E-Access Bulletin Live

An international plan for disability organisations and others to invest in producing a refreshable Braille device hugely cheaper than current systems on sale has obtained initial approval from the international DAISY consortium for information standards, E-Access Bulletin has learned.

The project is being led by the RNIB, which now has until the next DAISY board meeting in June to flesh out the plan. If this “charter” is passed, investors will be sought to identify and back a new device.

Refreshable Braille devices are made up of individual plastic “cells” with a grid of tiny holes through which a small rod rises and falls, triggered by an electronic current. A line of cells forms into a line of Braille as a computer reads across text.

As their production process is complex, cells currently cost around 100 US Dollars each, and mark-ups are high among the few firms which manufacture displays. With typical displays carrying 32, 40 and even 80 cells, overall costs soon spiral into thousands of dollars.

Kevin Carey, chair of RNIB, said this month there are already currently as many as 34 technical ideas in outline or prototype format at universities worldwide, any of which might lead to the desired goal of a cheap Braille display roughly the size of a stick of rock that could plug into the side of an e-book player.

“We need to narrow these 34 down to two or three – and ideally go down to one – and get massive investment in to bring prices down below 25 US Dollars per cell”, Carey said. At the moment, no business model had been ruled in or out for investment, production and sales, including models requiring mass pre-ordering and the involvement of existing major incumbent players in the Braille display market.

Carey first floated the plan in an address to last year’s “Braille21” congress hosted by the World Blind Union in Leipzig, Germany.

He told the congress a cheap display would “save massive amounts from hard copy Braille production which can be ploughed back into expanding the range of files on offer and into providing displays cheap or free to individuals.”

Anticipating complaints about market interference, Carey told the Leipzig conference the high prices operated in a similar way to a cartel, requiring intervention. “There are some who say that organisations of and for the blind should not become involved in the access technology market but the current cartel does not have an automatic right to exist. For the last 30 years of its operations the price of Braille displays has fallen slowly when most other consumer electronics prices have plunged.”

Ultimately, the very survival of Braille as a language could be at stake, he warned. “If Braille is to survive into the 21st Century, it will have to re-invent itself as a mass medium, simpler, cheaper and easier to render… unless we face up to these challenges, Braille will die”.

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.

On the face of it, Dr Norman Waddington – the holder of not just one, but two PhDs – should have what it takes to be offered a job interview. But like many disabled people – he is blind – this is not proving to be the case.

Early last year the government launched a programme of Incapacity Benefit reassessment, under which recipients of the benefit as well – as well as those in receipt of Severe Disablement Allowance or Income Support paid on the grounds of incapacity – were required to have their eligibility reassessed by undergoing a new “Work Capability Assessment”.

Anyone assessed as capable of working were moved on to Job Seekers’ Allowance or – for those with limited capability for work – Employment Support Allowance.

While Waddington accepts this is fair, he says the way the system has worked for disabled people is in danger of swinging from one extreme to another – from a situation where people were left isolated on benefits with no options, to one where they are being moved off benefits when the work may not be there.

“When I was pushed onto it at the age of 34, it was a bitter pill to swallow to be told you weren’t fit to work, when you knew you were. Now the tables have turned – they want people off incapacity benefit and back onto Employment Support Allowance and back into work. If you look at the small print in the DWP stuff, it seems you are likely to get benefit cuts after six months, but it’s not clear. The Jobcentre people don’t know what’s going on.”

Waddington has not worked since 1993, when he was made redundant from a white collar post at the Sellafield nuclear plant. Since then he has done some voluntary work, and looked for other jobs sporadically but since the benefit changes in Easter has been searching intensively.

“I must receive 1,000 job list emails a week now, people don’t realise the time it takes to plough through them with a screen reader,” he says. But despite having applied for some 800 jobs in that time, and despite his PHDs – in biodiversity science and clinical animal behaviour – he is yet to be shortlisted for any post.

“You get a bog-standard letter, saying you’re not successful on this occasion – they don’t say why. It’s soul-destroying. These email lists with jobs – sighted people can scan down them quickly, but we’ve got to go down it and read it all – people have no knowledge of the time it takes. And the time it takes to do an application, to use a screen-reader, cutting and pasting – for someone who didn’t have the computer knowledge I do it would be impossible.

“It’s as if they’re not aware of the time and effort it takes. They don’t want to know or they don’t want to know. And if you put it all in a covering letter, explaining about Access to Work, it’s as if they just throw your application out – though I can’t prove that’s the case.”

It is now up to the government to work out how to make the system fairer, he said.”They need to close the loopholes. The classic is the two-tick system, by which if an applicant meets the job criteria and is disabled, they are bound by law to give you an interview. So they just don’t shortlist you, they say you don’t meet criteria. Something needs to be done.”

The problems don’t stop there –applying for jobs in the first place can be made all but impossible by inaccessible online forms for job applications, he says. Recently he encountered a problem with an online application form on a local authority site, for example, which featured a visual icon to call up an interactive calendar for applicants to select dates such as start dates and end dates of previous jobs.

“Using JAWS for windows, you can’t access it. They very grudgingly sent me a word copy of an application form, but how accessible that will be, I’m not sure. They say they can’t accept a CV and a covering letter for application, even though under the Disability Discrimination Act you have an obligation to find an alternative method. The Jobcentre people say this is wrong, but I think half the forms I send are not getting to the people they should be. If they’re not meeting the admin criteria, they’re just scrapped.”

The Jobcentre itself is not providing enough information in accessible formats either, Waddington says. “People could possibly lose benefit, because it says in the small print you can lose £26 a week after six months. I went on it in September, so after March I could lose benefit if I don’t turn up for the Jobcentre interviews, or take up any placements they offer. But you don’t get this information in a format you can read.

“After my last Jobcentre interview, they said do I want a typed transcript – I said I couldn’t see it, can you email it to me? They said no, their computer system doesn’t talk to the internet. Then they gave me a whole load of leaflets I can’t see – I had asked for Braille, but it’s not available.”

Undeterred, Waddington says he will carry on trying to find work. “Obviously if I can get back into work I will get back into work. You can’t let it get to you – you’ve just got to keep on trying.”

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.

The basement floor of the UK’s new largest outlet for mobile phone provider O2, which opened this autumn on London’s Tottenham Court Road, is a chic modern space echoing the metal and glass technology wonderlands pioneered by Apple.

The “workshop” area with Wi-Fi, sofas and meeting booths, staffed at the entrance by a “concierge”, feels a long way from a traditional cramped high street mobile shop.

The clear, large lettering of the shop’s signs are a hint that something else is different: the store is attempting to integrate support for disabled customers including deaf people and blind people into its mainstream service. Staff have received awareness training from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) and sign language agency Positive Signs.

Asad Hamir, one of the store’s directors, is a qualified optician, with direct experience of the poor level of service that people with impaired vision receive on the high street. He has been quoted as saying he would like to create the sort of environment to which opticians would feel comfortable sending their low vision patients, and this is clearly part of the motivation behind the store’s attempts to offer the best advice on the benefits that mobile devices can provide for people with sensory impairment.

It’s not just a moral stand: the directors also see inclusion as a business opportunity. “If a section of the population is not being catered for or looked after, it’s definitely a market”, says Andrew Levey, the store’s marketing manager.

Perhaps the most powerful advocate for the store’s approach is a member of its staff, Abigail Gorman. Deaf and fluent in BSL, Gorman is one of the shop’s three O2 “gurus” working through bookable appointments to offer specialist advice to both hearing and deaf customers.

One of the only people in the world currently working in an integrated high street role of this kind, she works with a sign language interpreter funded from the government’s Access to Work scheme.

Speaking to E-Access Bulletin with the help of her interpreter in a bright corner of the “workshop”, having just finished advising a hearing customer, Gorman said her work background did not have anything to do with mobiles. But thanks to text messaging and internet access they are an indispensible part of modern life for deaf people as for everyone else, and she had first-hand experience of the barriers that can be thrown up on the high street when she went with her mother – who is also deaf – visited one shop with a sign language interpreter.

“When we arrived, they said have you called customer services? If not, then we can’t help”, Gorman says. “What can you do? Deaf people can’t call customer services.”

So when she saw the job advertised she jumped at the chance, and with the selection process supported for O2 by Positive Signs, successfully won through a large number of candidates to become O2’s first deaf guru.

If a deaf person comes into the store or books an appointment with her, she says she tries to show there are ways to solve the inevitable problems and issues that they face in communicating using mainstream devices.

“It’s about problem sharing, making it normalised.”

The main ways deaf people use mobiles is for text messaging and video calls, and with more and more phones carrying a front-facing camera and the rise of apps allowing free international communication over the web, there are a wide range of solutions, Gorman says.

For Apple users, one of the most important features for deaf people is the video utility FaceTime; BlackBerry offers the BBM instant messaging app; and other multi-platform video, voice and chat clients include Skype, Tango and ooVoo.

One issue for deaf users is that tariffs are based around voice calls, which they cannot use, she says: “At the moment, you have to pay for inclusive minutes. So though deaf people only benefit from internet and texts, we pay for calls as well.” The tariff she tends to recommend is 100 mins, 500 free texts and internet access, though a deaf person would use an internet app for text in any case.

Another minor irritation for a deaf user is voicemail, Gorman says. “A message comes up and says you have voicemail – but you have to call it to delete them. I have 52, because I never get round get round to asking someone to delete them for me!”

Gorman is the first deaf guru, but she says she hopes the concept will take off at other shops to allow proper research and trials to be run into how disabled customers can be served even better.

Since the store’s opening, use by disabled people has started slowly but a marketing campaign involving word of mouth, press campaigns, promotion through charities and disability networks such as deaf clubs around London is underway to spread the word and try to prove the concept makes good business sense.

Plans are in hand to expand advice and services for people with motor and learning difficulties, and the RNIB plans to hold events at the workshop looking at the accessibility of mobiles. The disability community will be hoping that this is the future of high street retail.

A US class action against the Walt Disney Company for the alleged inaccessibility of its websites has reached an out of court settlement ahead of a trial that had been planned for January 2012, E-Access Bulletin has learned.

On 29 June, California district judge Dolly Gee gave permission for three blind women from California and Kansas to proceed with a class action alleging Disney’s are inaccessible to screen reader programs, hampering the ability of blind users to make reservations for the company’s theme parks and download electronic tickets.

The three women are represented by Andy Dogali at Florida-based law firm Forizs & Dogali, alongside Los Angeles-based attorney Eugene Feldman. Dogali has now told E-Access Bulletin the terms of a settlement have been agreed by the parties, subject to court approval as required by US law.

“We are presently documenting the settlement, so most of the precise details remain confidential, although I expect the process to require no more than another few weeks”, he said. “The supportive documents will be publicly filed in the very near future, along with the request for approval.”

The news of a pre-trial settlement may disappoint some observers, as a January trial would have raised the issue of a need for greater corporate web accessibility worldwide. Last month Samantha Fothergill, senior legal policy officer at UK blindness charity RNIB, said the fact that a company with such a high profile was being sued was bound to have an effect on corporate behaviour and lobbying campaigns elsewhere.

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.