I chose to post this article because I think it does a nice job of breaking down this issue. First, the author describes some common web 2.0 tools, then she describes the barriers that people with disabilities might face in using those tools, and then she desribes a few ways that we can make web 2.0 tools accessible.

The writer of this article reviews some major blog hosts and discusses how accessible they are to people with vision impairments. Overall, he discusses how it is easier to read blogs than it is to create blogs for people with vision impairments. The reviews on different blogging sites are interesting. There is no date on this article, so it's possible that some of the blog sites have fixed these accessibility issues since the article was posted. However, I know that Blogger still has a visual CAPTCHA on its site that makes it difficult for people with visual disabilities to create an account.

I read "Is accessibility being overlooked in favour of sociability?" posted by Elias.
In this blog, the writer discusses how difficult it is to get people to consider web accessibility when creating websites. I learned that many social media sites are now moving towards making their websites more accessible. I didn't know YouTube had a closed captioning option. With this feature, users have the ability to improve the captioning and upload the improved version. Facebook has added audio CAPTCHA so that people with vision impairments can still join their service. This is a web access barrier I had never considered. It is important to have applications that can tell whether a human is really in control, but if we only have visual CAPTCHA, how will the vision impaired ever sign up for online services?
I also learned about "Easy Chirp", which is an alternative to Twitter that is more user-friendly for those with disabilities. Reading about all of these alternatives and improvements that have to be created so that people with disabilities can view websites that we browse with such ease everyday makes me very thankful for my health and abilities. I am also very glad that people are beginning to consider some ways in which we can make social media tools more accessible for those with disabilities.