[gui-talk] Fwd: E-Access Bulletin, December 2010: Canadian government loses milestone web access case.
Steve Pattison
srp at internode.on.net
Sat Dec 11 22:53:10 UTC 2010
From: Dan Jellinek
++E-ACCESS BULLETIN
Access To Technology For All, Regardless Of Ability
- ISSUE 132, December 2010.
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) Standard:
http://www.headstar.com/ten/ .
++Issue 132 Contents.
01: Canadian Government Loses Milestone Web Access Case
- Donna Jodhan victorious after her ‘rights infringed’.
02: Digital Government ‘Must Not Increase Exclusion’
- Policy advisor speaks out.
03: Free DAISY Book Recorder Software Upgraded.
- New version of open source audio tool.
News in Brief: 04: Standard Lesson – webinar on British web
access standard; 05: Refreshable Apple – Braille keyboard for
iPhone; 06: Third Survey – screen-reader trends questionnaire.
Section Two: Interview Special Feature - Diane Mulligan OBE.
+07: Podcast Pioneer: Diane Mulligan OBE has battled with
adversity to emerge as one of the world’s leading champions of
the rights of people with disabilities, particularly those in the
developing world. In an exclusive interview with E-Access
Bulletin, she explains how new technologies can transform the
lives of the world’s poorest people – and those who work to
help them.
[Contents ends].
++Section One: News.
+01: Canadian Government Loses Milestone Web Access Case.
A blind accessibility consultant has won her case against the
Canadian government for the lack of accessibility on its
websites, the country’s Federal Court has announced.
As reported in last month’s E-Access Bulletin (
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=508 ), Donna Jodhan sued
the Canadian government after she was unable to apply for a
government job online or complete an online census form
without assistance from sighted government employees,
arguing that this breached her rights.
Last week, Justice Michael Kelen returned a verdict in favour
of Jodhan, ruling that the government had infringed the
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by failing to make
its websites fully accessible, and was discriminating against
disabled citizens. The government has now been given 15
months to make its websites accessible for blind and visually
impaired citizens.
“I am humbled and elated that a decision has been made, and
with great haste,” Jodhan told E-Access Bulletin. “The
Canadian Government should not view this as a defeat but
rather as one where we all get to ensure that the future of blind
and sight-impaired kids will be a better one, where accessibility
will be a reality. This case was never mine to win but that of
our blind and sight-impaired community not to lose.”
The court’s ruling stated that Jodhan’s inability to access
government information online “is representative of a system
wide failure by many of the 146 government departments and
agencies to make their websites accessible.”
More on the case can be found on Jodhan’s personal blog:
http://www.donnajodhan.blogspot.com/
and the blog of her accessibility company, Sterling Creations:
http://sterlingcreations.ca/blog/
And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=511
+02: Digital Government ‘Must Not Increase Exclusion’.
Digitisation of government services must not take place at the
expense of increased exclusion of people with disabilities, a
leading national policy adviser has told E-Access Bulletin.
Felicity Shaw is senior policy advisor for Race Online 2012, a
campaign headed by the UK’s Digital Champion Martha Lane
Fox to bring online the nine million people in the country who
have never used the internet ( http://raceonline2012.org ).
“We’re making recommendations that government services
should be digital by default, but part of that is making sure that
nobody is excluded by that process. Making services digital is
about making them better, more convenient and easier, not
about leaving people behind who are excluded,” Shaw said.
Some of the more difficult and important work for Race
Online 2012 will be helping people with a range of access
issues to use the internet for the first time. “What’s harder to
tackle is people who may have multiple barriers to getting
online, particularly disabled people who might have
accessibility issues which make it harder or more expensive for
them to access equipment.
“What we don’t want is to have a campaign and promote just
some of the elements that go with that, which ultimately
increases exclusion for people who can’t get online” said
Shaw.
Part of Race Online 2012’s work includes a ‘People’s
Taskforce’ ( http://bit.ly/glTN2w ), featuring people from a
variety of backgrounds who have been helped to go online,
and are now helping others to use the internet. Members of the
taskforce are helping to provide the campaign with ideas and
information about accessibility, including Heather Lyons –
who is visually impaired and campaigning for more affordable
assistive technology – and Alan Thomas – who was diagnosed
with ataxia, and now uses the internet to share information
about his support website, livingwithataxia.org .
Shaw was among speaker’s at last week’s Future Democracy
’10, Headstar’s annual conference on the use of the internet
and other new technologies to boost all parts of the democratic
process ( <http://www.headstar-events.com/fdem10>http://www.headstar-events..com/fdem10 ).
And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=518
+03: Free DAISY Book Recorder Software Upgraded.
The latest version of an open source audio recording tool
designed to allow anyone to produce DAISY format electronic
books has been released by the global DAISY Consortium of
blindness organisations, publishers, technology companies and
others.
DAISY (digital accessible information system) books created
with the Obi 1.2 software ( http://bit.ly/fqzspr ) can contain
chapters, sub-sections and pages, allowing users with print
disabilities to easily navigate through the content. The Obi tool
is also fully accessible to screen-readers.
Version 1.2 of the Obi tool features a number of improvements
and upgrades for users, including an adaptation to work with
Microsoft Windows 7. Users can now also manage large
DAISY production projects more easily; and MP3 and WAV
format audio files can now be imported into projects.
All DAISY content is produced to a standard (
http://bit.ly/hcPbOF ) developed by the DAISY Consortium,
whose aim is to see all published information made readily
available to people with print disabilities through digital talking
books.
And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=513
++News in Brief:
+04: Standard Lesson: A free ‘webinar’ (internet seminar)
explaining the recently launched British Standard on web
accessibility BS 8878 (see E-Access Bulletin issue: 130:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=498 ) will be hosted by
assistive technology charity AbilityNet on 8 December. The
webinar will provide an overview of the standard and how to
implement it, including a question and answer session:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/763164576
Short link: http://bit.ly/gCD5Gd
+05: Refreshable Apple: A video demonstrating how to use the
Refreshabraille 18, a Braille display and keyboard, built by the
non-profit American Printing House for the Blind, with an
Apple iPhone or iPod, has been posted on YouTube. A link to
the video and a transcription can be found on the
‘StoneKnight’ blog run by transcription specialist Mirabai
Knight:
http://blog.stenoknight.com/2010/11/natcapvidmo-day-28-
refreshabraille-18.html
Short link: http://bit.ly/dIU26U
+06: Third Survey: The third periodic survey tracking trends
and changes in assistive technology is underway from US non-
profit WebAIM. The Screen Reader User Survey is intended to
help all organisations that create assistive technology products,
accessible web content and web standards. It takes around ten
minutes to complete and will close on January 10, with results
published around March 2011:
http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey3/
Short link: http://bit.ly/ikApbJ
[Section One ends].
++Sponsored Notice: Adept Transcription
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Formats we produce include audio, audio description, Braille,
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[Sponsored Notice ends]
++Section Two: Interview Special Feature
- Diane Mulligan OBE.
+07: Podcast Pioneer
by Dan Jellinek.
This has been a busy year for Diane Mulligan.
At the start of 2010 Mulligan was awarded an OBE for services
to disabled people and equal opportunities. Last week, she was
back at Buckingham Palace for a reception held by the Queen
for the Diplomatic Corps. In-between, she has been
spearheading a campaign to improve the rights of disabled
people in developing countries, in her role as Global Disability
Advisor for international charity Sightsavers.
One of the UK’s leading campaigners for disabled people’s
rights worldwide, and a candidate for the 2012 election to the
UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
(another of this year’s accolades), Mulligan has faced many
struggles on her path to high achievement.
Leaving school with few qualifications due to undiagnosed
dyslexia and ADHD, she has worked in the NGO sector all her
working life, starting with environmental issues and then
championing human rights, women’s rights and disability
rights.
The internet and other technologies play a major role in her life
and work now, but growing up she lacked the technological
support on offer to today’s schoolchildren like her own 10-
year-old son, Zephaniah.
“My son has ADHD and dyslexia, and he is using software that
helps him, especially with homonyms – he can write ‘no’ and
know whether it should be spelled ‘know’ or ‘no’ – and
pictorial software,” she says. “He still can’t hold a pen and
write, aged 10, but he went straight to using digital technology
and is now able to produce work of a standard that is really
high for his age. It’s so good for his self-esteem.
“I left school with hardly any qualifications, but if I had had a
laptop and software I would have been able to do the same.”
These learning challenges are not the only problems Mulligan
has had to overcome: after many years of working abroad, she
was involved in a serious road accident in Indonesia which led
to one of her legs being amputated. Returning to the UK, to
Seaford on the Sussex coast, she received good medical care
but a lack of proper psychological support spurred her to set up
the Sussex Amputee Support Group offering advice, emotional
support and information for people experiencing limb loss.
The group has its own website (
http://www.sussexamputeesupport.co.uk ), a tool which has
proven essential to its work building a support community,
Mulligan says.
“Getting that up on the internet was really key,” she says.
“Some people said the information was not accessible to a lot
of people – most amputees are over 80 – but I disagree: my
dad is over 80 and he is using online conferencing. But it is
also all available in large print and other formats.”
Technology has also helped her with her sporting passion, rifle
shooting: she was on course to compete in the 2012
Paralympics until work and family commitments rendered the
training schedule impossible.
“It’s all done on computers with laser beams from the end of
the gun onto a screen – they track your movement until you
fire so you can see how accurate you are, whether you are
swaying all over the place. But I’ve had to drop out from the
fast-track now. It takes up at least two evenings a week, and
every other weekend.
Computers and the internet have also proven enormously
valuable with her main current work role. She joined
Sightsavers in 2007, and is leading the organisation’s strategy
for raising awareness of the link between disability and poverty
in developing countries, where 80% of disabled people live,
almost all below the poverty line. In 2000 most world leaders
signed up to achieving eight ‘anti-poverty’ Millennium
Development Goals by 2015, but disabled people and
disability rights are noticeably absent from these goals, and
much of Mulligan’s work with Sightsavers is to campaign for
their inclusion and recognition.
With front-line teams in more than 30 countries, the charity has
created a global online network and uses a web-based
conferencing facility called Elluminate (
http://www.elluminate.com ).
“It has considerably cut down international travel, and
colleagues with low vision access the same information I can,”
Mulligan says.
“I do three-day training sessions for all my staff and in August
we piloted doing a session online.
We had 50 people in Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka, and guest
speakers, over three days in Sightsavers offices. Everyone
could access the PowerPoint, raise their online hand. They
could find out what people could do in different countries and
share best practice.
“Now I run one every month, 60 minutes on social inclusion,
as a round-up and opportunity for any of our 300 employees
worldwide to ask any questions they have and contribute
examples. It’s almost like a radio show, I can answer questions,
and I have other people contributing. Once I’d done it once, I
thought that’s the way forward to me – I don’t have to travel, it
saves me jetlag and means I don’t have to stay away from my
family.”
Mulligan records the webinars and puts them onto a podcasting
site called Podbean ( http://www.podbean.com ), each
bookmarked so people can browse between items without
having to listen to the whole hour. Currently they are only
available to Sightsavers staff, but “there are no trade secrets”,
so Mulligan is looking at ways of making them more widely
available. The service uses low bandwidth, so it is accessible
even in places like rural India, she says.
Another technology that is revolutionising her work is
‘phlogging’, a service from a company called ipadio that is
“like blogging, but using a mobile phone” ( http://bit.ly/8Q4YF
). Users can call in from anywhere in the world and record a
voice message from their mobile, using local rate numbers, to
broadcast the voice clip onto their website, blog or social
network.
Tools like this and ones that can help speak web content out
loud can be useful for communication not only with blind
people but for targeting remote communities who are either
illiterate or for whom the written word is not the medium of
choice, Mulligan says.
“We also try and encourage people to create video diaries, to
give our supporters an insight into what we do and how we do
it. And we convert our reports to MP3.”
Some of these technologies are hard for people in poorer
countries to access, but there is usually a way, she says. “Even
if you go to some of the poorest parts of the world you find
people with mobile phones. In India, social networking is
massive, and the blind people I know there are using it as much
as their sighted colleagues. And in countries like Indonesia,
you see internet cafes on the corner of every street.”
Sightsavers have also worked with accessible technology
specialists Dolphin to create the Sightsaver Dolphin pen (
http://bit.ly/gWM16t ), a low cost memory stick carrying
magnification and screen-reader software aimed at students in
developing countries.
“So there are many new technologies out there, it’s just about
harnessing them. The only stumbling block I’ve got is getting
someone to get headphones and a mike, and log on. It’s that
barrier of the unknown, people think it’s going to be hard. The
barriers disabled people face in the developing world are
almost the same as disabled people face here – liberation takes
place in that space between our two ears, before anywhere
else.”
And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=515
[Section Two ends].
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[Special notice ends].
++End Notes.
+How to Receive the Bulletin.
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Please send comments on coverage or leads to Dan Jellinek at:
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Copyright 2010 Headstar Ltd http://www.headstar.com .
The Bulletin may be reproduced as long as all parts including
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Please also inform the editor when you are reproducing our
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+Personnel:
Editor: Dan Jellinek.
Reporter: Tristan Parker.
Editorial advisor: Kevin Carey.
ISSN 1476-6337.
[Issue 132 ends.]
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