Skip to main content
📚 Cite this page

AMA
Weru Lawrence. Create Accessible (Content). The ENABLE Model website. Published 2025. Accessed 2026-05-16. https://enablemodel.com/docs/builder-side/content

APA
Weru, L. (2025). Create Accessible (Content). The ENABLE Model. https://enablemodel.com/docs/builder-side/content

MLA
Weru, Lawrence. "Create Accessible (Content)." The ENABLE Model, 2025, https://enablemodel.com/docs/builder-side/content.

Chicago
Weru, Lawrence. "Create Accessible (Content)." The ENABLE Model. 2025. https://enablemodel.com/docs/builder-side/content.

BibTeX

@misc{enable2025content,
              author = {Weru, Lawrence},
              title = {Create Accessible (Content)},
              year = {2025},
              url = {https://enablemodel.com/docs/builder-side/content},
              note = {The ENABLE Model}
            }

Create Accessible Content

Creating accessible content means ensuring that the words, images, media, documents, and data presented to users can be perceived, understood, and interacted with by people with disabilities. This includes both the raw content (e.g., text, visuals, captions) and the formats in which that content is delivered.

Role in the ENABLE Model​

This is the second builder-side intervention in the ENABLE model. It focuses on ensuring the core material being shared or rendered is inclusive before it's placed inside any user interface or application. Without accessible content, even the most technically accessible interface can fail its users.

Why It Matters​

Content is the substance of any communication -- whether it's a website, a form, an educational resource, or a government alert. If the content itself is unreadable, non-navigable, or lacks alternative formats, people with disabilities are left behind, no matter how well the surrounding platform is built.

Grounding​

Section 508 specifies accessible content requirements for federal agencies, covering text, images, audio, video, and documents.1 Courts and settlements have applied ADA Title III to content through the NAD v. Netflix litigation, which required Netflix to caption 100% of its streaming content.2 CRPD Article 9 likewise requires states to ensure accessible information and communications.3

WCAG's Perceivable principle formalizes accessible content requirements: "text alternatives for non-text content," "captions and audio descriptions for time-based media," and content structure that can be "presented in different ways without losing meaning."4

A 2023 Lancet analysis of 250 journals found alt-text provision to be rare, with only three disability-focused journals in the sample providing detailed alt text that met WCAG guidance.56 Auto-generated captions can also fall as low as 57.5% accuracy when key audio conditions are not met, establishing that accessible content has measurable quality thresholds, not merely a binary presence or absence.7

Emma Grey Ellis documented deaf users confronting caption quality failures that platforms routinely normalized as good enough.8

Sins Invalid, a disability justice performance project, builds language access into its shows and resources in ASL, English, and Spanish and treats AAC, sign languages, text, video, touch, and other forms of expression as valid communication.910

In the news

Apple previews Live Speech, Personal Voice, and more new accessibility features (May 16, 2023)
-- Apple Newsroom

  • Apple announced Personal Voice, a feature that lets users at risk of losing their speech (such as those with ALS) create a synthesized version of their own voice by reading 150 text prompts. This accessible content innovation allows people to preserve their voice identity for use in calls and conversations, demonstrating how builder-side care can address needs before navigator-side compensations become necessary.

National Association of the Deaf v. Netflix Settlement (2012-2016)
-- Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund

  • Netflix agreed to caption 100% of its streaming content within two years after the NAD sued over inaccessible video content. This landmark settlement established that accessible content -- including captions -- is a civil rights obligation for streaming services, not an optional feature. Today, Netflix has over 560 titles with audio description and is considered "the dominant provider of streaming content with description" by the American Council of the Blind.

YouTube Experiments with Viewer-Suggested Corrections to Auto-Generated Captions (March 18, 2024)
-- Logie.ai

  • YouTube launched a feature allowing viewers to suggest corrections to auto-generated captions. While auto-captions remain problematic -- accuracy can drop to 57.5% in poor audio conditions, leading deaf activist Rikki Poynter to launch the #nomoreCRAPtions movement -- this iteration represents YouTube's acknowledgment that accessible content requires ongoing improvement, not one-time fixes.

Examples​

  • Using plain language for cognitive accessibility
  • Providing alt text for images and charts
  • Offering transcripts and captions for audio and video
  • Supplying accessible data visualizations or alternative summaries
  • Structuring documents semantically for screen reader navigation
  • Ensuring math content is compatible with MathML or spoken math engines

Care Sounds Like​

“We must include a representative sample of people who stutter in our AI training dataset.”
“Our slide deck must include alt text for all images.”
“Let's produce a transcript and a plain language summary alongside this podcast.”
“This table looks great, but does it make sense when read aloud line by line?”

Neglect Sounds Like​

“The visuals are self-explanatory, no need to describe them.”
“We don't have time to caption this.”
“Just PDF the scan and upload it.”
“We already wrote it once, why would we rewrite it in plain language?”

Real-World Scenario​

A federal agency releases a critical COVID-19 vaccination guide as a PDF, but it's an image-only scan without text recognition or tagging. Screen reader users cannot access it. As a result, blind individuals cannot easily learn how, when, or where to get vaccinated. This wasn't a technical bug -- it was inaccessible content.

Footnotes​

  1. Section508.gov: Developing Accessible Web Content ↩

  2. Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund: Netflix Consent Decree ↩

  3. United Nations: Article 9 - Accessibility ↩

  4. W3C: How to Meet WCAG 2.2 (Quick Reference) ↩

  5. PubMed: Figure accessibility in journals: analysis of alt-text in 2021-23 ↩

  6. EASE: Figure accessibility in journals: analysis of alt-text in 2021-23 ↩

  7. 3Play Media: The Problem with Using Auto Captions in Higher Education ↩

  8. Emma Grey Ellis, WIRED, The Problem With YouTube's Terrible Closed 'Craptions' ↩

  9. Sins Invalid, About Sins ↩

  10. Sins Invalid, Language Justice is Disability Justice ↩


Manifestations

The following manifestations are associated with this ENABLE Model location:


Edited by Lawrence Weru S.M. (Harvard)

Disclaimer

The ENABLE Model draws on the principles of anthropology and the practice of journalism to create a public ethnography of accessibility, documenting how people intervene or compensate for accessibility breakdowns in the real world. Inclusion here does not imply endorsement. It chronicles observed use -- how a tool, organization, or strategy is actually used -- rather than how it is marketed. References, when provided, are for verification and transparency.


📚 Cite this page

AMA
Weru Lawrence. Create Accessible (Content). The ENABLE Model website. Published 2025. Accessed 2026-05-16. https://enablemodel.com/docs/builder-side/content

APA
Weru, L. (2025). Create Accessible (Content). The ENABLE Model. https://enablemodel.com/docs/builder-side/content

MLA
Weru, Lawrence. "Create Accessible (Content)." The ENABLE Model, 2025, https://enablemodel.com/docs/builder-side/content.

Chicago
Weru, Lawrence. "Create Accessible (Content)." The ENABLE Model. 2025. https://enablemodel.com/docs/builder-side/content.

BibTeX

@misc{enable2025content,
              author = {Weru, Lawrence},
              title = {Create Accessible (Content)},
              year = {2025},
              url = {https://enablemodel.com/docs/builder-side/content},
              note = {The ENABLE Model}
            }