A-Tech Review

Make Accessibility Standard in Software

Accessibility needs to become a standard offering on Web page authoring tools. Right now, it's so difficult to maintain sites responding to screen readers that hardly anyone does so.

As Darrell Shandrow at Blind Access Journal notes, even the U.S. Senate can't meet the standards. There are great free tools out there like WebXact which can measure whether a site measures up, and the Web Access Initiative offers advice, but we really need software.

Technology for Kids with LD

A blogger at Yahoo 360 has posted about technology for kids with learning disabilities.

I wish to comment on that here because I actually have some experience in this area.

Our daughter (right) was born with dyslexia. It was diagnosed at age 7. When she was 3, I remember sitting her down before a game called "Fun With Letters and Words", having her hit the keys and watch letters and words appear on a DOS screen. I never connected the dots. She would hit the same key again-and-again, she would finish a level and then repeat it, again-and-again. Something wasn't getting through.

What Cellular Teaches Assistive Technology

What is most vital in creating an active market is real competition. (Picture from Vision Connection.)

This is a problem in assistive technology, where we usually have maybe one and one half competitors. That is, Microsoft delivers, and open source tries to catch up. Those are the only two choices. Thus Microsoft is able to use its technology lead to dictate to those needing assistive technologies, then use their needs to dictate to the rest of the market.

Thus it doesn't matter that there are multiple vendors within the Microsoft space, in, say, screen readers. There aren't enough to create a competitive market, because they are all working on the same platform.

If open source could match Microsoft, feature-for-feature, and match Microsoft's delivery schedule, date-for-date, and if open source were also as able to innovate on behalf of its customers as Microsoft has been, then we would have a competitive market, even if Apple never entered it.

How Useful is EyePoint?

If you have a neck injury but retain use of your fingers, you can get relief at the computer by using EyePoint, a system recently developed at Stanford. (Thanks to Access on Main Street for pointing me to it.) The demonstration above, posted at YouTube, describes the system.

EyePoint works using a four-part process. You look at a page, you press a key, you look again and you press a second key. There aren't the multiple mouseclicks that disturb people with carpal-tunnel syndrome, and you're actually getting work, not just sight, from your eye glances.

The Importance of PDF Equalizer

One of the most important bits of assistive technology around may be PDF Equalizer. It's from Premier Assistive, which has been in business since 1998.

As the name implies this is a tool for dealing with Adobe PDF files. PDFs are commonly used for reports posted on the Web, and in electronic books.

One of the big problems with PDFs is that they're highly complex. They don't have to be linear like book pages. They can have nested charts, links, dependencies of all sorts. These are quickly apparent to those with sight, but to those without it's not so obvious.

So it's not enough that software support reading the text of a PDF to you. If it just does that, you've lost most of the meaning. Given the technical nature of many PDF documents, plain reading won't really help you.

So PDF Equalizer does a whole lot more.

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.

Europe Takes the Lead in TeleMedicine

Medical help delivered by the Internet is going to be a huge industry, absolutely huge. A small investment in this research today can reap enormous dividends. And much of the chip and networking technology needed was developed in the U.S.

But we're giving that lead away, because it's Europe that is making the investment.

A 20-member consortium dubbed the SOPRANO Project is going to put 12 million Euros into practical investigations of what I call Always-On technology.

The World of Always On, which consumed many of my efforts in 2003-2004, posits using a WiFi network as a platform for applications which live in the air. RFID chips, sensors, and motes in our environment, and in us, constantly report via wireless data radio to programs that are always-on, perhaps in the WiFi router itself. These programs analyze the data, and give alerts when conditions warrant, perhaps to the patient, or a caregiver, a doctor, or an ambulance.

In the SOPRANO Project 600 people across Europe will test the technologies, aiming to find solutions that work, user interfaces that are comfortable, and an a defined application platform that can then be used by industry.

Fast Help for Disabled Learners

People who teach kids with disabilities, whether physical, intellectual, or merely learning, have a tough time coming up with aids they know will work, in-time to use them.

There are, when you break it down, so many things that people must learn to be successful -- reading, writing, arithmetic, critical thinking -- and teachers are really given very little time to teach it all because most kids pick it all up naturally, and only have to be presented the information in order to get going.

Open source getting its assistive act together

The open source movement is starting to get its assistive technology act together.

The latest version of the Linux Screen Reader, which runs in the GNOME operating environment (there's another graphical user interface for Linux called KDE), is now out.

Version 0.4 now supports such things as Braille output, cyclic commands (as when you touch a key multiple times to get information on a Web 2.0 site), and its own icon, which can tell you (or others) when it is running.

Now want to get even more bang for your assistive technology buck?

Stop being victims, become advocates

It is vital that in every area of assistive technology, patients avoid the role of victim and become advocates.

Here's a good case study of what's possible.

Doug Rose is a tech writer for a small California paper called the Times-Standard. He's also blind. In addition to his reporting, he and his wife  Patti are members of the  region's technology consortium.