Inspired by BBC's Technologies on the rise in 2008

Each time I see predictions for new technologies, I wonder how long it will be until they are accessible. Perhaps 2008 will be better than previous years - let's take a look at the technologies listed in the BBC's Technologies on the rise in 2008 and make some accessibility predictions for the upcoming year.

THE WEB TO GO

"Google announced its Gears application whilst Adobe launched Air and Microsoft released Silverlight." I haven't looked at Gears and Air, but there is hope that they will be accessible (good folks work at both companies) but SilverLight is an accessibility disappointment. Let's hope version 2 straightens things out.

Accessibility prediction: Accessibility will be incorporated into each technology but the majority of developers won't use accessibility features. Development tools won't check for accessibility issues so developers won't know or think to address them.

What can you do? Put ATAG and WCAG into developers' hands.

ULTRA MOBILE PCs

"...towards the end of 2007 a series of new products started to hit shelves. The most talked about was the Asus EEE, a sub-£200 laptop about the size of a hardback book."

The EEE runs Linux - while I've not played with LSR or GNOME accessibility, at least there is an open source movement.

"Apple is even rumoured to be launching ultra-thin Macbooks using flash in 2008." - assuming that the universal access features of leopard are all that apple claims they are, the future of the ultra mobile pc looks bright.

Accessibility prediction: Ultra mobile pcs will be an inexpensive platform for the replacement to mobile assistive technologies and augmentative communication devices that currently cost hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars.

IPTV

More homes have broadband connections and speeds are increasing, "As a result, more and more internet protocol television services are being launched." I hope currently captioned programs will continue to be, but one look at YouTube -with its thousands of hours of uncaptioned video - and I shake in my boots. Although, there is hope: CNET is captioning all of its programs.

Accessibility prediction: Thousands more hours of uncaptioned video and few described videos.

What can you do? Learn about captioning services and tools and incorporate captioning into your workflow. Refer to WCAG 2.0 Related Resources for Captions and WCAG 2.0 Related Resources for Audio Description.

WIMAX

No issues that I'm aware of.

Accessibility prediction: None that I can think of. Any ideas? Matt says, "location-based services" and pointed me to Andrew WiMAX Location Information Server. Sweet! Wonder what the Geeze has to say about that.

MOBILE VOIP

Accessibility prediction: As long as the interface is accessible, should be awesome. I assume people with hearing loss or who are deaf will continue to chat and text. Any issues here that I'm not aware of?

What are your predictions for 2008?

Art and language

From the L.A. Times: A new film about a troupe of disabled performers delivers a message of empowerment.

As I read the first paragraphs of the story, I dreaded that the director, Liu Xiao Cheng, was using disadvantaged people for his personal gain. But, as I read further, it seems he genuinely wants to change how people think about abilities.

"It wasn't enough for this troupe to arouse people's mercies," he said. "We wanted their respect."

As I reread the article, it is the columnist's use of language that triggers feelings of bias, "blind dancers," "deaf dancers," "blind singers." By saying, "blind dancer" he focuses on the disability, rather than the person. By removing "hearing-impaired" from "host" in the following paragraph, the theme can sing:

At each performance, a host uses sign language to express the troupe's theme -- that it does not take sight or hearing or full physical faculties to produce gorgeous art.

Beautiful.

Rulings and olympics and online media captioning, oh my!

It's been an emotional two days in the world of accessibility.

I've been reading reactions to the judge's ruling that Target should stand trial and I looked at the site this morning - the one that includes "several improvements" that were made in reaction to the suit. I keep expecting someone to say, "Just kidding! We uploaded this site from the wayback machine, circa 1998. Here's our standards-based design over here...."

I keep coming back to these two paragraphs from "Court Rules Against Target in Web Site Accessibility Lawsuits" by Evan Schuman:

As for the Target argument that many of the purchases were ultimately made, albeit with help, the judge offered a different perspective. "Certainly, forced reliance on other people is injurious in many respects. Again, Target responds that none of these (consumers) were absolutely prohibited from entering the Target stores and making purchases as a result of the [Web site]'s inaccessibility. According to Target, these shoppers merely experienced inconvenience," Hall ruled. "Target contends that equal convenience is not required by ADA. Therefore, the fact that (the suing consumers) spent more time to accomplish the same tasks as sighted persons and required assistance from in-store personnel or guides does not render the stores inaccessible."

The judge continued: "Like its argument that deterrence does not constitute inaccessibility, this argument, too, is overbroad. A wheelchair user is not prohibited from entering a store without a ramp: [T]hat person could be carried into the store by the store personnel or hire a guide to do so. Nevertheless, those accessibility barriers, even where they may be accommodated, would generally violate the ADA. Similarly, the increased cost and time to surmount the alleged barriers presented by the inability to pre-shop demonstrate that these (consumers) have met the class definition. Target's reliance upon their ability to accommodate blind shoppers through other means, such as in-store assistance or a 1-800 customer service number is misplaced at this stage. As the court noted at the outset of this litigation, the method of accommodation is an affirmative defense."

I'll let that percolate for a couple days...a post about "accessiblity vs usability" is likely the result.

On the other hand, the Special Olympics Summer World Games opened yesterday and I'm just now watching the rebroadcast. Over 7,000 people from 165 countries? With that many people raising that much accessibility energy in one area of the planet maybe there's hope for us yet. (Do you suppose the golden dragon who delivered the magical ball of light to the woman in the orange boat floating above the blue sea of dancers was audio described for the folks unable to see the performance?)

In other news, "AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! Unite to Advance Online Media Captioning." Yes, please.

More later, I'm off to the university to hear T.V. Raman speak.

universally accessible play area

universally accessible play area
Originally uploaded by anneke boudreau

We recently traveled to the midwest to visit family. Since we were traveling with a 2 year old, we stopped at as many playgrounds as time would allow.

Two of them were accessible. The photos that I took of the play areas didn't turn out, but they both had a ramp that allowed access to the play structure (the towers, steering wheels, and other toys on the walls of the enclosure, as well as the tops of the slides and stairs). The play area in Michigan also had an English alphabet panel. With each letter was the American Sign Language hand gesture and the Braille character.

"Access to Play Areas" lists a variety of reasons to make play areas accessible.

A playground should not just be accessible for children. It should be accessible for adults with disabilities as well. At times there may be teachers, parents, or even grandparents at the play area that may have disabilities and need to access different elements of the play area should children using the equipment need support, supervision, or first aid.

Most importantly, an accessible play environment allows for social integration to still take place. Children naturally form play groups. Play areas that are inaccessible prohibit children with disabilities from fully participating in the group.

Once again, accessible design benefits a variety of users and strengthens our social fabric.

Add to my to-do list

clipped from www.456bereastreet.com Overall the examples keep the promise the book makes in that they are creative, standards compliant and up-to-date, but there is just a little bit too much inaccessible image replacement going on for my taste. Not a huge problem, but I would have liked to see at least one example of image replacement that has a fallback for when images aren’t available, or at least a mention of the issue to make the reader aware of it.

captions

One of the coolest things about academia is free access to Lexis-Nexis. Each week I search for "accessibility" and never tire at the interesting things I stumble upon. A couple weeks ago, it was an article in Game Developer magazine that ends:

It's important to keep in mind that game accessibility isn't strictly about contributing to the gaming experience of disabled gamers. As Reid Kimball, creator of the Doom3[CC] mod and a colleague of mine at LucasArts, states, "GA equals 'games for all,' in my opinion," and that's a sentiment commonly found throughout the GA community. Closed captions can help younger children learn to read, clarify foreign language or heavily accented dialog, and add an additional important piece of gameplay feedback for a richly immersive environment. For designers, audio-only gameplay represents a largely unexplored area of game design. [From AUDIO ACCESSIBILITY, Jesse Harlin]

Cue the dreamy music as I leave the real world with its uncaptioned youtube videos and I enter into my utopic dream world where "We are the web" + scrabulous + dotsub.com + Amazon Mechanical Turk = a community-driven process that rewards people for writing and synchronizing captions.

Ten-second test

My husband and I have been role playing - heh. He's an executive at a manufacturing company and I'm a universal design/accessibility advocate. We have mock conversations where I try a new sales pitch and he tells me why it won't work. Yesterday, I thought I had the perfect pitch - he wasn't shooting it down and was asking great questions, until wham! I veered off into technobabble about CSS. "You had me until you started talking technical. Frankly, I don't care. I have people for that. I am putting out so many fires each day that you need to make this one of the hottest or we won't get to it. I want to look at my site, see what's wrong, and know what needs to be done to fix it."

And, that's the issue that we - accessibility advocates - have faced for....ever. Today, as I read Launching Your Online Community: How Not to Get Killed, I realized that we need a ten-second test or at least a ten-second pitch that will sell an executive on the idea of standards-based universal design....or at least be interesting enough that he or she will put someone to work on it. The quest continues....