E-Access Bulletin Live

Keyboard-accessible links, audio cues and simplified layouts are some of the features present in ‘Accessible Twitter’, a new application under development to make the popular microblogging service more accessible to disabled users.

Users sign in to the application
( www.accessibletwitter.com )
with their regular Twitter username and password and are then presented with a tweaked version of the service with improved usability and accessible alternatives to many features.

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An approach to improving web access for people with disabilities based on ‘adaptability’ rather than ‘accessibility’ is urged by a leading academic in this month’s E-Access Bulletin.

Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus at UKOLN, the national digital library research body based at the University of Bath, says ‘adaptability’ adopts the UN Convention’s view that disability results from the interaction between people with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinder their participation in society.
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A lack of accessibility in old ICT systems and lack of budget are the two main barriers preventing organisations from making their internal and external ICT systems more accessible for people with disabilities, according to the results of the new survey.

These factors were each cited by 40% of respondents as ‘strong’ or ‘very strong’ barriers to implementation of accessibility in a survey carried out by Bloor Research in conjunction with E-Access Bulletin’s publisher Headstar and Ability Magazine. The finding suggests that providing tools for improving the accessibility of these ‘legacy’ systems could be an interesting business opportunity, say the survey’s creators. Less than a quarter of respondents quoted lack of understanding of accessibility issues as a barrier to progress.
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Social media users are being invited to think about the internet in terms of touch, taste and smell, to raise awareness of deafblindness and encourage deafblind people to use social networking sites, in a project from the deafblind charity Sense.

An online ‘Sensehub’ portal ( www.sensehub.org.uk ) has been created for Sense on a pro bono basis by advertising and digital agency RMG Connect, allowing visitors to link to sense-based channels on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. On the Twitter channel, for example, visitors can view streams of Tweets which contain words like ‘touch’, ‘taste’ and ‘smell’, while the Facebook link takes visitors to a group which encourages people to tag their photos with sense-based words, rather than just people’s names.
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An advanced screen-reader and other accessibility features on a new version of Apple’s iPhone represent an “extremely significant development” for a previously inaccessible technology, according to the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).

‘Off-the-shelf’ features built into the iPhone 3GS allow blind and visually impaired users to send and receive text messages and emails, browse the internet, play music and make and receive phone calls.
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Public sector procurement should be used to improve equality for people with disabilities, including the development of more accessible IT systems, according to a government bill passing through Parliament.

The Equality Bill
( services.parliament.uk/bills/2008-09/equality.html
), introduced to the Commons on 24 April and currently undergoing its committee stages, aims to reform and harmonise equality law. Notes accompanying the bill say: “With an annual expenditure of around £175 billion every year on goods and services, the public sector has an important opportunity to use its purchasing power to promote equality where possible.”
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Accessibility is to become a key priority for the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA –
www.bima.co.uk),
the body representing the interactive and digital content sector, incoming chair Justin Cooke has told E-Access Bulletin.

Cooke is managing director of web design agency Fortune Cookie, which has a track record of creating accessible websites for clients such as Legal and General. He has been elected chair of BIMA for three years, heading an executive board that also includes senior representatives of leading ad agencies, national newspaper websites, digital agencies and recruitment and skills firms.
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Communications, technology and broadcasting companies are currently carrying out “very little research” into the accessibility requirements of consumers and the needs of disabled people, a new report has found.

The report, based on interviews with 20 companies, was prepared by i2 media research for the Advisory Committee on Older and Disabled People (ACOD), a sub-group of the communications industry regulator Ofcom.
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A method for presenting Braille characters as a sequence of strong and weak pulses on the touch-screen of a mobile device has been developed by a research team at the University of Tampere in Finland.

The most successful method tested by the team involved sending sequences of pulses about a third of a second apart to a single point of the screen of a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. Almost all participants could accurately recognise individual characters sent in this way, though faster speeds reduced the recognition rate.
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The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has failed to adequately address accessibility problems with its new mobile web news service, one of the country’s leading accessibility analysts has told E-Access Bulletin.

Tom Worthington, a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the Australian National University, examined ‘ABC Mobile’ (
www.abc.net.au/innovation/mobile )
for accessibility on its launch. In a report posted to his blog, he said: “The home page does not appear to have been designed in accordance with guidelines for web accessibility for the disabled, and may be unlawful. The site also fails several mobile phone and other web guidelines.” One of the key faults had been with a lack of proper alternative text tags for information conveyed as images, he said.
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