[gui-talk] Fwd: E-Access Bulletin: Issue 119, November 2009

[Steve Pattison]

 From:    Dan Jellinek dan at headstar.com
 To:      eaccess at headstar.com

++E-ACCESS BULLETIN
Access To Technology For All, Regardless Of Ability
- ISSUE 120, December 2009.

A Headstar Publication.
http://www.headstar.com/eab/ .

Please forward this free bulletin to others (subscription details at the
end). We conform to the accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN)
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++Issue 120 Contents.

01: Call For Compliance With UN Convention Covering ICT Rights
- Disability groups must monitor nations' actions, analyst says.

02: UK's First Educational e-Book Library Launched Online
- Alternative format text-books available to registered students.

03: Automatic Captions Added To YouTube Videos
- Speech recognition system enhances access for deaf users.

News in Brief: 04: New Wheelies - acclaimed disability-themed
Second Life nightclub reopens; 05: Borderless World - Russian social
networking portal for disabled people; 06: Egypt Debate - access and
diversity session at Internet Governance Forum.

Section Two: 'The Inbox' - Readers' Forum.
07: Invisible Loan - 'Sonata' web radio offer confirmed; 08: Microsoft
Suspense - email merry-go-round on accessible e-books; 09:
Oneformat Update - browser style sheets.

Section Three: Focus - Global Accessibility Policy.
10: Technology Changes, Civil Rights Do Not: The UN Convention on
Rights of Persons with Disabilities is at the heart of renewed pressure
on states and companies worldwide to ensure people with disabilities
have access to information and communications technologies. But its
implementation will have to be monitored carefully to ensure
maximum impact, says Cynthia Waddell.

[Contents ends].


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[Sponsored Notice ends]


++Section One: News.

+01: Call For Compliance With UN Convention Covering ICT Rights.

Disability rights groups, organisations working with people with
disabilities and all other interested parties must carefully monitor their
home nations' compliance with the UN Convention on Rights of
Persons with Disabilities to ensure moves towards more accessible
information and communications technologies (ICT) do not fall by the
wayside, one of the world's leading accessibility analysts writes in this
month's E-Access Bulletin.

Cynthia Waddell, Executive Director of The International Center for
Disability Resources on the Internet (ICDRI - http://www.icdri.org/ ),
says the Convention entered into legal force in May 2008 and starting
next year, 2010, all states that have ratified it will be required to report
to the UN Committee on Rights of Persons with Disabilities on
measures taken to meet its accessible ICT obligations.

The Convention has helped to create a paradigm shift in the exercise of
the rights of people with disabilities in the use of ICT, Waddell says,
with many provisions relating to ICT availability, affordability and
accessibility through principles of 'universal design'. "But it is one
thing to have a law or policy, and another to implement it.if the UN
Convention is to succeed, then its monitoring provisions need to be
followed. The Convention requires the signatory states to designate
focal points within each country to assist in implementation and
monitoring. I encourage you to find out who the designated focal
points are in your country and to contribute your voice to the
Convention implementation effort and the country Monitoring Report."

The ongoing controversy over the Kindle 2 - an electronic book reader
with a text-to-speech feature which has been embroiled in a row over
royalties from what some see as a new 'audio book' format - "reminds
us that the accessible ICT paradigm shift is fragile and can be broken,"
Waddell says.

NOTE: For the full article see Section Three, this issue.

And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=368


+02: UK's First Educational e-Book Library Launched Online.

The UK's first online library of educational textbooks in a range of
digital formats accessible to visually impaired students has been
launched.

'Books for All' is a joint project between The Seeing Ear (
http://www.seeingear.org/ ), a website which provides electronic books
for visually disabled people, and the University of Edinburgh. It allows
authorised and registered teachers and students with visual
impairments to access an online catalogue of alternative format
educational books for free.

Accessible books are uploaded to the database by teachers, and can
then be freely downloaded by other schools or registered users in
formats such as plain text, Word and PDF. Tony Dart, chief executive
of The Seeing Ear, said the system should eliminate the problem of
people across the UK having to convert the same book into a format
accessible for visually impaired students many times. "If a book is a set
text, it's very often converted locally, with varying degrees of quality.
This way, we can have one person upload an e-book to make it
available for everybody."

Dart said that if successful, the project would have a "vast and positive
impact" on accessible e-learning.

There are currently around 100 educational titles available through the
service, and Dart says he hopes this number will increase as more
schools join. Around 250 schools are already registered.

Future plans to improve the service include a collaborative editing
system to correct any mistakes to uploaded texts, and an online
converter to automatically switch between accessible formats as
required.

And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=370


+03: Automatic Captions Added To YouTube Videos.

Google, the owner of video exchange website YouTube, has started
providing automatic captions for some English language videos on the
website, increasing accessibility for deaf users.

The 'auto-caps' system is made possible by Google's own automatic
speech recognition (ASR) technology, working alongside the current
YouTube captioning system.

Although captions are already available on YouTube, it was previously
necessary for the owner of the video to insert them manually - a time-
consuming task, given the sheer number of videos uploaded to the site.

Ken Harrenstien, a Google software engineer who is also deaf, said
recently on the official Google Blog: "Every minute, 20 hours of video
are uploaded. How can we expect every video owner to spend the time
and effort necessary to add captions to their videos? Even with all of
the captioning support already available on YouTube, the majority of
user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like
me."

Google's ASR technology is also being used to make the manual
captioning system on YouTube easier and more efficient to use. 'Auto-
timing' will allow users to caption a video without any specialist
technical knowledge through creation of a simple text file with a
transcript of the video's speech. The ASR then converts this text to
captions by searching for the words at the relevant point in the video.

The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID:
http://www.rnid.org.uk/ ) have supported Google's decision, saying
that all on-demand content should be accessible. RNID director of
external affairs, Emma Harrison, told E-Access Bulletin: "RNID
welcomes Google taking this first step towards making YouTube more
accessible for deaf viewers."

Auto-caps are currently live on a series of educational YouTube
channels (including National Geographic and some American
universities), in order for Google to gather feedback before rolling out
the system on a broader basis. The auto-timing feature is currently
available on all English-language YouTube videos.

And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=372


++News in Brief:

+04: New Wheelies: An award-winning disability-themed nightclub in
the online virtual world Second Life has relaunched with new
sponsorship. First opened in 2006, Wheelies 74 has a dance venue and
activities centre, and will now feature a weekly music and
entertainment schedule for both disabled and non-disabled Second Life
users. The owner of the club, Simon Stevens, controlled the first avatar
to use a virtual wheelchair in Second Life:
http://www.wheelies74.com/

+05: Borderless World: An online social networking portal for
disabled people has been launched in Russia, allowing users to interact
with each other using groups, forums and 'digital maps', and to access
goods and services. Created by Alexandre Gorelik, director of the
United Nations Information Centre in Moscow, the 'Bezgraniz' ('Life
without borders') portal, which includes some English translation,
features collaborative information on a range of subjects including e-
learning, ICT accessibility, jobs, travel and music:
http://www.bezgraniz.com/?s=1024

+06: Egypt Debate: A debate on access and diversity in internet use,
covering topics such as accessibility guidelines, was held at the fourth
annual Internet Governance Forum in Egypt last month. Speakers on
the panel included Shadi Abou-Zahra, activity lead for the World
Accessibility Initiative international programme:
http://bit.ly/67S49V


[Section One ends].


++Section Two: 'The Inbox'
- Readers' Forum.

Please email all contributions or responses to:
inbox at headstar.com .

+07: Invisible Loan: Our article last issue on the UK's first accessible
web radio, 'Sonata', from the charity British Wireless for the Blind
Fund (BWBF) , stated the radios were available on free loan to
registered blind users.

However one reader, Delilah, commented on our blog: "I read this
article with great interest, but cannot find anything on the entire
[BWBF website] http://www.blind.org.uk [saying] that these devices
are on loan free to blind people. It states that if you are registered blind
or visually impaired you do not have to pay VAT. Otherwise the cost is
£343.85 plus further annual charges of £25 each November."

She continues: "Their website does not work in my preferred browser
either. The accessibility pages only give instructions for IE and firefox,
neither of which I like. This is disappointing from a blind charity."

We contacted the charity, and a spokesperson responded to these points
as follows: "Unfortunately the website hasn't been updated to reflect
the fact that it is now available on free permanent loan, but it definitely
is and if your reader is in receipt of a means-tested benefit and doesn't
have a set from us already then she might be eligible for one. I will
chase on getting the website up to date.

"As for the technical comments, this is disappointing to hear and a
group is looking at the website at the moment so I will pass this on and
hopefully it's an issue that will be addressed sooner rather than later."

Further comments please to inbox at headstar.com or direct to the
website:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=363


+08: Microsoft Suspense: In our October issue we published a query
from a reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, about barriers to
downloading accessible electronic books thrown up by international
copyright laws. He wrote that none of the blindness-specific accessible
electronic book players he had found supports the protected Windows
media format, DRM (Digital Rights Management), due to the costs in
licensing.

"Is there a way to play protected file types on non-standard players,
and if not, what can we do to convince Microsoft or the producers of
such players to play these formats?" he asked.

This month we have received an update from the reader, who has
forwarded to us a long sequence of emails (more than a dozen in all)
which followed his own attempts to ask Microsoft directly for answers
to his questions.

The emails are all holding replies from Microsoft representatives and
executives in several countries, carrying such statements as: "It appears
that we are looking for an answer for you. I will contact you when I
receive some information"; and "I am hoping that one of you may be
able to help this gentleman" [an internal email copied to several
people].

As E-Access Bulletin went to press however, the signs were more
hopeful, with a senior executive saying: " Several people [are] looking
at the situation and working on a response to you. I have pinged them
this morning to check on the status of their work. As soon as I hear
back from them, I will let you know when you can expect an answer."

The reader promises to keep us updated.


+09: Oneformat Update: In our January 2009 issue, Diana Monahan of
Moor End Technology College, Huddersfield, wrote in to describe a
problem she met in using the 'Oneformat.com' website, which offers
free accessible web browser style sheets. Diana had said she was "told
by the school software that 'Virus/spyware Troj/Comic-Fam has been
detected.'"

The site's creator, Daljit Singh responded to reassure readers that his
site was safe, and this problem was a software glitch: "Try turning off
the web shield on the anti-virus program while using Oneformat.com."

Now Diana writes in with her further response: "Thank you for chasing
this up. My school is trying to contact Sophus who make the antivirus
to see what can be done as it still says it has detected Troj/Comic-Fam
so [the] school cannot give me access. The local authority use another
anti-virus set-up which was also blocking the site but they checked up
and have now allowed me access to the computer I use at my other
base."


[Further comments please to inbox at headstar.com].

[Section Two ends].


++Section Three: Focus
- Global Accessibility Policy.

+10: Technology Changes, Civil Rights Do Not
by Cynthia Waddell

The UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities addresses
the rights of 650 million persons with disabilities and impacts two
billion persons worldwide, including family members of persons with
disabilities.

Six years in the making, the treaty opened for signatures in March
2007, receiving the highest number of signatories for any UN treaty on
its opening day; and entered into legal force in May 2008.

Starting next year, 2010, all states parties that have ratified the
Convention (including the US, pending Senate ratification) will be
submitting a comprehensive report to the Convention's monitoring
committee, the Committee on Rights of Persons with Disabilities, on
measures taken to meet the accessible ICT obligations of the
Convention.

Some people have expressed surprise that even with the passage of the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, there are still gaps in
the US effort on accessibility. In fact, a gap analysis performed by an
independent federal agency, the National Council on Disability, found
there will be several changes needed to conform US laws and policies
to the obligations of the Convention.

Worldwide, two paradigm shifts brought on by the Convention are
having an impact.

The first is in our basic definition of disability, and how society views
persons with disabilities. No longer is the medical approach valid,
whereby we are viewed as objects of charity, medical treatment and
social protection.

The Convention demonstrates that a shift is underway towards viewing
persons with disabilities as holders of rights. We are individuals who
can claim full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and
fundamental freedoms and full participation in society.

There is also a second significant paradigm shift underway concerning
the exercise of our rights in the use of information and communications
technology (ICT).

The Convention has many provisions that impact the development,
procurement and deployment of ICT products and services, including
ICT availability, ICT affordability and ICT accessibility through
Universal Design.

But it is one thing to have a law or policy, and another to implement it,
as we saw in the US when we tried to implement accessible ICT
practices.

In 1986 Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to ensure
that electronic and information technology would be accessible to
persons with disabilities. But the prohibition against discrimination on
the basis of disability in procurement was difficult to manage because
there was no agreement as to what was meant by the accessible design
of electronic and information technology.

And across the country, we were seeing our investments in assistive
technology being torpedoed as software upgrades in mainstream
technology destroyed compatibility and interoperability with assistive
technologies in use by workers with disabilities.

It was not until 1998 - eight years after the ADA was enacted - that
Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 by strengthening
Section 508 through the Workforce Investment Act. It requires federal
agencies to make their electronic and information technology
accessible to people with disabilities, including all mainstream
technologies procured.

In taking this action, it was recognised that we had to strengthen US
law to define what was meant by accessible design and that we had to
create marketplace incentives for businesses. This civil rights
procurement law was fashioned as a way to enable businesses to
recover their investment in accessibility and at the same time enable us
to lower the cost of expensive customisation.

The US effort was only the beginning of what would become a global
one. Japan, for instance, has been busy addressing accessibility within
the Japanese Industrial Standards.

And at around the same time, in 1997, the World Wide Web
Consortium launched the Web Accessibility Initiative, which has led to
a number of valuable resources including its web accessibility
guidelines.

We also saw the international standards-setting community becoming
increasingly active. For example, since 2004 the ISO/IEC
(International Standards Organization/International Electrotechnical
Commission) JTC1 Special Working Group on Accessibility has been
mapping accessible ICT standards worldwide. For the first time a
systemic review of worldwide standards is underway to identify
standards and to analyse gaps in standards.

Another significant international activity of interest is the effort
underway due to the European Commission Mandate 376 to European
Standardisation Organisations.

Recognising the need for a public procurement policy and practice for
accessible information and communications technology, the mandate
was launched to develop a solution for common requirements and
conformance assessment in accessible ICT. It is expected that this
effort in due course will result in a European standard for accessibility
requirements in the ICT domain to be used as technical specifications.

So there is no question that an accessible ICT paradigm shift is
underway. But now, back to the future. If the UN Convention is to
succeed, then its monitoring provisions need to be followed. The
Convention requires the signatory states to designate focal points
within each country to assist in implementation and monitoring.

I encourage you to find out who the designated focal points are in your
country and to contribute your voice to the Convention implementation
effort and the country Monitoring Report. Cross-disability
representation is vital in all sectors to ensure "Nothing about us,
without us."

The recent and ongoing controversy over the Kindle 2, an electronic
book reader with a text-to-speech feature which has been embroiled in
a row over royalties from what some see as a new 'audio book' format,
reminds us that the accessible ICT paradigm shift is fragile and can be
broken.

Overall, I believe that ICT innovation embracing accessibility will
bring a future of inclusiveness and economic sustainability, with
greater percentages of persons with disabilities working and
contributing to society. The Convention provides us with a framework
for policy and implementation. But this cannot happen without
universal design training in our schools and public policy awareness
across disciplines so that our workforce is knowledgeable about
accessibility and the Convention obligations.

Our investment in accessibility should be no different from any other
ICT requirement. An accessible future is coming because technology
changes, but civil rights do not.

NOTE: Cynthia Waddell is Executive Director of The International
Center for Disability Resources on the Internet (ICDRI -
http://www.icdri.org/ ). This article is an edited extract from her
keynote speech to the RNIB's Techshare 2009 conference in London.

And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=374

[Section Three ends].


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The site has recently been redesigned and the forum system improved.
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[Special notice ends].


++End Notes.

+How to Receive the Bulletin.

To subscribe to this free monthly bulletin, email
eab-subs at headstar.com
with 'subscribe eab' in the subject header. You can list other email
addresses to subscribe in the body of the message. Please encourage all
your colleagues to sign up! To unsubscribe at any time, put
'unsubscribe eab' in the subject header.

Please send comments on coverage or leads to Dan Jellinek at:
dan at headstar.com .

Copyright 2009 Headstar Ltd http://www.headstar.com .
The Bulletin may be reproduced as long as all parts including this
copyright notice are included, and as long as people are always
encouraged to subscribe with us individually by email. Please also
inform the editor when you are reproducing our content. Sections of
the bulletin may be quoted as long as they are clearly sourced as 'taken
from e-access bulletin, a free monthly email newsletter', and our web
site address:
http://www.headstar.com/eab
is also cited.

+Personnel:
Editor - Dan Jellinek.
Reporter: Tristan Parker.
Editorial advisor - Kevin Carey.

ISSN 1476-6337.

[Issue 120 ends.] 

Regards Steve
Email:  srp at internode.on.net
MSN Messenger:  internetuser383 at hotmail.com
Skype:  steve1963
Twitter:  steve9782