[blindlaw] Accessible Technology

[Mike Freeman]

Believe me: there'd be arguments as to what accessibility actually 
means, whether any design was or was not accessible and on and on ad 
nauseum. "Accessibility" is best understood in the negative, that is, we 
all know something is *not* accessible. It is far less easy to define 
when something truly is accessible in that this requires us to assess 
user competence with accessibility tools as well as whether any given 
task can be made easily accessible without disrupting the existing 
technology. Example: the iPhone accessible interface is absolutely 
different from the regular interface. IN the case of something like 
making an insulin pump fully accessible, much care and thought needs to 
go into such things as how to verbally make accesssible trend graphs 
etc. (Same for  continuous bg monitors.)

Anyway, I think accessibility is sort of like the late Potter Stewart's 
definition of porn: I can't define it but I know it when I see it!

Mike Freeman

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mazen" <jazenmazen at yahoo.com>
To: "'NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List'" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 12:38 PM
Subject: [blindlaw] Accessible Technology


This is a very interesting question. Can there be any kind of regulation
that would make emerging consumer technologies accessible? I would posit
that the standard should require the incorporation of accessible design 
in
technology where doing so is not unduly burdensome. In other words, 
where
the cost of doing so is not prohibitive.  I think adopting such a 
regulation
would actually cost businesses far less than figuring out how to make
something accessible after the design is complete.

This could include an access design assessment, analogous to an
environmental impact statement, that can be part of the development 
process.


A good example of where this kind of regulation would have made a 
difference
is in Ipods. it took apple nearly a decade to come out with an Ipod that 
has
voiceover. Is there any reason why this shouldn't have been part of the
original design?

Thoughts?

M~


-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Freeman [mailto:k7uij at panix.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 12:54 PM
To: NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Textbooks for disabled, Particularly College
Students

You're absolutely right. However, there's an additional wrinkle: people
keep innovating and coming up with technologies and appearances of
documents and/or web pages that screen reading technology can make
neither hide nor hair of.

I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that ultimately, to legislate
true accessibility, one must mandate that technology stays fixed.

Ain't a-gonna happen!

Mike Freeman, President
NFB of Washington

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Pepper" <b75205 at gmail.com>
To: "NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 8:05 AM
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Textbooks for disabled, Particularly College
Students


The other problem here is that what people deem to be accessible is not
actually accessible.  Just because a document or a webpage complies with
section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act does not make it actually
accessible
to the blind.  It is infuriating when you deal with people who insist
that
they followed all the rules and that the documents are certified even by
the
Access Board as being accessible to the blind using the legal definition
of
accessibility and yet when you actually try to use it, it is useless.

This separation between the law and reality is the problem.

James Pepper
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