A-Tech Review

What Will iCreate?

Singapore has decided to take the lead in assistive technology.

Its International Convention for Rehabilitation Engineering & Assistive Technology (i-Create) will be held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Singapore from April 24-26.

The conference is being held in conjunction with the 1st Tan Tock Seng Hospital, and will combine work on helping disabled work effectively with work on helping them become as able as possible.

The Importance (And Danger) Of A Warm COAT

The Blind Bookworm reports that some 45 organizations -- state, local, and federal -- have gathered together into a grand coalition they are calling the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology, or COAT for short. (The coat at the right is from the 18th century. Why will become obvious.)

COAT has some big dreams:

• Extend disability protections to the Internet, forcing Web sites to support assistive technology.
• Make all TV-like devices support closed captioning.
• Apply closed captioning to IPTV
• Restore video description rules that were knocked out by the courts, and extend them into digital TV.
• Extend relay service taxes to VOIP
• Require accessible interfaces on all consumer devices.
• Demand accessibility for 911 services.
• Get Universal Service Fund money for people with disabilities.
  

One Ring To Rule Them All

There are so many disabilities, and their needs contradict. Getting them onto the same technology page may be impossible.

So Mike Davies, a leader in trying to build accessibility technology into open source through Isolani, has come to believe. (The ad, on behalf of Joe Clark's Accessibility Research Project, is from Mike's site.)

Recently Davies called out some of the groups he feels haven't met user needs:

GAWDS has failed. Accessifyforum has failed. Accessites is fundamentally flawed. WCAG 2.0 is in trouble.

Naturally, a spirited discussion followed. Mike was quoted, writing "we need a community of people working on the Web (as a content producer, as a browser - or plugin - vendor, as an assistive technology provider), focused on accessibility. And that we simply don't have." Some users attacked Mike while others, like Mike Cherim, defended the efforts he derided.

The truth is something common to open source. Money. Money is needed to get work done, to have that work incorporated into Web standards, and to turn that work into Web sites that are accessible to all.

The money's failure to materialize in the free market is a chicken-and-egg problem. We want something to invest in. I need money to create that. You need protection for the resulting IP to get the money. Which takes you out of the Web standards game entirely, because imposing a fee for using Web standards is just impractical.

Open Source piggy-backing just for you

Since I write about open source as part of my living, I have to admit Microsoft's dominance in assistive technology is galling.

But this is more so.

Sun is bragging that its new ODF Converter, which will move files between the Open Office ODF format and that of Microsoft Office, is its big contribution to assistive technology.

"Right now, our focus is to ensure that people using assistive devices are able to join in with OpenDocument workflows," Simon Phipps (right), chief open-source officer at Sun said. "Because Microsoft hasn't published interfaces for those devices to use, they are all hard-wired to Office 2003, and their users can't migrate to other software."

That's spin, Simon. You're blaming Microsoft for not having interfaces, as an excuse for your piss-poor performance in delivering any assistive help in your product category. So you expect blind, deaf and/or handicapped users to all grab Open Office and your converter software, rather than use Office, which has that support natively?

Know Your Rights and Sue for Assistive Technology

You have a right to software you can use, regardless of your disability.

There are a number of laws asserting this, as Deafgeek notes.

The Americans with Disabilities Act, The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.  The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004. The Rehabilitation Amendments -- they are all there to be used.

Trouble is they are not used often enough.

More Than Words Are Needed

Following its Florida conference last week, the Assistive Technology industry Association hosted a full-day of gab in Orlando, where corporate executives tried to talk things up.

IBM was the main driver of the program, and the result was a business case with numbers like these:

• 155 million people in the U.S. need accessibility technologies of some type.
• Disabled Americans represent $175 billion in discretionary income.

Big numbers. But if the opportunity is so enormous, why are so few corporations pursuing it?

The reason is that this market, by its nature, does not speak for itself. Most of those who speak for the disabled are advocates, who speak from a non-profit or government viewpoint. They mainly see this area as a cost, not as an opportunity.

When your body is locked in a nursing home, or you are locked in your own home by blindness or paralysis, it's very hard to turn that buying power into a market force which must be respected.

Until the people within this market gain more control of their money, and demand entry to the mainstream, this won't change.

So I have the most optimism here regarding the aging of America, especially the baby boomers (of which I am one). We are accustomed to whining, to demanding action and holding out vast sums of money to those who meet our needs.

What Microsoft Has Done Right

Regular readers here know I have a tendency to bash Microsoft.

But there's something they're doing right, something very important.

They are bringing out all their accessibility features with Windows Vista and Office 2007 alongside the launch of the software.

This is especially important with regards the operating system. Microsoft has been working for three years on this release and hundreds of application programs will come out alongside it. These programs, too, can be expected to have accessibility features implemented.