E-Access Bulletin Live

Two free new learning resources have been released by JISC TechDis, a education advisory service on accessible and inclusive technology, to boost skills for learners with and without disabilities.

The first resource will help learners who use text-to-speech applications: two new voices for text-to-speech were commissioned from specialists CereProc available for free to learners and learning institutes.

The male and female voices – named “TechDis Jack” and “TechDis Jill” – are designed to be easy to understand, “youthful and modern”. TechDis Jill possesses a Northern English accent, which its creators believe is a first in text-to-speech.

According to the TechDis website, “all staff and learners over 16 in every publicly-funded learning provider in England should be eligible for the TechDis Voices, which can be downloaded after registering.

The second project to be launched was the JISC TechDis Toolbox, with information to help people use ICT and online technologies more effectively in employment.

This information is divided into five main categories: ‘using technology’, ‘planning and organisation’, ‘communicating’, ‘teamworking’, and ‘different needs?’ It includes guidance on how to carry out effective Google searches; and how to operate text-to-speech on some mobile devices.

The resources were launched at ND’12, the seventh national digital inclusion conference, held in London last month. In a launch video, Alistair McNaught of JISC TechDis said: “We spent eight years working with learning providers from the top down, helping to influence senior management teams, librarians, learning support staff, tutors, etc, and telling them about the kinds of tools and technology that could make a difference to their learners.

“But while that was fantastic in some areas, in many places it just wasn’t trickling down to the learner, so we decided to flip it over and work form the learner upwards. The whole point of the Toolbox is to take all the things you wish your tutor might have told you about but never did, and take that to learners directly.”

The work was funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

A blind accessibility consultant who took the Canadian Federal Government to court over the inaccessibility of its websites has won a second victory, after the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal upheld an initial decision in her favour.

Canadian citizen Donna Jodhan, who is blind, won her first case against the government in 2010, after claiming that her rights were breached when she could not apply for a government job online or complete an online census form using screen-reader technology. The government then appealed the decision (see E-Access Bulletin issue 133), continuing a long legal battle.

In its defence, the Canadian Government had claimed the case should be thrown out since the information was available to Jodhan by other means – by telephone, post or in person. However, the appeal court has now upheld Jodhan’s 2010 victory, which included a ruling that the Canadian Government must make its websites accessible for blind and visually impaired citizens within 15 months.

Jodhan told E-Access Bulletin she was “absolutely delighted, humbled, and relieved that this decision has been handed down.” She said: “It is my sincere hope that the Canadian government will now take the initiative to work with our community to ensure that the court’s ruling is adhered to in full and in the spirit that it was meant to be. Now we need to build on this and use this as a launching pad for creating more awareness and to encourage all stake holders to work together for a common goal.”

In a press statement about the ruling, a spokesperson for the Federal Government said: “Our government is continuing to implement the Federal Court decision from 2010. We are committed to web accessibility and to date over 100 government institutions are converting their content in line with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.”

A more creative, inclusive approach to accessibility is needed than simply following technical guidelines, delegates heard at the eAccess 12 conference co-hosted this week by E-Access Bulletin publisher Headstar.

David Sloan of the Digital Media Access Group at Dundee University said his university’s School of Computing had integrated user feedback into all aspects of its work, from the building’s open design to recruitment of local elderly people to come in and participate in research.

“Involving people who benefit from the skills you’re teaching is critical, rather than just presenting people with guidelines like WCAG and using that in an assessment”, Sloan said.

Paul Edwards, programme manager for Channel 4’s online coverage of the upcoming Paralympic Games, agreed that sticking too rigidly to accessibility guidelines can have a detrimental effect on your audience. Flexibility is crucial: “The most important thing we’ve been trying to do is make sure our process is flexible enough to react when a situation occurs. When you’re looking at guidelines like WCAG, sticking too closely to them actually blinkers you to what’s happening to your users.”

Henny Swan, senior accessibility specialist for iPlayer and mobile at BBC Technology, said modern developers should ensure a website responds to the device it is being viewed on, including smartphones and mobile devices: “responsive design”.

However, designing accessible content for mobile devices is still tough due to a lack of authoritative guidelines on the subject, Swan said. This led to Swan and her team at the BBC developing their own specialist guidelines for accessible BBC mobile content: “We decided to write guidelines for HTML, Android and iOS (the iPhone operating system), because those are our three biggest areas. We needed ‘device-agnostic’ guidelines, rather than writing three different sets.”

The result is ‘Mobile and tablet accessibility guidelines and techniques’ – an internal BBC guide for developers, designers and project managers when creating mobile content. Guidance includes ‘supporting device capabilities’, which states that content must try not to break specific device accessibility. An example of this is the ‘pinch’ zoom function on the iOS, said Swan, which allows users to magnify content with a small finger gesture on the screen. “If you’re coding in HTML you can suppress ability for user to do that, immediately preventing a lot of people being able to read content quickly and easily. Don’t suppress what the device allows you to do.”

A new network of 51 specialist organisations across England have been funded to help local computer users with a disability or learning difficulty to get online and use government services.

The Disability Network initiative has been launched by the national technology access body UK Online Centres ( http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/ ), with specialist learning providers across England receiving funding of £7,500 each to provide training and support to disabled computer users.

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Four out of five leading price comparison websites surveyed are inaccessible to disabled and elderly users, potentially putting them in breach of the Equality Act 2010, a new report has found.

Conducted by ICT access charity AbilityNet, the research presents a dismal picture of accessibility by disabled and elderly users for the websites, which allow people to compare prices of goods and services including online shopping and insurance prices.

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The British Assistive Technology Association (BATA) and RNIB are calling for changes to the copyright law to allow disabled people to copy all legally owned digital books or multimedia into more accessible formats.

The calls come as part of the organisation’s response to consultation on proposed changes to copyright law from the UK Intellectual Property Office in a report by Professor Ian Hargreaves – chair of digital economy at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies – which would allow wider and easier access to a range of materials for disabled people.

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By Brian Kelly

For many web authors, developers and policy makers, the issue of accessibility to disabled people is addressed mainly by trying to ensure that their sites conform with the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) maintained by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium.

For example, the UK Government’s ‘Delivering inclusive websites guidelines’ ( bit.ly/3lCReg ), published in 2009, said: “The minimum standard of accessibility for all public sector websites is Level Double-A of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. All new websites must conform to these guidelines from the point of publication.”

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Developers of mobile apps must build in “as much choice, adaptability and flexibility as possible” to their products to maximise accessibility for disabled people, or risk creating a whole new world of digital exclusion, a new report finds.

‘Moving together: mobile apps for inclusion and assistance’ ( bit.ly/yBTdwo ) was written by E-Access Bulletin editor Dan Jellinek with Peter Abrahams of Bloor Research, on behalf of the OneVoice for Accessible IT Coalition.

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A pledge on behalf of the publishing industry to work with all parts of the publishing supply chain to improve the accessibility of e-books has been launched by The Publishers Association (PA), with cross-sector support.

The joint statement ( bit.ly/HzaaBV ) was launched at this week’s London Book Fair 2012, and is supported by a range of organisations, including: the Royal National Institute of Blind People; and EDItEUR, the international trade standards body for the book industry.

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Today’s technologically-skilled young people are likely to face significant web accessibility problems as they grow older, similar to those faced by elderly computer users today, a professor of computing has said.

Speaking to E-Access Bulletin ahead of his talk at this week’s W4A web accessibility conference in Lyon, France ( www.w4a.info/2012 ), Alan F. Newell, an emeritus professor at Dundee University’s School of Computing, said that he has “every expectation” that today’s young people will face problems using the web in the future, even if they currently have good computer skills. This will arise from their declining abilities (such as poorer eyesight, poorer cognition, poorer dexterity) struggling to cope with constant technological evolution, he said.

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