Author(s) :

Emily Cheong.

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

Communication accessibility is essential for the social participation of people with disabilities. However, limited public funding makes it difficult to prioritize accessibility investments. This study proposes a quantitative framework to examine how resources may be allocated for communication accessibility under budget constraints. Utilizing population-level disability prevalence data from the American Community Survey, inclusion weights were generated for four domains of accessibility: hearing, vision, cognitive, and independent living. A linear programming model was developed to maximize an overall communication inclusion score based on these weights. With a baseline efficiencydriven formulation, the model produced a corner solution, directing all resources to a single domain with the highest inclusion weight, exhibiting the limitations of efficiency-only decision-making for accessibility policy. To address this limitation, the model was extended with constraints related to equity, including minimum baseline allocations and proportionality conditions across domains. The revised model produced a more balanced allocation of investments while decreasing the exclusion of smaller disability groups. The findings in this study indicate how decisions for resource allocation may be formalized with mathematical optimization while revealing the limitations of efficiency-only allocation. This framework provides a transparent tool for supporting the decision in allocation in the perspective of planning accessibility under constrained resources.