A-Tech Review

IBM's Assistive Mistake

IBM has a great new offering called WebAdapt2Me.

Developed at the company's Accessibility Research unit in Yorktown Heights, NY, the software was tested at the University of California in Long Beach, which won a 200-seat license in exchange.Color, contrast, size, and style of an online textbook can all be changed at a flash with the software, making it ideal for use in online learning.

What could possibly be wrong with this?

One big thing.

Orca!

One of the continuing problems for disabled people is that they remain locked into a proprietary, Windows environment.

This locks the rest of us into the same environment. Microsoft lobbies against anything that might benefit open source, saying that if a change were made it would be discrimination against the blind.

To get out of this box, I want to highlight tools that work in open source environments, doing the same things that Windows tools do.

We'll start with the Orca screen reader.

More on the Good Bytes Cafe

I'm writing this in the Good Bytes Cafe, a spot in San Antonio I wrote about a week ago.

A few important points occur to me as I type on the comfy chair opposite a counter where three women work the kitchen, counter, and cash register:

1. Helping those who need assistive computing services is just one small piece of the mission here.
   This is actually a good thing.
2. The main purpose is to run a small cafe and coffee shop at a profit, catering to people who might not be able to afford such luxuries. Featured are soups, simple sandwiches, wholesome food at low prices.
3. There's a TV picture displayed on one wall, which comes out of a unit attached to the ceiling. The result is a huge picture that doesn't take up any floor space.
4. For those in wheelchairs, the big news here is the flat cement floor, and the fact that all the furniture can be moved easily, out of the way of the widest chair. The computers all have small office chairs in front of them, but these can easily be pushed aside for your wheelchair, and the extra technology works as advertised.
5. It's unobtrusive. That is, when you roll in here you're not a big deal, you're just another client. And that, too, is a good thing.

The Right Use of Internet Resources

Here is something American agencies can learn from.

AbilityNet, an English charity that works with disabled people, helping them become more productive, is using the Internet to do "virtual service calls" on its clients.

Peter Abrahams of Bloor Research notes that it was becoming impossible to get clients to come to the center, and it was cost-prohibitive to send people out to client homes. So the center is giving clients broadband connections and simple Internet cameras. Once those are installed, service can be handled remotely.

Canada Takes the Lead

Thank God for Canada.

Whenever I get discouraged over the ignorance of my fellow Americans, I can generally look to the north and see another way forward.

Today it takes the form of ICAST, an effort by York University in Toronto and a non-profit research group called Precarn to develop new technologies for disabled workers.

As with the efforts of the Gates Foundation and AIDS, the idea here is to share resources and ideas and hopefully come up with breakthroughs.

Among the initial members are the

University

of

British Columbia

;

University

of

Toronto

; Toronto Rehabilitation Institute; Neil Squire Society; the Health Technology Exchange of Markham; Systèmes Lifelink Inc. of

Ste-Marie-de-Beauce

,

Quebec

; and Quanser Consulting Inc., of

Markham

,

Ontario

.

More on Goodwill Cafe

The blog SeniorCitizen has more information on the cafe for the disabled we mentioned earlier.

And it's pretty cool.

The place is called the Good Bytes Cafe, and it sits next to a Goodwill store in downtown San Antonio, just a few blocks from the Alamo and Riverwalk.

What makes it unique, writes Physorg, is just how much thought has gone into the design for the wheelchair crowd.

• The floor is concrete.
• The computers have a joystick mouse.
• There's magnifying software built-in.
• You can also point-and-click with eye movements.

Who's Selling Us?

One of the continual frustrations in having any disability must be who is selling you stuff, and why.

Without a disability the motivations are clear. People are trying to make a dollar. Competition keeps them relatively honest. At least the dishonest ones (attention "opportunity seekers") are fairly easy to ferret out.

But disabled markets don't have that kind of intense competition. Finances are constrained, insurance is always a question, and it may be that the patient isn't even making the buying decision. (It could be a doctor or family member, or that drat insurance outfit.)

A Tale of Two Chairs

ActionOnline has two posts today about wheelchair design, which represent the hard choices facing every handicapped person on a budget.

First there is the Action Chair designed by Randy Kwapis for his son, Matt. It looks like any other chair. What makes it different is a shock absorber that lets it go through grass and over sidewalk cracks easily.

Kwapis designed the chair so his son could play, and it's a great little chair. The company that now sells the chair as the AC-2 is called Mobility Sports, and he's continuing to try to improve it, for example allowing it to fit easily in a car.

It's not a cheap chair (no price is listed on the Web site) but in production quantities it should be affordable.

JAWS for Jim

I hadn't really heard from Jim since his second wedding.

But I knew things hadn't gone well. She left him. His alcoholism became totally disabling. He was living in a group home in South Georgia, his daughter living with the ex, grown now, working in a fast food shop and hoping to get into Junior College.

It was gratifying this morning to hear he is recovering. He's four years sober. He even works sometimes. That's thanks to JAWS, a collection of screen reading applications from Freedom Scientific of St. Petersburg.

Jim, you see, is now totally blind.

Another Form of Computer Assist

We often think of assistive technology as meaning systems that allow folks with disabilities to use computers.

But it's a lot more than that.

It can also mean computerized systems that make life for the disabled more livable.

One quick example today, from the United Spinal Association blog.

Terry Moakley, the group's historian, notes that a computer measuring seat pressure, which became a traveling seat clinic, was a life-changing technology for many people.

Most people who can't walk also can't feel their butts. They may stay in the same position for days, in a seat that puts pressure on one place more than others. They may develop horrible bed sores, until the only way to get through is to stay in bed, to become truly inactive.

He writes:

Our veteran members could have their seating pressure checked, and then either through adjustment to the personal wheelchair or a prescription for a better cushion, be empowered to sit in the wheelchair appropriately. “Weight shifts” in the chair every 15 minutes are still highly recommended by therapists (by mine just two weeks ago), but I’m betting that seating pressure computer saved our members thousands of days of bed rest, having prevented many pressure sores.

IBM Makes IAccessible2 A Free Standard

Blind people have a friend in IBM.

Big Blue has an Application Program Interface (API) called IAccessible2, and donated it to the Free Standards Group, the same folks who control Linux.

Here's what the release states:

IAccessible2 makes it easier for assistive technologies to provide those with disabilities access to advanced features in software programs — such as editing functions, tables, hyperlinks, charts and menus — found in rich Browser applications based on AJAX, DHTML, and WAI-ARIA, and desktop applications based on the OpenDocument Format (ODF).

What it means is that the Linux open source operating system and Open Office open source application suite will now have a standard for screen readers and magnifiers, so the blind and nearly-blind can use  advanced Web applications and authoring software.

How to Make the Web Accessible

A recent study by Nomensa, the English accessible technology consultant, found that 97% of Web sites fail to provide even rudimentary accessibility features for the disabled. 

The guidelines included written descriptions of graphics, reliance on Javascript (which screen readers can't handle) and (perhaps most important) failure to follow industry Web standards in their programming code. Some 98% of Web sites were dinged on that.

You can see how your own site stacks up by using WebeXact, from Watchfire.

But the blog FlippingHeck says there are some rudimentary things you can do, looking at your own code, to help, "such as using ALT tags on images, TITLE tags on links and sensibly naming (and labeling) form fields."

The solution to the problem, of course, is to take this out of the hands of ordinary users. Blogs like Typepad, for instance, use WYSIWYG editors, so that the actual HTML is obscured from the user. Yes, you can edit it yourself (and sometimes I do) but asking people to do this regularly on grounds of accessibility is too much to ask -- even in countries with laws mandating it.

What's the solution?

Eye on AudioEye

AudioEye is a great example of the promise and perils in accessibility technolgoy.

Simply put, AudioEye reads you the text on a Web page and gives you audio prompts for navigation. It defines its potential market broadly, including dyslexics, foreigners, and baby boomers (76 million of 'em) in its target market.

The problem is that the software must be implemented on both the server and client ends. And the client requires both MS Windows and IE 5.0 -- no Mac or open source for you. The result is a highly-proprietary solution used by very few sites, and useful to only a very small number of people. Yet this claims to be a mass market audio solution.

It's not. In the end a proprietary solution is just that, proprietary. AudioEye, like many other companies in this market, is mere Microsoft Astroturf, hoping for force governments to support its proprietary Windows standard and ignore the emerging world of open source.

The Microsoft Fraud

Each time a new version of Microsoft Windows comes out we get the same yadda-yadda-yadda about it being accessible to those with disabilities.

In fact, what made Massachusetts reverse its mandatory support for the Open Document Format (ODF) early this year was a Microsoft claim that the mandate would discriminate against those with disabilities. Screen magnifiers are usually proprietary and don't always support the ODF, while they do support Microsoft's proprietary format.

In this way the accessibility community becomes just another arm of Microsoft marketing and captive to the interests of proprietary software companies.

It doesn't have to be that way. In fact it shouldn't be that way.

What We Are About - II

If my eleven-year street brawl with Parkinson's has taught me anything, it's that old and rigid thinking still prevails in the ADL product/service business model.

This, of course, will change dramatically over the course of the next twenty years as Baby Boomers age and die, but for the near term there is still a paucity of even the most basic technology used in maintaining the quality of life for those of us who find ourselves to be - through no fault of our own - chronically ill, disabled or frail and aging.

Don't believe me? Join me at the assisted living facility where I've lived for four years (Don't forget your VCR) on a holiday . . .a day when many of the residents are taken to a child's home or restaurant for dinner. Watch the enormous difficulty the resident has getting in and out of a $90,000 Mercedes or $22,000 Honda and you begin to understand the scope of the problem.

MKB

What We Are About

This blog is designed to fill an enormous need in the market.

Until now there was no free Web publication covering the technology people need to be productive despite their disabilities.

Today's world of computing assumes you have two eyes, good ears, 10 fingers, and the fine manipulation required by a mouse.

Millions don't, and every year millions more join them.

Their challenges differ. Some, like my mom, are blind. Others are deaf, or paralyzed. Others suffer from disease.

But every mind should be whole when it reaches this world. There is nothing preventing it, save money, effort, and (perhaps most important) knowledge.

It is this last gap A-Tech Review will fill.

We will cover the news of this industry. We will identify the vendors and their products. We will review those products. And we will advocate for you, the customer, the client. The person who counts.

To learn more, click below: