E-Access Bulletin Live

A blind woman who is battling the Canadian government in the courts over the inaccessibility of its websites has said a new initiative to improve the sites does not move fast enough.

Donna Jodhan, a blind accessibility consultant, sued the Canadian government last year over the inaccessibility of its websites after she was unable to apply for a government job online. In December 2010 a judge ruled in favour of Jodhan but the government is appealing against the ruling, claiming that the judge exceeded his jurisdiction in finding a “system-wide failure” of government through its websites, when it was only Jodhan who was proved to be directly affected (see our January issue http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=532 ).

The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) has now published a new standard on web accessibility for government agencies ( http://bit.ly/pYv4Jo ). Under a phased programme, agencies have until the end of the year to submit a report on their current state of accessibility. Inaccessible web sites will then have to be made accessible in stages, with home pages and pages providing “the most important information and services” ordered to comply by the end of February 2012; and all remaining pages by 31 July, 2013. All new web pages published after 1 October, 2011 must immediately conform, although exceptions will be allowed to all deadlines in circumstances where “exclusion for a period of time can be demonstrably justified.”

A government-wide compliance report will be released by the board at the end of February 2012, with updates published annually thereafter. If government bodies do not comply a range of sanctions are possible including suspension of public sector staff from web duties.

Jodhan told E-Access Bulletin she thought the release of the new guidelines was linked to her legal action, but that it was an inadequate response. “It does not go fast enough; their time frame is too long,” she said. “I think that a year would be more reasonable.”

She also questioned the government’s commitment to accessibility in appealing the 2010 decision in her case. “If the government feels that this is going to address the issues raised in my court case, then why is it spending all this money to appeal the decision that was handed down on in 2010?” she said.

Dates have now been set for the appeal of 15 and 16 November.

Jodhan suffered a minor disappointment in August when two of three disability organisations which had sought intervention status in her case had their requests turned down by the court.

These were the national blindness charity CNIB, the Canadian Council of Disabilities (CCD) and the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians (AEBC) of which Jodhan herself was elected president in May of this year. In an August ruling, the AEBC was the only one granted intervener status, allowing it to speak in court about the wider implications of any decision taken.

Responding to this decision, Jodhan said: “These three organisations felt that they had a vital and vested interest in this case to represent other concerns on a broader level. We were all quite surprised that the other two were not granted similar status.” The two unsuccessful applicants would have offered a broader perspective to her case, Jodhan said, “but they can still help in other ways.”

UK and European blindness charities are stepping up the pressure on politicians ahead of a decisive meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) to consider rules allowing accessible versions of copyrighted works to be shared across borders, giving people with print disabilities wider access to books.

Negotiations at the WIPO General Assembly later this month, followed by a meeting of the organisation’s standing committee on copyright and related rights (SCCR) in November, are likely to settle a long-standing debate on whether access rights to copyright works should be the subject of a binding international treaty of merely a voluntary ‘recommendation’.

EU negotiators have been lobbying against full treaty status under strong pressure from rightsholders in some member states. However the European Blind Union has now submitted a petition to the European Parliament’s Petitions Committee to be heard on 3 October saying the EU’s position contravenes its own charter.

“By opposing such a treaty, the EU Commission and Member States are clearly failing to recognise and respect the right of persons with disabilities to benefit from measures designed to ensure their independence, social and occupational integration and participation in the life of the community”, the petition says. “In doing so the commission is failing to live up to its commitments to article 26 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights on the integration of persons with disabilities.”

Meanwhile the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has responded to a UK government consultation on the copyright negotiations saying the EU’s position in calling for a voluntary code or ‘soft law’ runs counter to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which “makes explicit disabled people’s right to accessible information… and that ‘laws protecting IP rights should not place unreasonable or discriminatory barriers in the way of access to cultural materials’.”

“No rights holder organisation would accept the idea that voluntary codes of good behaviour signed by consumer organisations could be so effective in ensuring an acceptable level of rights holder protection that they would remove the need for binding copyright law. We likewise reject the argument that voluntary cooperation and licensing can replace a legally binding right of access to works by print disabled people.”

The RNIB rejected moves by some EU negotiators to suggest a ‘two-step’ approach, with a joint recommendation to be followed by returning to discussions on a treaty at a later date but with no guarantee any treaty would emerge.

“RNIB would like to underline that a two-step approach simply postpones – possibly for many years- a full and long overdue solution to a problem first identified back in the 1980s… it would put in place a second class solution for disabled people, in contrast with the first class solution –treaties – offered to rights holders to protect their interests.”

The November meeting is also likely to settle the final wording of the text of the proposed recommendation or treaty, including the relationship between the new copyright exception law and contract law, following progress in June towards a single draft document involving compromise on both sides (see July issue coverage).

The prospect of agreement on an international treaty to allow accessible versions of copyrighted works to be shared across borders, giving people with print disabilities wider access to books, has brightened following a recent meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

At a specially-extended June session in Geneva of the organisation’s standing committee on copyright and related rights (SCCR), WIPO member states agreed to merge previously separated formal positions on the issue into a single draft document, clearing the way for treaty negotiations later this year, E-Access Bulletin has learned.

Before the meeting, discussion of the issue had been fragmented between four draft texts developed separately by the World Blind Union; a grouping of African countries; the EU; and the US. In the run-up to the June meeting, the WBU had facilitated the merger of these documents into a single new draft.

“That was a big success, as countries were no longer defending their own proposals,” Dan Pescod, WBU Vice Chair, told E-Access Bulletin this month. “We are pleased with the text – negotiation by committee is always a compromise, but we are 80% of the way towards an acceptable final text of a law.”

Areas of compromise in drawing up the single text include a softer wording on the relationship between the new copyright exception law and contract law, Pescod said. “We wanted something that made it very clear that contract law could not undermine copyright exceptions, but it has been left somewhat open to interpretation in the new text as currently worded,” he said. “It has left it to member states to decide how they address this issue, whereas the WBU does not want any rights-holder to be able to draw up a contract which removes the copyright exception.”

Another ongoing area of debate is the issue of which organisations will be permitted to send digital files across borders under the copyright exception, Pescod said.

Some rightsholder groups want a system of formal requirements to determine who can become such ‘trusted intermediaries’, and also which books can be sent and which ones can’t, he said. But the WBU would prefer a less formal system whereby ‘authorised entities’ would not have to be pre-approved, or gain fresh permission each time for individual titles.

The discussion now moves on to the next SCCR meeting on 21 November, where the detail of the final text could be decided, and a decision taken as to whether it will become a full international treaty or simply a ‘recommendation’.

The EU has been the biggest block on creation of a full treaty (see E-access Bulletin, April issue), with strong pressure from rightsholders in countries including France to resist any systematic exceptions to copyright law.

But this would represent double standards, Pescod said. “In the very same committee meeting this June, WIPO Member States agreed that a treaty on the protection of audiovisual performances should be concluded. We do not think print disabled people deserve a lesser solution.”

An ‘online book’ setting out the first seven steps that any website owner or developer should take towards making their site accessible to people with disabilities was unveiled last month by the OneVoice for Accessible ICT Coalition, an umbrella group of accessibility and technology organisations.

‘The First Seven Steps to Accessible Websites’ was launched at the recent e-Access 11 conference, co-hosted by the coalition with E-Access Bulletin publisher Headstar.

The seven were chosen as the most important first practical steps that should be taken by most websites, and are all relatively easy to implement, the book’s author Peter Abrahams, Accessibility Practice Leader at Bloor Research, told the conference.

The steps are grouped into two types, Abrahams said.

Steps 1, 2 and 3 are ‘setting the scene’ steps. Step 1 is to do a quick accessibility check of a website: “We provide a methodology for doing that to give you an indication of whether your website is very accessible, reasonably accessible, partially accessible, or is an absolute nightmare. “ Step 2 is to publish an accessibility policy, and Step 3, is to provide a way for people to give feedback on any problems encountered.

The next four steps represent a few basic technical features that are most important for accessibility, for example helping people who navigate the web using keyboard only or blind people using text to speech screen-readers, he said.

Step 4 is providing a ‘jump to content’ link to allow people to jump over all the menus, adverts and “rubbish” that can clutter up a page and go straight to the main content. Step 5 is ensuring the tab sequence – jumping from link to link using the tab key – is logical; Step 6 is ensuring that pictures and links have alternative text; and step 7 is to ensure that text sizing works.

The book’s own website features a page for each step with background, information about implementation, links to good and bad examples, and instructional videos with closed captions, Abrahams said. Future plans include similar steps for accessibility of other technologies such as smartphones; and the building of an online community to discuss the continual refinement and development of the project, he said.

An online video and audio player being developed by the Open University (OU) for its students and the wider learning community has successfully passed through a round of accessibility testing including testing with deaf and dyslexic users, E-Access Bulletin has learned.

The generic media player, currently viewable as a ‘work in progress’ in alpha or prototype format, is being developed to allow the distance-learning university greater control over the technology used to access it extensive bank of podcast material.

The OU’s 200,000 students are likely to begin using the player on the university’s virtual learning environment by the end of this year or the start of next, according to Nick Freear, a web developer in the OU’s Institute of Educational Technology. It will also feature on ‘OpenLearn’, an open educational resources portal where anyone can access hundreds of online learning materials for free.

Accessibility features of the media player including the ability to add captions for video, and developers will be able to change the look and feel for use on their own websites, Freear said. The player is built on Flowplayer, an open source flash player which works on both desktop and tablet computers such as the Apple iPad, with HTML and Javascript additions, he said.

Eventually the source code for the accessible player might be opened up, Freear said. “but that’s down the line.”

The biggest barrier to making make the web more accessible to disabled people is interoperability, Sandi Wassmer, member of the UK government’s e-Accessibility Forum, told delegates at e-Access ’11 conference in London last month.

Interoperability is “about having disparate and diverse devices that all communicate with each other,” Wassmer said. “To use a non technical way of explaining it, a postage stamp is interoperable. We have a system that everyone agrees upon around the world. The stamp makes sure your letter gets from here to where it’s going. It’s a system which is different in each country, but it is interoperable on a global scale.”

Without interoperability, inclusive design – creating websites of value to everyone – will fail, she said. “We can design inclusively all we want, but if I have one device that does one thing and you have another that does something different, if we don’t achieve interoperability, we won’t be able to connect.”

The key to interoperability is the use of the open standards created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and its accessibility arm, the Web Accessibility initiative (WAI), Wassmer said. However, although the consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are fairly widely followed by web designers and developers, two other key sets of guidelines – the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) which cover software used to create web content such as content management systems, blogs and social media; and the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG), which cover software that displays web content such as web browsers and media players, have not yet been widely adopted, she said. Instead, the market is allowed to dictate how features are added to web browsers or social media networks, for example.

“People don’t really care about [ATAG and UAAG] as it is a case of market forces. To me, this is really what needs to be resolved before we can have an inclusive web.”

Meanwhile a range of new government initiatives relating to access to ICT by disabled people were announced at the conference by Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries Ed Vaizey and his senior digital inclusion policy adviser, including a new online forum to discuss key issues with government (see coverage from our sister publication E-Government Bulletin).

And click here for Sandi Wassmer’s slides and other presentations and transcripts from e-Access ’11.

A European working group to develop guidelines and standards for the accessibility of self-service terminals such as cashpoints and transport ticket machines has been revived by the European standards body CEN.

The group – to be convened by user interface consultant Julian Jones – is a successor to the former user interface working group WG6 of CEN technical committee TC224 on ‘Personal identification, electronic signature and cards’, which has lain dormant for two years.

The revival is needed “because human interfaces have moved on a lot in last couple of years, with i-pods, i-pads and so on,” Jones told E-Access Bulletin this week. “There is far more use of touch-screens and operations which use multiple fingers. We also want to reflect the use of near-field communication and the use of tokens on personal handheld devices as well as contactless cards.”

These developments mean the range of possible user preferences has become much wider, he said. Preferences could now include colour combinations, font size, volume of audio feedback, cursor behaviour and many other factors.

The new group will run a UK open meeting at the end of the summer to explain the workgroup’s objectives to interested parties and gather input before the membership is nominated by national standards bodies, Jones said. All those interested in attending should email him on juliang.jones@btinternet.com .

Meanwhile a European research project into personalisation of digital self-service terminals, ‘APSIS4all’, has been launched with the aim of overcoming accessibility barriers faced by people unfamiliar with ICT, people with disabilities and older people.

The three-year project is being led by the Technosite Foundation in Spain, with other partners from across Europe including John Gill Technology and AbilityNet from the UK. It will focus on two areas – first, how users might be able to connect a mobile device such as a smartphone to any self-service terminals so they can carry out interactions on their own personal device; and second, that of personalisation according to preferences held either on a smartcard or in the cloud – work which will overlap with that of the revived CEN working group.

An online platform to help disabled and deaf people find access information online for any location such as a shop, cinema, cultural event or town centre, based on the recommendations and comments of others, is set to go into beta testing next month.

The ‘GoGenie’ pilot project is initially focused on the West Midlands. Its development phase was supported by the Arts Council England Digital Content Development programme and support for the pilot has come from NESTA’s Reboot Britain programme.

Alison Smith, director of GoGenie developer Pesky People, told E-Access Bulletin the project is aimed at “taking the best of social media and using it for the benefit of everyone in planning a visit. We are not replacing existing social networks, we are working with them and enhancing them.”

The result could embrace a mix of technologies including smartphone apps and tools that can be embedded into partner websites, with each format being shaped by its disabled and deaf users, Smith said. “We are not waiting until it is perfect and launching it – the whole point of crowdsourcing is to be organic.”

Other partners for the pilot include Telford and Wrekin Council; the arts marketing agency Audiences Central; and community theatre and dance organisers Black Country Touring. “We are also in discussion with a number of cultural organisations outside of the region,” said Smith. “The pilot has an emphasis on cultural venues but has potential for wider application.”

Various members of the wider digital community, such as Will Perrin of local networking group Talk About Local and Nick Booth of community social media specialists Podnosh, have been major supporters of the project from its outset, she said. “Much of what we are doing has been influenced by attending hack days, unconferences, and networking – very much the opposite end of formal conference events and the way businesses usually operate within the sector.”

This approach brought unexpected success recently when a partnership forged with the design for all consultancy Enabled By Design and others to create an android mobile phone app in less than 24 hours ended up winning an award at Interactivism, a ‘hackday’ focused on finding accessible solutions for older people. The day was hosted by consultancy FutureGov and Google, and the mobile phone app ‘Spotted’ won the Gransnet award for most useful app.

A series of smartphone apps to let disabled people contact shops, petrol stations and other locations to let them know their access needs before they arrive is being developed by Sunderland-based social enterprise DisabledAccess4All.

The ‘Customer Assist’ app will let users request assistance both en route and after arrival. When the user arrives, the shop, service or petrol station will have received information about the assistance he or she requires so they can have an attendant ready to help.

The app will also offer directions to accessible services, and a separate ‘Parking Space Finder’ app is being developed to work with local authorities to offer people directions to the nearest blue badge parking spaces. The parking app is due to go live for testing in October, with Westminster and Sunderland councils signed up to take part.

Gary McFarlane, managing director of DisabledAccess4All, said the apps would be free to use, with various business models being developed including a possible licensing deal for service providers, or sponsorship deals which would allow stronger accessibility branding for some businesses.

“We are currently negotiating to sign up a range of public and private sector bodies such as banks. If they don’t want to sponsor, will still carry the information, but sponsors can gain brand awareness, more prominence.”

The potential of mobile apps such as this to give people with disabilities more freedom in their everyday lives is enormous, McFarlane says.

“It breaks down social and physical barriers as well as attitudinal ones. If someone is relying on a personal assistant to help them going out shopping, when they implement this, they may not need that assistance. It means life with a lot less fuss, with much more independence and choice.”

Twenty-six years ago Howard Leicester was unexpectedly diagnosed with genetic deterioration of his eyes and ears, halfway through taking his first degree. Simple things became difficult; difficult things impossible.

However, with help and guidance from the charity Sense, which supports children and adults who are deaf and blind, Howard has since gained a PhD, run an academic department, and served on various boards in health and social care. Dr Leicester is now an independent consultant supporting change in healthcare planning and delivery.

This year, he had a chance to offer some help in his turn to Sense when he received a grant from the Vodafone World of Difference programme which offers people the chance to donate their time and skills to their chosen charity. Here, he picks up the story in his own words:

“Deafblind myself and working from home as an academic in health information systems (health informatics), I’m well on my way to providing accessible information across Kent from my native village of Otford.

“My progress has been made partly thanks to Headstar’s events and bulletins. Last year’s e-Access 10 conference introduced me to PDF accessibility expert Ted Page of PWS Ltd. Now we’re converting advanced academic textbooks from inaccessible PDFs into usable versions. Many such texts have been standard on MSc courses I’ve taught for years. But it’s only now that I’ve been able to “read” them myself. Moreover, Kent Library Services will get the products for their online library portals throughout the county.

“Then E-Access Bulletin issue 129, September 2010 introduced me to open source accessibility software expert and guiding force Steve Lee. In particular, the EduApps resource range, specially collected by the TechDis Regional Support Centre in North and East Scotland, allows us to generate and convert documents from and to various output formats. Local documents, like menus and newsletters, can thus be made more accessible for Otford residents and visitors.

“IT Can Help, the network of volunteers to help older and disabled people with IT run by the British Computer Society, is also on board. My local ambitions also stand a better chance because I’m now an Otford Parish Councillor.

“In recent months (mid March to mid May) I have also been working with the major deafblind charity Sense, generously supported by Vodafone’s World Of Difference programme which funds people to work for charities.

“I have been working with Sense, fellow academics and other local and national organisations to help promote the charity, and help to identify additional needs of deaf-blind patients in the UK in the modern digital age. Aims include to:

– Develop a standard for including ‘special needs’ in patient records;
– Produce models of local populations for predicting ‘special needs’ for planning and awareness;
– Promote computers for production and sharing of information in formats better suited to those with ‘special communication needs';
– Make Otford a more information-accessible village, and spread these principles across Kent; and
– Gather stories promoting a greater sense of humour on disability issues.

“Currently, patient ‘special needs’ are not formally collected, and data is too limited to estimate national or local needs. Most leaflets, books, mainstream and mobile websites are still inaccessible, and there is a general lack of awareness and understanding of accessibility issues.

“But”, continues Howard, “there’s progress on some of my national aims on top of my Otford activities. The ongoing Life Opportunities Survey (LOS) carried out by ONS/ODI deserves special attention by anyone involved in population modelling. For the first time, it maps up-to-date numbers on disability types to various barriers in society – and I’ve received generous, personal guidance from the official statisticians.

“Recording patients’ accessibility needs is also justified by LOS. I’ve produced a method based on self-completion linked to GP practices. I have received some encouragement for this work from various academics, Department of Health Informatics folk and RADAR, but further development and adoption will depend on receiving further help from other organisations, and I would be keen to hear from anyone interested.

“Please follow my activities in Otford and Kent, as well as my wider activities, via my website:
home.btconnect.com/howardleicester

“The home page has a link to the programme with subsequent links to the specific strands.”