples where born-accessible concepts have been incorporated into U.S. State and Federal policies.

Jonathan Lazar, PhD, LLM is a professor in the College of Information at the University of Maryland, where he is the executive director of the Maryland Initiative for Digital Accessibility (MIDA), and is a faculty member in the Human- Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). Dr. Lazar has over 25 years of experience in research and teaching in human-computer interaction, with a focus on technology accessibility for people with disabilities, user-centered design methods, assistive technologies, and law and public policy related to HCI. Dr. Lazar has authored or edited 17 books, including Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction (2nd edition, co- authored with Feng and Hochheiser), Ensuring Digital Accessibility Through Process and Policy (co-authored with Goldstein and Taylor), Foundations of Information Law (co-authored with Jaeger, Gorham, and Greene-Taylor), and Accessible Technology and the Developing World (co-edited with Stein). Dr. Lazar has published over 200 refereed articles in journals, conference proceedings, edited books, and magazines, and has received research funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), Google, and Adobe. At the University of Maryland, he frequently teaches courses on Human-Computer Interaction, Accessibility, User-Centered Design, and Legal Research Methods. He is the recipient of the 2020 ACM SIGACCESS Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computing and Accessibility and the 2016 ACM SIGCHI Social Impact Award, is a member of the ACM SIGCHI Academy, and has served as the general chair of the 2021 ACM ASSETS conference.