Text reads 1 mission: Accessibility in news. We break down barriers for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, people who are neurodivergent, for veterans and caregivers, and people with low literacy so more people get news and more people like us are in newsrooms. 4 projects: Accessibility in action. • the EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide • training for journalists, media outlets and news organizations • The Word magazine • the National Tab (coming soon) equalaccesspublicmedia.org

One mission. Four projects.

https://equalaccesspublicmedia.org

April Newsletter: This Spring Fund Drive, we won’t ask donors for more funds What if we flipped the Spring Fund Drive on its head and didn’t ask our regular donors for funds?

Hey EAPM donors and supporters! You may have heard it's our Spring Fund Drive. Did you know we're not asking you to donate again? Nope. We're asking you to spread the word about us instead.

You can read our entire wacky plan in this months newsletter.

equalaccesspublicmedia.org/april-newsle...

Actress Lizza Minelli and Kermit the Frog in the whisper campaign scene from Sardi's in The Muppets Take Manhattan

This April is our annual Spring Fund Drive.

Except we're not asking our current donors for funds.

Instead, we're taking a page from Kermit the Frog in his role as Kermit the Frog in "The Muppets Take Manhattan." We want you to help us with a sort of "whisper campaign."

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It's the Equal Access Public Media Spring Fund Drive, and you can help by spreading the word about EAPM. Equal Access Public Media • Focuses on improving accessibility in the journalism industry and public-facing news products. • Is a nonprofit in the public interest. • Funded almost entirely by small-dollar donors. • Trains journalists in accessible skills. • Built projects including The Word magazine and the EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide.

You may have heard it's our Spring Fund Drive. You probably also heard that we're not asking our donors to give money again.

Instead we're asking you to talk about us. So we thought you might like to have the facts about us.

(And please share our website, too! www.equalaccesspublicmedia.org)

It's the Equal Access Public Media Spring Fund Drive and you can help by spreading the word about EAPM. Do you support EAPM - or one of our projects such as The Word, the EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide, or journalist accessibility skills training? Share your reason why you've donated or volunteered!

It's our Spring Fund Drive — and instead of asking our current donors for more funds, we're asking you to spread the word about us.

Today, we'd like you to tell others why you support www.equalaccesspublicmedia.org.

As this retreat from #DEIA has ramped up, our funding has dried up.

Which is why we need your help. Donate now.

www.equalaccesspublicmedia.org/support-us/

A heart with the Equal Access Public Media square logo. The EAPM Style and Accessibility guide logo and The Word logo are below the heart. Large text at the top reads "Love it? Fund it."

The end of the year is here. Time to put your money where your heart is. 

Make an individual donation through Givebutter (https://givebutter.com/buildnews

Want all the ways to donate? Check our website (https://equalaccesspublicmedia.org/support-us/

We just made it official. We updated our Bluesky handle from @eapmstyleguide.bsky.social to @eapmstyleguide.org.

autism, autistic - EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide A disability that affects how people experience the world around them, which can be...

Public service announcement: words have meaning.

The autism community has largely defined autism as a neurodivergent identity. Autism/autistic has meaning.

Austism spectrum disorder is a diagnosis. This has parameters. ASD (F84.0) has meaning.

eapmstyleguide.org/autism-autis...

You don't necessarily need to say "image of" in your alt text for users to know it's an image. Screen readers will announce that it's an image. But it can help readers to specify if it's a hand-drawn image, Polaroid, infographic, screenshot, chart, map, diagram, or so on.

We're still building. Please help us continue our work.

Home - EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide Welcome to EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide. Browse by chapter or search for a term.

Do you love the Style and Accessibility Guide? Hate it? Haven't used it, but simply love taking surveys? Great! We're looking for you! Take our User Feedback Survey!

eapmstyleguide.org#survey

em-dash - EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide Use the em-dash between the dateline and the start of the first paragraph, surrounded by...

Yes, we love the em-dash as much as the next journalist — and apparently as much as gen AI, so we're told. But did you know that a screen reader doesn't necessary read the em-dash?

need, needs - EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide The word need is both a noun and a verb, but it is often misused in its verb form. As a noun, it means...

To be, or not to be? Do you really need it? Oh, yes. You do need to know it.

this, that, these - EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide As pronouns, vague words used to indicate a person, persons, a thing, or things nearby, just mentioned...

This.

Support - EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide Become a Guide Patron of the Style and Accessibility Guide.

Are you a Style and Accessibility Guide patron? Not only do you help fund the Style and Accessibility Guide — and the people who contribute to it! — but you are part of building the only journalism accessibility guide out there.

Support Donations to EAPM help build the future of accessible news.

Two years ago this month, we went from idea to reality. Help continue our work by donating $2 in honor of our second birthday.

Happy day after elections. With so many candidates focusing on affordability, we thought it might be helpful to post two terms:

• minimum wage (eapmstyleguide.org/minimum-wage/)
• living wage (eapmstyleguide.org/living-wage/)

and a song.

Related: Have you ever heard of Protactile? It's an emerging language, developed by people who are deafblind.

When using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, don't just make text bigger and bolder to make it a heading. That will work for sighted users, but screen reader users will miss that and just hear it as normal paragraph text. Use actual heading styles, like level 1 through 6.

rest - EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide A noun meaning a state of refreshing ease, period of inactivity after exertion or labor, a refreshing period...

Did you get more rest last night? We hope no one wrested the extra hour of sleep away from you.
eapmstyleguide.org/rest/

When possible, use simple and familiar data visualization techniques. Complex data visualizations can be visually appealing, but they can also be more difficult to understand. If a visualization gets overly complex, consider alternate chart types for the sake of understanding.

Some people replace the word "season" with "szn" or the word "please" with "plz." Not all sighted users will know what those spellings are supposed to mean, and many screen reader users won't, either. Many screen readers will read "szn" as S-Z-N and "plz" as P-L-Z.

We figured, as a new account, it's important to post a controversial opinion.

So here we go. We love the Oxford comma.

(It makes serial lists more accessible.)

How People with Disabilities Use the Web Introduces how people with disabilities, including people with age-related impairments, use the Web.

People who want to make the web accessible need to understand the many different ways that people with disabilities use the web. This W3C resource offers a good introduction to how disabled people navigate the web, and barriers they commonly encounter.

www.w3.org/WAI/people-u...

rehab - EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide Short for rehabilitation. A generic term for a program or facility that treats a person with a diagnosed...

They tried to make me go to rehab
And I said, "Great, but my HMO only covers outpatient physical therapy once a week for five weeks."
And they said, "No, we meant an inpatient SNF."
And I said, "Wait, these Amy Winehouse lyrics just got really confusing."

The same photo could appear on three different pages and require different alt text for each instance. The alt text for an image can vary, depending on the context of the image, its role on the page, and the intended message.

how to write hashtags - EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide For the majority of hashtags, use Pascal case. This convention capitalizes the first letter of...

Are you still using all lowercase letters for multi-word hashtags?

Hang on. We've got just the thing to improve your hashtag accessibility.

eapmstyleguide.org/h...

#BetterHashtagsForAccessibility
#WeLovePascalCase
#andCamelCaseToo

The #NoMouse Challenge is a global effort to raise awareness about accessible web design. Try using your website without a mouse. Use the keyboard instead. Is it possible to access all features and operate all buttons, sliders, and other controls?

nomouse.org

how to add emphasis - EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide Avoid using italic or bold text to convey emphasis. This will not be read by screen readers. In audio...

This guy on social media ends a lot of posts by thanking people for their "attention to this very important matter" in all capital letters. Screen reader software may read that letter by letter.

What is the best way to emphasize text anyway?