The age of Twitter Democracy has given way to the era of Instagram Democracy. A younger generation of elected officials in the US and across the world are increasingly turning to a visual-first world to communicate with their constituents, letting them see the innerworkings of government through their own eyes, from photos of them at work to livestreamed viral videos designed to rally their bases. Unfortunately, this transition is making government increasingly inaccessible to those with differing physical abilities, reversing almost overnight decades of work on improving accessibility, diversity and inclusivity and sharply increasing the divide isolating minority populations. The response from the social media platforms and lawmakers themselves has been silence, but what does the US Government have to say about its transition towards a more inaccessible web and what might its reaction teach us about hope for addressing AI bias?
Twitter and Facebook/Instagram are among the most popular social media platforms used by lawmakers across the world today. Yet these platforms only recently embraced the most basic of accessibility features like adding ALT descriptive text to images. Twitter waited nearly an entire decade to add ALT text, announcing it only in 2016, while Instagram just added ALT support an astonishing month and a half ago.
Unfortunately, the most prominent social-first US lawmakers aren’t making use of these accessibility features and in fact emphasize the most inaccessible features of social platforms like livestreamed video and meme-friendly images whose hashtags offer not the slightest clue as to what they depict.
Asked about their commitment to accessibility, neither Facebook nor Twitter responded to requests for comment this week. Similarly, one of the most visible leaders of the Instagram Democracy revolution, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, did not respond to multiple requests for comment on why she did not believe it was important to make her posts accessible to those with differing physical abilities or if she would commit to do so in the future.
For its part, the US Government offers only vague guidance on digital accessibility, recommending accessibility for social media content in many of its guides, but stopping short of absolutely mandating it.
In contrast, the GSA “Section 508” website states that “Under Section 508, agencies must give disabled employees and members of the public access to information comparable to others.” The United States Access Board clarifies that social media is covered by this mandate: “content made available by an agency to members of the general public. Examples include, but are not limited to, an agency Web site, blog post, or social media pages.”
What about Congress itself? How does the House of Representatives see the question of social media accessibility and ensuring that the official government communications of its members are accessible to all?
To gain an understanding of Congressional policy towards digital accessibility, I reached out to the Office Of The Chief Administrative Officer of the House (CAO), which is the “non-partisan, non-legislative office that provides support services and business solutions to the community of 10,000 House Members, Officers and staff … providing administrative, technical, and operational solutions so Members can perform their Constitutional duties.”
I asked CAO whether the House offered any recommendations or placed any requirements on minimum accessibility of the official governmental communications of its members, such as requiring ALT text for images and captioning for videos. If the House only recommended accessibility best practices, but did not require them, I asked whether it had considered any mandatory requirements.
I also asked whether the House offered any kind of on-demand online accessibility for the digital publications of its members like it does for physical access to the House. In particular, for constituents physically unable to view a House member’s official photographic or video communications, is there a central House office they can contact to receive an accessible version of that post if the House member themself refuses to provide it?
I also asked why the House permitted its members to utilize completely inaccessible forms of digital communication like livestreaming on official US Government social media accounts without any form of accessibility features.
The CAO referred me to the Committee On House Administration (CHA) for an official statement.
The Committee’s spokesperson for the Democratic Majority offered only that “This is the guidance members are provided: ‘Member-controlled content on Social Media Accounts is subject to the same requirements as content on Member websites’ [and] ‘Websites should be compliant with the accessibility standards set out in § 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.’
This guidance comes from the Member’s Congressional Handbook. Though, the Handbook itself does not underline or otherwise demark the word “should” in its guidance.
The Committee did not respond to multiple followup requests, including why it had emphasized the word “should” in its response, whether it would consider making accessibility mandatory and what options differently abled constituents have to access official House content in cases where the members producing it refuse to make an accessible version available.
As social media evolves towards a visual-first digital world, an entire swath of the American public is being increasingly marginalized from their government. As lawmakers increasingly release official statements, policy announcements and constituent polls exclusively through these inaccessible mediums, those with different physical abilities are being walled off from their representatives, relegated to the status of second class citizens with no obvious recourse and little apparent interest from Congress to fix things.
If the US Government doesn’t care that a minority population of the United States is increasingly being marginalized from the democratic process itself, why would it care in the slightest that other minority populations encounter difficulties with some new consumer gadget or a piece of AI software?
In other words, if democracy itself isn’t sacrosanct enough to protect from bias, why would something as abstract as AI bias warrant even a moment’s glance?
For all the conversation from technology companies about AI bias, their silence and inaction on the issue of accessibility reminds us that there is a tremendous gap between words and actions. Most importantly, it reminds us that the only true motivator of change is economic value.
Putting this all together, as we rush towards a visual-first web we are increasingly leaving a portion of the population behind. This shift is especially corrosive to democracy as governments follow society’s lead towards inaccessible communications mediums, rapidly marginalizing minority populations and relegating them to second class citizens that do not enjoy the right to engage with their elected officials. That neither the social platforms themselves nor the elected officials creating the inaccessible content could be bothered to comment on the topic, while the government itself seems little interested in concerns over accessibility, we are reminded that in a capitalist world there is little interest in the halls of government for the rights of those whom society does not view as economically important.
In the end, the quarter century of indifference towards accessibility issues on the web should give pause to those who hope AI bias might be addressed in our lifetimes.
