[nabs-l] New Technology and Blindness

[Patrick Molloy]

Nicole,
I agree with you. New technology continues to be a stumbling block, at
least in part. However, I think the answer is twofold: First, we
should strive to educate the people in charge of leading technology
companies with regards to blindness. Second, there really should be a
law mandating all touch screens be accessible. However, I feel that
progress will come. As the number of Americans with vision
impairment/vision loss increases, technology will HAVE to be made
accessible.
Just my thoughts,
Patrick

On 4/29/11, Nicole B. Torcolini at Home <ntorcolini at wavecable.com> wrote:
> It continues to amaze me in how inaccessible new technologies can be. I
> don't think that the people who design them are purposefully making them
> inaccessible, but it is still very frustrating. For example, I just read a
> paper about a virtual nurse agent that is designed to help patients
> understand medical information before being discharged from the hospital.
> Although the system does talk, it has several other features, including a
> touchscreen and pointing at places in a print booklet, which would be
> completely inaccessible to the blind. My question then is, besides educating
> people about blindness, is there something else that could be done? For
> example, should there be a law that all touch screen devices have to be
> accessible or have an option for accessibility?
> The paper can be found at:
> http://relationalagents.com/publications/CHI09.VirtualNurse.pdf
>
> Nicole
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