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. 

AT Help for Dementia

Laurie Blanchard has been helping compile some great resources at her Long Term Care blog.

Today she offers help on one of the least-noticed areas in assistive technology, dementia.

We are accustomed to looking at assistive technologies helping the blind, the deaf, even the paralyzed. Those with mental problems, we think, not so much.

But that's not true. There are products that can help these people, too. The site's product listings are divided into groups:

• prompts and reminders.
• communication
• leisure
• communication

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.

Web 2.0 For All

One continuing frustration is the lag between technical improvements and their adaptation for disabled users. (Image from AndyBudd.)

The Apple iPhone, for instance, does not meet the requirements of Section 255 in the Federal Communications Act. That means your needs haven't been considered, and you really shouldn't be considering it.

As Chairman Mal (the newest addition to our blogroll) notes,

I’m still waiting for access to I Tunes and those nifty little I Pods.  During the ice storm last week, I thought there might be a chance this could happen, but hell froze over with no word from Apple!

The same problem exists with the improvements known as Web 2.0.

Is the iPhone Really a Step Forward?

The Apple iPhone is considered a giant step forward in user interface design.

But is that true for everyone?

Just like current phones, the iPhone features tiny icons. While it can be programmed for voice commands, that programming requires good vision -- it can't be done by voice alone.

The sad fact is that the cellular revolution has happened with almost no input, and no attention paid, to those with disabilities. It's a welter of proprietary designs and interfaces. When you change phones you lose everything you put into the old one.

And from here the iPhone doesn't really look different.

The IBM-Microsoft Battle

A recent Associated Press feature on assistive technology for the Web makes casual note of the continuing IBM-Microsoft rivalry in this area, without giving it the emphasis it deserves.

Many Web 2.0 features can be very difficult for blind users. What are you supposed to do about text that appears only when your mouse scrolls over it, or the welter of keywords, each a different size (depending on how common it is) you find on many sites today?

The story goes into detail about how IBM's iAccessible2 is, through programs like Firefox, making such content accessible. But only near the end does it even mention the real problem:

For now, programmers and assistive technology vendors still have to figure out how to incorporate [Microsoft] User Interface Automation with other technologies, including iAccessible2.

This at least is the heart of the problem.

Threat of the Gadget Decade

This is the gadget decade.

Technology progress today is defined by client devices, gadgets like the iPod, the cellphone and the like.

This is good for Apple Computer Inc. (now Apple Inc.) but it can be very bad for the assistive technology community.

Take the new Able Planet Able Talker for example. Please.

On the surface, this is a very good thing indeed. It's a noise-filtering microphone that can link to a headphone and deliver clear sounds from up to 35 feet away.

It's also hopelessly proprietary.

Everything about it is proprietary. The way it works is proprietary. The way it transmits data is proprietary.

That means, when it becomes obsolete, you're stuck. More important, it means you can't really connect this device to anything else. You can't improve it. You can't access its innards, and neither can anyone else.

The Thin Edge of the Wedge

Assistive and adaptive technology are not a unitary market.

They are a collection of mini-markets, with products offering a wide variety of help from minor to major, across a wide field of disabilities.

Today I want to briefly discuss one of the mildest such disabilities, the thin edge of the wedge if you will.  Specifically, dyslexia.

I have a child with dyslexia. We used a variety of computer software tools to try and help her. But it was eventually something beyond tech, the skills of a trained teacher, that changed her life. We learned that there are a variety of ways to learn -- by seeing, by hearing, by doing -- and that our daughter was a highly tactile learner. She had to get her hands on the letters and their relationship to one another. One of our most effective techniques was to spread shaving cream on our glass dining table and have her spell words into it.

A Promising Acquisition

One good way to boost assistive technology is to have technologies from other parts of the market acquired by folks who can bring them to the assistive market.

That seems to be the case with this week's deal by Nuance Communications of Burlington Mass. to acquire MobileVoiceControl, based in Mason, Ohio.

MobileVoiceControl makes a system that lets Blackberry users access features of their units without typing on its quirky keyboard. Nuance launched its Nuance Mobile Platform last month, aiming to do the same thing with a wide variety of mobile devices. The hope is the smaller company's system can be deployed generally.

In making its announcement Nuance noted most phones' data interfaces are kludgy. Users have to go through many menus to do even simple things, since the phones only have 12 keys (plus some function keys).

But there is more to it than that.Nuance also owns Dictaphone and Dragon, the leading general voice technology outfits. Nuance is involved heavily in the health market, through Dictaphone. And every blind user is facing the equivalent of a 12-key keypad when they try to access the Web.

There is enormous hope in this deal, if Nuance takes full advantage of it.

The Words Drop and Bucket Come to Mind

The University of Delaware is trumpeting a $600,000 grant for three years of disability computing assistance.

Delaware is a relatively small state, but the words drop and bucket still come to mind.

The director of DATI, the Delaware Assistive Technology Initiative, which includes 19 state agencies, called the grant "fiscally and environmentally responsible." What she means by that is a lot of the money will go to re-use existing assistive technology equipment.

Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't really provide anything new to anyone. And you get photo ops with people claiming the problem is solved. When it's not.

Cheap and Open

In order for assistive, adaptive and accessibility technology to be effective in meeting the needs of all those who need it, it needs to be inexpensive and, more important, open.

I'm not talking here about open source. I'm talking about open protocols, which allow all applications to take advantage of hardware and software remediation.

This is a new idea. I think it is embodied in the Microsoft UI Automation system we discussed yesterday (although you always have to note the fine print). But low-priced, even free tools are also important here, and you won't find a better directory to them than at Paul Hami's site on Edublogs, which I have just added to the blogroll here.

Hero or Villain?

I am trying to decide today whether Rob Sinclair is a hero or a villain to the assistive technology community. (Picture from IEEE Spectrum, which credits Houghton Mifflin.)

I am inclined toward the former view, but hear the other side before deciding.

IEEE Spectrum has a profile of Sinclair the hero this month. He is the head of the accessible technology group at Microsoft. In that job he has added many good things to Microsoft Vista, the new version of Windows introduced late last year. These include "enhanced                 screen magnification, voice control, and dictation, plus                 improved compatibility with third-party assistive                 technology products."

All good things.

Perhaps the most important contribution Sinclair has made is the Microsoft User Interface Automation model. The idea is to let any application talk to any assistive technology through a set of APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces. Best of all, Sinclair wants to expand the use of MUIA, making an industry standard so it can be used with Macs and Linux systems.

So what's the problem?

Always-On Is Here

I have long advocated what I call "The World of Always On."

The idea is to use a WiFi network as a technology platform, connecting sensors with analysis via the Internet so that we have better control over our homes, our possessions, and our independent lives.

This last niche, medical monitoring, is finally coming to market through two companies (so far), Quiet Care and Lusora.

Both are similar platforms. Wireless sensors (fairly large in the case of QuietCare) are placed near doors, and next to such things as refrigerators and medicine cabinets. These detect the patient's motions through the house during the day, and send results to a PC in the home. That PC, in turn, then reports to a central server over the Internet.

The sensors keep their clocks going and quickly learn about the patient's habits -- when they wake up, how they move about. This database is then matched against current actions, and if there's a discrepancy a quick phone call may take care of things. Or a visit from a care-giver may be required. Or the ambulance. Lusora adds a "panic button," usually a necklace, which patients can use themselves to call for help at any time.

This is literally a 'killer app' in that it can save your life of the life of someone close to you. And it's much less expensive than hiring a full time home care worker.

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.

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.)

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.

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