[gui-talk] Fwd: E-Access Bulletin, July 2010: New UK Government Forum To Drive Accessibility.

[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 127, July 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 127 Contents.

01: New Government Forum To Drive Accessibility
- Minister outlines work plan for coming year.

02: Australian 'e-Playground' For Children of All Abilities
- Memory and music games among free online resources.

03: Council Offers Real-Time Sign Language Video
- Sutton breaks new ground with on-demand service.

Section Two: 'The Inbox' - Readers' Forum.
07: Cost Barriers - research lead; 08: Short Links - web link 
formatting.

Section Three: Focus - Web Access Guidelines.
09: Real World Approaches to Accessibility: The international 
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are useful in 
context but should be treated as just that - guidelines - and 
disregarded where they are ineffective, argues Brian Kelly.

[Contents ends].


++Section One: News.


+01: New Government Forum To Drive Accessibility.

The UK government's new 'eAccessibility Forum' will address 
three key areas: improving the regulatory framework; 
supporting businesses; and developing an 'e-accessibility 
action plan, Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications 
and Creative Industries, told delegates at the recent E-Access 
'10 event in London (
http://www.headstar-events.com/eaccess10/ ). The event was 
hosted by E-Access Bulletin publisher Headstar with the 
OneVoice Coalition for Accessible ICT.

The eAccessibility Forum was announced in the Digital Britain 
Act and is led by officials at the Department for Business, 
Innovation and Skills (BIS). On its first area of work, 
regulation, Vaizey said a consultation document would be 
published in September on the UK's implementation of the 
Regulatory Framework for Electronic Communications in the 
European Union, amended in November of last year, which 
covers electronic accessibility. The UK is required to transpose 
the framework by the end of 2011, he said. 

The forum's eventual 'e-accessibility action plan' will cover 
both consumer technologies and website accessibility, Vaizey 
said. "[This] doesn't necessarily mean by imposing regulations 
on bodies. It can be through partnership and persuasiveness as 
well and working together," he said.

The minister was speaking the day after UK digital champion 
Martha Lane Fox launched her Manifesto for a Networked 
Nation: http://raceonline2012.org/manifesto )
which included the recommendation (in paragraph 9.2) that 
"Government should close down publicly funded websites that 
consistently fail to meet its own web accessibility guidelines."

NOTE: Further in-depth coverage of E-Access '10 will be 
featured in our August issue.

And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=456 .


+02: Australian 'e-Playground' For Children of All Abilities.

Memory-improvement games and an activity allowing children 
to create their own music are two of the games in a new free 
online play environment for children with special needs and 
disabilities.

The All Abilities ePlayground (
http://www.allabilitiesplayground.net.au/ )
was created by the Australian arm of Sonokids ( 
http://www.sonokids.org/ ), an international non-profit 
organisation developing technology for disabled people. It was 
commissioned by Gold Coast City Council in Queensland, 
Australia, with the state's Department of Communities 
(Disability Services).

Access features include a 'function for children with limited 
motor skills who can blow into a microphone to control games; 
and a 'single switch' control for children who are only able to 
use a single button on a computer.

The platform is based on the objectives behind 17 outdoor 'All 
Abilities' playgrounds built by councils across Queensland, as 
part of a government project. 

Phia Damsma, creative director of Sonokids Australia, told E-
Access Bulletin the ePlayground was designed to be as 
inclusive as possible. "In addition to more traditional devices 
like keyboards, mice and joysticks, the ePlayground is tailored 
for use with touch screens and low-tech assistive 
technologies", Damsma said.

The ePlayground received positive feedback after being tested 
by special schools and special education units throughout 
Queensland, and it is hoped funding will be found for further 
development including personalising the platform to offer 
relevant local educational information, said Damsma.

"The current ePlayground introduces children to iconic 
Australian animals such as kangaroos, pelicans and crocs. We 
invite requests for Sonokids to localise and customise the 
ePlayground's design concept to suit other countries, languages 
and cultures", she said.

NOTE: Comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=455 .

+03: Council Offers Real-Time Sign Language Video.

Deaf users of Sutton Council's website in the UK will be able 
to contact customer services through a live, online sign 
language interpreter, in what the system's owners believe to be 
the first service of its kind.

Sutton Council's website (
http://www.sutton.gov.uk/ )
features a 'SignVideo' link which connects deaf users to a 
specialist video call centre staffed by British Sign Language 
interpreters. The interpreters then contact the relevant council 
department and act as translators between the deaf website user 
and the hearing council staff member. This means that deaf 
website users can instantly discuss their queries with the 
council from any location with internet access and a webcam, 
without first having to book an appointment to ensure an 
interpreter is present. 

The system was created by the social enterprise Significan't ( 
http://www.bsl.org.uk/ ). Brigitte Francois, director of 
interpreting services at Significan't, told E-Access Bulletin that 
as well as giving deaf residents equal access to customers 
services within the council, the system also makes financial 
sense for the council.

"People are reluctant to book interpreters for a small 
conversation of 10-15 minutes, because most face-to-face 
interpreters charge for a minimum of three hours," Francois 
said. "Significan't's director, Jeff McWhinney, decided that 
video interpreting would bring a solution to this. Face-to-face 
interpreting is very necessary - we don't want to get rid of it - 
but in some circumstances it makes sense and is more cost 
efficient to be able to make a short call on the videophone."

The system has already received positive feedback from 
residents in Sutton, a borough in which there are around 250 
deaf people. Sutton is the only London borough to have been 
awarded accreditation for accessibility by the Shaw Trust, a 
charity which assists disabled people to find and prepare for 
employment.

NOTE: Comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=453 .


++News in Brief:

+04: Dyslexia Licence: Copyrighted texts can now be made 
available by relevant organisations to people with dyslexia 
requiring them in accessible formats such as audio books and 
large print, after the UK's Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) 
upgraded its Print Disability Licence. The CLA widened its 
definition of 'print disability' to include dyslexia after a 
request from the Accessibility Action Group, a forum of 
publishing organisations, and the Right to Read Alliance, a 
group of 19 charities lead by the RNIB:
http://www.cla.co.uk/about/news/article/?article_id=80
Short link:
http://bit.ly/aOeY5E

+05: Talking Android: The first barcode reader and email 
reader for blind and visually impaired users of Google's 
Android operating system for mobile phones and devices have 
been developed in the US. The readers were created by 
Apps4Android, a subsidiary of IDEAL Group focused on 
developing applications for disabled users. The IDEAL Item 
Identifier allows smartphone users to scan barcodes and 
identify products, while the IDEAL K9 E-Mail reader is 
compatible with Google's open source screen-reader Talkback 
and other Android screen-reading products. IDEAL is now 
developing an open source Android web browser for the blind 
and an open source video magnification application:
http://apps4android.org/e-mail-and-barcode-scanner-
release.htm
Short link:
http://bit.ly/aw8TQV

+06: Good Cities: Nominations for the European Award for 
Accessible Cities, which recognises good practice in access for 
disabled people, have been invited by the European 
Commission. Access in information and communication 
technology (ICT) is one of four categories recognised by the 
award, to be presented in December at the European Day of 
People with Disabilities conference in Brussels:
http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=879&langId=en
Short link:
http://bit.ly/aQ1Uc9

[Section One ends].


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

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


+07: Cost Barriers: Last issue, Noel Hatch of Kent Council 
asked readers if they knew of any research into how disabled 
people use digital technologies.

In response, management consultant Sue Thomas, formerly of 
EDS, writes: "I ran a study in 2007 for the UK Disability and 
Carers Service to see if the service could meet the targets they 
had been set to improve their current rate of use of online 
services from 1% to 8%.

"The study showed that around 45% of those suffering a 
disability and 65% of their carers had the propensity to use 
online services. The barrier was not their ability to use the 
technology but the cost of entry both in high speed broadband 
and technology."

Further responses please to inbox at headstar.com .


+08: Short Links: Also in our June issue, Clive Lever wrote in 
to suggest a change to the way we publish web addresses in the 
bulletin. He suggested that where links were so long they run 
over a line, they should be accompanied by a shorter 'alias' 
link so people could choose which one to click.

Jude DaShiell, a computer programmer in the US civil service 
and regular E-Access Bulletin correspondent, wrote in to say: 
"It's never necessary for an organisation to use external 
services to provide short urls and doing so only involves setting 
up a blog on which to place content, then using short unique 
links to articles on that blog in email messages. As an example, 
today is July 4, 2010. I can write that using a date code in four 
letters; tjgd. The first two letters are the year t being the 20th 
letter in the alphabet and j being the 10th, that encodes 2010. 
The g is the 7th month in the year and d is the 4th day. 
Probably the easiest way to handle the last five days in a 31 
day month would be to use uppercase letters running from A to 
E."

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Thanks for everyone's input, and we have 
made a decision - Jude's idea is a good one, but it does not 
really work for links to external stories as we cannot post those 
onto our blog, and also if we have many stories on the same 
date. As a compromise and to hopefully offer something for 
everyone, where links are long we will now offer a short link 
after every one, on a separate line. People can choose which 
one to use, and ignore the other. Please continue to provide 
your feedback on the results - further responses please to 
inbox at headstar.com].

[Section Two ends].


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++Section Three: Focus
- Web Access Guidelines.

+09: Real World Approaches to Accessibility
by Brian Kelly.

The theme of the Seventh International Cross-Disciplinary 
Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A 2010 -
http://www.w4a.info/ ),
held in North Carolina in April, was 'Developing regions: 
common goals, common problems?'

This provided an ideal opportunity to highlight the limitations 
of approach taken by the international World Wide Web 
Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) to web 
accessibility, which is enshrined in legislation in many 
developed countries, and to argue that developing countries are 
in a position to avoid repeating mistakes made in the Western 
world.

One key issue is the importance of understanding the context 
of the use of web resources. The approaches taken to 
accessibility in a teaching and learning or cultural appreciation 
context may be very different from those taken to access to 
informational resources, for example. The resource costs 
associated with the provision of accessible web resources also 
need to be considered, and policies which endorse a view that 
all resources must be universally accessible to everyone, no 
matter what the cost implications may be, is naive and, in any 
case, is in conflict with legal requirements to take "reasonable 
measures".

The question of the costs of providing accessible services is 
becoming even more important in the UK in light of the new 
government's budget in which we can expect to see significant 
cutbacks in funding for the public sector. The economic 
concerns which we are currently facing will also be shared by 
those in developing countries.

Two examples from disability studies illustrate the value of 
applying critical theories to support more holistic approaches to 
web accessibility: 'Aversive disablism', and 'Hierarchies of 
impairment'. Aversive disablism is illustrated using a 
comparison with race theory: aversive racists are not anti-
black, but pro-white. There is a need to understand how 
approaches to accessibility might be based on pro-non-disabled 
assumptions. Such considerations should be understood from 
the context of 'Hierarchies of impairment'.

The City University academic Mark Deal argued the need to be 
"focusing attention on impairment groups that face the most 
discrimination in society (i.e. those ranked lowest in the 
hierarchy of impairments), rather than viewing disabled people 
as a homogenous group". In the context of web accessibility, 
the focus of attention is often the needs of the visually-
impaired, with the needs of users with learning difficulties 
having been seemingly marginalised in the development of 
accessibility guidelines. We conclude that "Critical research 
into accessibility for such groups is therefore recommended 
before standards can be invested".

In light of such concerns, should we simply shrug our 
shoulders and abandon any commitment to addressing the 
challenges of enhancing access to web resources? On the 
contrary, rather than ignoring WAI's Web Content Accessibility 
Guidelines (WCAG) altogether, we should treat them as just 
that - guidelines, which are useful in many instances but can 
be disregarded if they are ineffective.

And rather than looking for an answer in a set of guidelines, 
which, in the case of WCAG 2.0 are relatively new, we should 
be looking for patterns of emerging best practices.

One example is the use of networked technologies in 
'amplified events', in which Twitter 'back channels', access to 
speaker slides on SlideShare and video or audio streaming can 
enhance access to people not physically present at an event. 
We should regard this as providing many accessibility (and 
environmental) benefits - indeed it might be argued that a 
failure to use such affordable technologies to provide event 
amplification could be regarded as discriminatory.

So rather than regarding WCAG conformance as a mandatory 
requirement, WCAG should be regarded as guidelines, which 
may be ignored if their use conflicts with other requirements, 
so long as steps are taken to address the potential exclusion that 
may result. It should be noted that UK legislation that requires 
use of 'reasonable measures' to ensure that users with 
disabilities are not discriminated against unfairly, provides a 
legislative context for this approach. A policy based on 
'seeking to make use of WCAG' will provide the flexibility 
needed. This would not be possible with a policy which states 
that all resources must conform to WCAG.

'Reasonable measures' should also include identification of 
costs of conforming with accessibility guidelines. There should 
be consideration of the trade-off between financial savings and 
usability issues. 

If it is too costly or difficult to conform with accessibility 
guidelines, the provision of alternatives that are equivalent may 
be an appropriate solution. It should also be noted that the 
alternative need not be web-based: for e-learning resources, 
equivalent real world learning alternatives may be used. 

A requirement that all resources conform to WCAG is a 'just-
in-case' solution. This may be an appropriate resource for 
widely accessed informational resources, but may be 
inappropriate if resources are expected to be little used. There 
may be advantages in delaying provision of accessibility 
solutions to allow development of technologies which can 
enable more cost-effective solutions to be devised. 

The need to ensure that disabled people are included in the 
design and development of web solutions must also be 
emphasised. And finally, there needs to be a focus on 
'accessibility', rather than 'web accessibility': the benefits of 
web or IT solutions to real world accessibility difficulties needs 
to be considered. As described above, amplified events can 
address difficulties in travel and access, even though the 
technologies used may not conform with accessibility 
guidelines.

NOTE: Brian Kelly is UK Web Focus at UKOLN, a digital 
information management research centre at the University of 
Bath. This article outlines the ideas presented in an award-
winning paper for W4A 2010 by Kelly with Sarah Lewthwaite 
and David Sloan: 'Developing countries; developing 
experiences: approaches to accessibility for the real world' (
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/papers/w4a-2010/ )
Short link:
http://bit.ly/d9l9gi .

NOTE: Comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=449

[Section Three ends].


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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 127 ends.]

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