A-Tech Review

How to really celebrate Disability Awareness Day

Tomorrow, at Cal State Sacramento, they will be holding a Disability Awareness Day.

There will be technology demonstrations and " a tour of the Services to Students with Disabilities High Tech Center located in the Academic Information Resource Center, Rooms 2010 and 2011."

I know. I'm so excited I could plotz.

This is the kind of self-congratulatory group hug we usually see from well-meaning people, It's show-and-tell. And I should add, before continuing to sound snarky, that the University of California system is the most advanced in the world, when it comes to delivering assistive technology solutions to students.

But here are some alternate activities:

The Global Opportunity of Always-On

What I call Always-On technology, sensors and monitors using a wireless network as an application platform, sounds like science fiction. It also sounds like an opportunity that can only be real in the most advanced countries, like the U.S. and Japan.

But that is simply not the case.

The Singapore blog Dream Ink details some of the real opportunities, in discussing the need to treat seniors better:

• China will have 174 million senior citizens aged over 60 in 2010, and the number will peak in 2030 when the national population hits 1.5 billion.
• About 80 million Indians — more than the entire population of Britain — are over 60 at present. This figure is projected to touch 100 million by 2013 and 198 million by 2030.

Singapore itself now has 291,000 elderly and this number will double by 2020.

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.
  

Government Support for Assistive Tech Falling

The need for assistive technology limits one's ability to make a living, and may eliminate it.

Or, you may find yourself at a Catch-22. You don't have money, you can get money if you have assistive technology, but you don't have money.

This is a good job for government, but governments have other priorities.

A recent UN Survey showed that only half the world's governments had made progress, over the last 10 years, in meeting 22 key goals for assistive technology. Even in those countries that have made progress, as Inclusive Technologies notes, progress has been piecemeal.

And it's going to get more piecemeal. A blog for speech pathologists, called What Do You Hear What Do You Say, reports that many programs for the disabled have their funding slashed in the 2008 budget submitted by President Bush.