E-Access Bulletin Live

A plan to create an online “knowledge base” of resources relating to digital inclusion for older people is being drawn up by Age Action Alliance, an umbrella group of companies and charities led by the Department for Work and Pensions.

The alliance, whose members include the BBC, Microsoft, mobile network Three, Age UK and the digital inclusion charity for older people Digital Unite, has tasked a working group with drawing up a “starter strategy” for the knowledge base covering its potential usefulness, purpose and viability. It will then make a final decision on whether to go ahead with the project at the next meeting of its digital inclusion group in February.

“The aim of the knowledge base is to gather in one place the mass of extensive and varied research, analysis and evaluation data on activities and projects that have, and still are, delivering and facilitating digital literacy for older people”, Emma Solomon, managing director of Digital Unite and the groups’ chair, said this month. “The aim is also to gather – or at least signpost – practitioners to a variety of tools and resources that can help them deliver or facilitate digital inclusion for older people.”

The knowledge base will be aimed at all practitioners and promoters of digital inclusion for older people, Solomon said. “These may be formal intermediaries, informal intermediaries and individuals as well as organisations and businesses from third, private and public sectors.”

As a separate project, the group also hopes to help co-ordinate the promotion of all actions, events and activities that promote digital inclusion to older people by creating a searchable national database of all campaigns, outreach projects, learning and engagement activities in which older people are being encouraged and supported to embrace digital technologies, she said.

Moves to create an international treaty to allow accessible versions of copyrighted works to be shared across borders, giving people with print disabilities wider access to books, received a setback this month following “aggressive” intervention by EU negotiators.

Between 21 November and 2 December, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) held a meeting in Geneva of its standing committee on copyright and related rights that negotiators for the World Blind Union (WBU) had hoped would clear the way for agreement on a copyright treaty.

Hopeful signs had emerged from a June session of the committee, at which WIPO member states had agreed to merge several previously separate positions into a single draft document which became known as “the chair’s text” (see E-Access Bulletin, July 2011). The new meeting, however, cast uncertainty on the plans after the chair, Manuel Guerra Zamarro from Mexico, unexpectedly invited members to submit further amendments.

Negotiators for the EU subsequently attempted to reintroduce clauses that would require rights-holders to formally authorise and pre-approve organisations to use any exception, a condition the WBU says would render the whole exercise close to pointless.

“The EU decided to submit a raft of new and aggressive amendments which moved us even further away from an agreed text”, WBU Vice Chair Dan Pescod told E-Access Bulletin. “They were trying to shoe-horn back in the idea of authorisation, but this is a no-no – the whole point of this exception is you will use it when you haven’t been given any help from rights-holders.”

The new proposed amendments have now been captured in a working document which Pescod says must be fully discussed between member states ahead of the next WIPO meeting in July 2012. “What we are now urging is for the member states to come together before the next meeting to agree the basis for a new single text, rather than have a situation where each time people throw down amendments, go away and don’t consider them until the next meeting,” he said.

Another vital issue remains, of whether the new agreement becomes a legally binding treaty – as urged by the WBU – or softer non-binding guidelines, but Pescod hopes all can be resolved in July. “I am still optimistic that we can finish this work next year, ahead of a formal diplomatic conference in 2013.”

If he is right, new ground will be broken: WIPO normally acts to reinforce protection for rights-holders, whereas this treaty would reinforce access for users. And it will not have been easy: formal negotiations on a treaty began two and a half years ago, in May 2009.

A ground-breaking project to enlist the power of volunteers to fix web access problems for disabled people is at risk of closure, after failing to secure government funding.

Fix the Web was launched in November 2010 to allow disabled internet users to complain quickly and easily about inaccessible websites using Twitter, email or online forms. Members of a pool of registered volunteers then take responsibility for contacting the website owner on the user’s behalf, following up any response and feeding back results to the user.

Since launch, the project has recruited almost 700 volunteers who between them have handled more than 1,000 website reports and helped to solve problems with several high profile sites including the Coventry Building Society, various BBC sites and the online scheduling service Doodle. A major rise in activity was triggered earlier this year after actor, writer and technology lover Stephen Fry posted a message of support for the campaign.

However, despite gaining £50,000 of initial funding from the Nominet Trust, and receiving publicity support from organisations including RNIB, the project has failed in attempts to raise further cash and has now been running for a year without any external funding.

After it emerged that a recent bid for funding from the government’s new £10 million Social Action Fund has failed, Fix The Web founder Gail Bradbrook, director of programmes at Citizens Online, told E-Access Bulletin the project would struggle to survive.

“The government asked for charities to innovate, and that’s what Citizens Online has done – we have raised multi-millions across all our projects over the years, with not a penny from central government. So we’re not a cap-in-hand charity, but equally we can’t run on fresh air.

“Fix The Web still has a huge amount of potential, but it needs some design work and some funding to oversee the work by volunteers. Come the New Year, if there isn’t a clear plan for the project, Citizens Online might have to withdraw because our brand will be associated with something that isn’t being looked after properly.”

The project could eventually be sustained by small donations from multiple sources, but in the short term needs around £150,000 over the next 18 months to help it reach a sustainable level, Bradbrook said.

Citizens Online managed to raise pledges of services worth some £270,000 to use as “in kind” match funding for its recent Social Action Fund bid. “This shows the level of support and commitment to the project. The issue is securing money, when so few funders fit to the aims of this project. Times are really hard for the voluntary sector, competition is steep,” she said.

Ironically, the project has attracted interest from organisations in other countries including Canada who would like to replicate it, Bradbrook said. The intention had always been to expand the work internationally, but this vision is now also in jeopardy.

A smartphone app which allows people to magnify text and adjust fonts and background colours was among the winners of the inaugural Smart Accessibility Awards for smartphone applications aimed at supporting disabled and older people.

Zoom Plus Magnifier, developed by a UK partnership of 232 Studios, Ian Hamilton and Digital Accessibility Centre, offers functionality for free that has previously largely only been available in software and camera products costing hundreds of pounds.

Four international awards of 50,000 Euros each were presented by the Vodafone Foundation – a charitable arm of mobile communications provider Vodafone –in partnership with AGE Platform Europe, a network of organisations working with older people, and the campaign group European Disability Forum.

The other winners were Help Talk, an app developed in Portugal allowing people who are unable to speak, such as those recovering from strokes, to communicate by tapping on icons; Wheelmap, an app developed in Germany which lets users rate the accessibility for wheelchair users of public places; and BIG Launcher, an alternative customisable Android home screen for elderly or visually impaired users who often struggle to use the small keyboards on most devices, developed in the Czech Republic.

BIG Launcher uses big buttons and large fonts to represent all the basic functions of a phone such as voice calls, text messages and cameras. Jan Husak, the app’s co-developer, says a typical smartphone home screen is not very accessible for elderly and blind people, being often crowded with all sorts of icons and widgets.

“On Android, due to its openness, you can choose from dozens of launchers, but they mostly offer functions which are only appealing to geeks – even more icons, special graphical effects and so on.

“BIG Launcher makes using the phone easy, even for users who are scared of new technologies. It allows its users to use the phone quickly in any situation, without pulling out their glasses or getting lost in the menus.”

Wheelmap is an app that builds on top of Google maps, overlaying information about wheelchair accessibility of any location such as a restaurant or railway station sourced from users. In its first month 1,200 users registered for the app, posting information about 180,000 places.

Andrew Dunnett, director of the Vodafone Group Foundation, told E-Access Bulletin the type of crowdsourcing used by Wheelmap held huge promise for disabled people. “The potential for that to change people’s lives is very impressive. The maps are there, the handsets are available – the key is the user groups, and how they engage with it.”

In all some 67 applications were received by the awards, with 12 shortlisted before the four prizes were award, Dunnett said. He confirmed that the foundation would be rerunning the awards next year.

A smartphone app offering digital versions of shop loyalty cards will open up card schemes to many disabled people for the first time, its developer has said.

The “mClub” app from print and digital directories company Yell – which is free to download –allows retailers to offer deals such as “buy nine cups of coffee, get the 10th free” without using a physical card. A pilot service – available for both the Apple iPhone and Android phones – has been launched in London, Plymouth and Reading, with a BlackBerry service due to be released in the next few weeks.

Although the service was not originally designed for use by disabled people Artur Ortega, senior accessibility developer at Yell, told E-Access Bulletin this month that when he saw the idea presented internally he immediately saw the potential benefits for disabled people, and was able to influence the design process.

“Before, it wasn’t possible for blind people to use loyalty cards,” Ortega said. “You couldn’t find the right card in your pocket, and you didn’t know how many stamps were on it. The app is also useful for someone who has reduced mobility in their hands and who might have problems getting a card out of their pocket or wallet.”

Once the app is running, loyalty points are added for each participating retailer either by swiping it near a terminal on Android phones using near field communication, or by scanning a QR code (a square bar code) using the iPhone. Although there is a beep emitted when the app is successfully swiped, the lack of near–field communication on an iPhone was a limitation for blind users unless helped by a shop assistant, Ortega acknowledged.

Running the app itself was not too hard for blind users, with iPhones coming pre-installed with VoiceOver text-to-speech functionality and Android phones able to run similar software such as the Mobile Accessibility suite from Code Factory, he said.

This kind of approach, combined with geo-location technology, is implemented in the new smartphone version of the company’s home page www.yell.com, which is hugely liberating for disabled people, Ortega said. “If I need a taxi, I can find one immediately and then call the taxi using the same device, I don’t have to copy telephone number – it’s two clicks away. Or I can order a table in a restaurant – it’s a huge advantage for blind people or people with reduced mobility.

“Before, you had to call someone and ask them to put you through to the restaurant. If the line was busy you had to call again and ask them to look it all up again.”

The problems encountered in putting ICT accessibility policies into practice are common across Europe, according to early findings of a survey of policies in 30 nations (the EU countries, plus Norway, Iceland and Switzerland), E-Access Bulletin has learned.

According to research carried out in June for the EU-funded ‘i-access’ project on access to electronic information and lifelong learning, problems encountered include creating accessible content; standards compliance; problems procuring accessible systems; and a lack of awareness and understanding.

The project is run by the European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education to raise awareness of the issues surrounding accessible information provision for lifelong learning. While some survey respondents said their organisations provided style guides for creating content, only about half of these addressed accessibility aspects such as considering how a screen-reader would cope.

“There are an estimated 80 million people in the EU with disabilities of varying sorts and to differing degrees, and as the age profile shifts, so too will the proportion with disabilities”, John Galloway, a consultant working on dissemination of i-access findings told E-Access Bulletin this week. “There is no one solution to the issue of ensuring that any information in an electronic format, whether a web-page, a text message, an on-screen document, or an information film, is available to all of them equally,” Galloway said.

“For each country, we need to find out – what policies do they have, and how do they put them into practice? What are the differences and similarities? The lessons learned from across Europe will be brought together for everyone to share, so this difficult issue can be addressed.”

Full details of the research and a report of a project conference co-hosted by the Danish Ministry of Education in Copenhagen this June are due to be published shortly, with the final project recommendations expected towards next summer, Galloway said.

The UK’s leading charity supporting blind and partially sighted people RNIB is investigating whether people in the UK might be able to join a US class action against the Walt Disney Company for the alleged inaccessibility of its websites, E-Access Bulletin has learned.

On 29 June, California district judge Dolly Gee gave permission for three blind women – two from Southern California and one from Wichita, Kansas – to proceed with a class action against Disney alleging the company’s websites unlawfully include information which is visible to sighted users but not to screen reader programs, as well as options which are inaccessible to blind people such as the ability to make reservations and download electronic tickets.

Web accessibility is just one of five main areas of complaint being brought in the case, with others including issues in the theme parks themselves such as a lack of Braille maps. The plaintiffs are not seeking money damages, simply an injunction requiring Disney to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act by making its services accessible.

In her ruling judge Gee rejected as irrelevant arguments by Disney that the women could have accessed the same services and information elsewhere, and also rejected arguments that “there is no accepted accessibility standard”. In dismissing the latter argument she pointed out that nearly three years ago — “presumably when website accessibility standards were even less settled” – a similar action was allowed to proceed against the US retailer Target for alleged accessibility problems with its website Target.com.

The three women are represented by Andy Dogali at Florida-based law firm Forizs & Dogali, alongside Los Angeles-based attorney Eugene Feldman, with the case set for trial in Los Angeles in January 2012.

Talking to E-Access Bulletin this week Samantha Fothergill, senior legal policy officer at RNIB, said she had contacted the US lawyers handling the case to see if UK citizens could potentially play any part in adding an international dimension to the case.

“There is no recourse under UK law for the websites as you can only sue a website under the Equality Act if the provider is established in the UK, but because this is an international tourist attraction people from around the world, including Britain, could potentially be part of the US case.

“If so we might be able to find clients who had gone to those resorts, and could make people aware this action is going on – we would not be encouraging them to join, just passing on the information.”

UK class actions are rare in the field of disability law, Fothergill said, not least because all such cases tend to be settled out of court.

“Class actions are often used here in product liability cases but disability lawyers don’t often think in that way. We’ve looked at possibility of class actions but the cases that we have always get settled, so we’ve never really got to that stage.”

Whatever happens, the fact that a company with such a high profile worldwide is being sued anywhere is bound to have an effect on corporate behaviour and lobby campaigns elsewhere, she said.

“The Target case got more publicity probably among IT professionals than it necessarily did among blind people, but this case is more likely to raise the profile of access issues with those responsible for services and websites around the world, which can only be a good thing wherever you are.”

Disney is connected with a huge range of public-facing websites including sites for media partners ESPN and the ABC television network.

The closure by Middlesex University of the first ever European MSc course in digital inclusion after just one year of operation sets a “dangerous precedent” for those trying to establish a business case for accessibility, the academic leading the course has told E-Access Bulletin.

The unique two-year part-time course was launched by Middlesex last year. Its curriculum included the social, ethical and business case for accessibility; regulations and standardisation; web accessibility; and inclusive user experience. The course’s overall goal was to improve participation in the digital society by older and disabled people as well as people at social disadvantage such as unemployed people, people on low incomes and those with low literacy.

However after just eight people joined the programme the university has decided that no more will now be taken on and the course will close when the current set of students – who include four public sector workers – have graduated. To make the course financially sustainable a minimum of 20 students a year would have been needed.

Gill Whitney, digital inclusion programme leader at Middlesex, told E-Access Bulletin the lack of demand for the course signalled a serious problem for the development of accessible digital services in the UK and beyond.

“Losing the MSc programme due to low student numbers sets a dangerous precedent – if there is truly no demand, then there is no business case for offering similar specialist programmes elsewhere”, Whitney said.

“Designing and developing more accessible systems depends on having suitable training or education courses in place for those involved in all aspects of the development process”, she said. “The essential element is to convince students of the value of taking such courses, for example better job opportunities for both students and disabled people.

“There is now recognition of e-accessibility at a political level, with the government setting up an e-accessibility forum, but we also need industry, not-for-profits and government bodies to demonstrate there is a market demand and that there will be better jobs for professionals who genuinely understand the complexities of delivering accessible ICT, systems and services.”

Whitney said options other than the MSc course could also play a role in the educational mix, such as better integration of accessibility issues into mainstream technology courses or offering short professional development courses or diplomas that enhance existing skills. But whatever the solutions, action was needed to ensure student demand, she said.

“There is a strong need for this sort of training to make accessibility happen.”

One of the course’s students, Big Lottery Fund head of new media Claudio Concha, said the course had already proven valuable in his work.

“Inclusive design is pretty much taken for granted in architecture and product design, yet online content and digital channels still suffer from a lack of user-centred development and there is a complete lack of consideration for disabled and older people,” Concha said.

“This course has helped me understand the gulf that exists between content producers and organisations on one side and the reality of customers with differing needs on the other. It has allowed me to influence design and development projects with an authority that comes with real experience.”

The RNIB is set to conduct its largest ever manual website accessibility testing exercise later this year, when it will check all 433 UK local authority sites against a specially-devised set of criteria.

The project will form the charity’s latest contribution to the annual ‘Better Connected’ review of UK council websites conducted by the public sector Society of IT Management (Socitm).

In previous years RNIB has run initial automated accessibility tests on all the sites, only carrying out more detailed manual assessment on those passing a certain threshold. This year, however, it will carry out manual checks on all sites based on attempts to perform three practical tasks on each such as paying council tax or renewing a library book online. A few other random top level pages will also be checked.

Marco Ranon, Principal Web Accessibility Consultant at RNIB, told a recent Socitm seminar in London the tests would not use a checklist approach against all the principles of the internationally accepted ‘WCAG [web content accessibility guidelines] 2.0’. Instead, though the guidelines would be used as a reference, the performance of tasks would be rated from 0-3 against 14 criteria such as presence of ; unique and informative page titles; and clear labels on forms, Ranon said. Some criteria such as the presence of keyboard shortcuts for tasks would be considered essential “showstoppers”, whose absence would spell failure of the test as a whole – again with close reference to WCAG, he said.

“Web accessibility is not about going through every page, unless you have a very small website,” Ranon told E-Access Bulletin this week.” You have templates and then try to educate content people. This is the largest group exercise we do as a team, and conformance testing with WCAG 2 takes a long time, so it was not practical.”

‘Better Connected’ reviews are carried out in November and December, with all results including accessibility test results due to be published at the end of February 2012.

Some 60% of website owners contacted about accessibility problems by the national ‘FixTheWeb’ project either ignore the contact or “duck the issue”, according to the project’s director. And just 10% take action immediately to fix the problem.

FixTheWeb is a national programme allowing any disabled person encountering accessibility problems online to inform a group of volunteers – now morethan 600-strong – who will pursue the issue with the website owner on their behalf. Volunteers can be contacted using email, Twitter, a web form or a special browser toolbar, allowing anyone to report any web accessibility issue quickly and easily. The project is led by the digital inclusion charity Citizens Online with funding from Nominet Trust.

So far about 700 websites have been reported through the service, Gail Bradbrook, the project’s manager, told the second annual Web Accessibility London Unconference at City University last week. However of these, only about 50 have been fixed by their owners.

In all, 40% of contacts made by volunteers received no response at all, said Bradbrook: “Somebody probably chose to ignore it, unless we got spam filtered.” In a further 20% of cases the volunteers were “fobbed off, with people kind of acknowledging issue but ducking it”, she said, or in some cases showing they had not previously registered the issue of accessibility at all.

Some 30% of people contacted agree they have an accessibility problem and say they can’t deal with it now, but it does matter to them and they will try and address it in future, she said. And in 10% of cases the problem is fixed right away, with half of these needing help to do so.

However even in cases where no response at all is received, the project may be achieving something by raising awareness that accessibility problems exist and that people are noticing them, Bradbrook said.

One of the project’s high points so far came when actor, writer and technology lover Stephen Fry posted a message of support for the campaign, with the resulting PR boost producing its biggest rise in activity to date, she said.

FixTheWeb is currently focused on the UK but is now looking for partners to go global, Bradbrook said. Within Europe, it is already in the process of setting up a key partnership with eAccess+ , a European network of e-accessibility experts.