E-Access Bulletin Live

By Jonathan Hassell

Many people struggle with reading text on websites, particularly those with dyslexia, vision impairments, Asperger’s syndrome, ADHD and the multiple minor impairments associated with ageing.

While web browsers do include facilities to help these users such as the ability to change text size or colour or use your own style-sheets, many people are not able to find or use the browser controls to take advantage of them.

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The UK government has declined to offer full support to a draft international treaty to allow accessible versions of copyrighted works to be shared across international boundaries, giving those with print disabilities wider access to books, E-Access Bulletin has learned.

The news comes in a response to a written Parliamentary question from Lord Low, President of the European Blind Union (EBU), in which he asked for the government’s assessment of the treaty. The draft was first put forward by the World Blind Union (WBU: bit.ly/gs9o55 ) in 2009 at a standing committee of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) ( see E-Access Bulletin issue 131: bit.ly/eNgEDt ).
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A coalition of Canadian disability organisations is claiming a historic victory this month after the country’s broadcasting regulator backed their call for an independent trust fund working to ensure 100% accessibility of all digital broadcasting platforms by 2020. Its work programme will be designed to focus on “innovation that provides platform-neutral solutions to ensure accessibility of all broadcasting content.”

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has included establishment of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund among conditions attached to its approval of the takeover of Canada’s largest TV network, CTV, by BCE ( www.bce.ca/en ), owner of communications company Bell.

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An ‘ideas marketplace’ for new open source assistive technology projects has been launched by a group of academics and developers with funding from JISC, the technology agency for UK colleges and universities.

The REALISE project ( www.realisepotential.org ) is an open, three-stage tool for creating new software technologies to make it easier for people with disabilities to use the internet, computers and mobile devices.

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By Tristan Parker

Some council websites present elderly users with a range of problems which prevent them taking full advantage of the opportunities to access their local services online, according to new research from the University of Hertfordshire. This is a problem for older people, and a problem for councils too, since citizen ‘self-service’ over council websites is seen as a key way of helping local authorities save money on face to face services, crucial in these times of heavy public sector budget cuts.

‘An e-government case study of London’s older citizens’ was led by Dr Jyoti Choudrie, head of the university’s Systems Management Research Unit (SyMRU) ( bit.ly/e9utoc ), and Vivian Songonuga, a research student and staff member at the Royal National Institute of Blind People. It examined 30 local government sites across London, plus 179 questionnaire responses and a further series of focus group interviews.
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Lack of awareness of the needs of users with disabilities; funding problems; user-testing problems and problems with ensuring use of open standards are all among barriers to successful transfer of new assistive technologies from the research laboratory to the real world, a new report finds.

The report was written by consultant Dr John Gill for the Cardiac project, a European initiative to identify research and development gaps in the fields of accessible and assistive ICT ( www.cardiac-eu.org ).
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Website accessibility should be built into local authority software and IT systems procurement criteria, the leading annual review of all UK council websites has found.

More local authorities should also carry out user-testing on their websites using groups of people with disabilities, according to Better Connected 2011 ( bit.ly/hBOGUw ), conducted by the public sector Society of IT Management (Socitm).
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A new awards event aims to recognise the ability of computers, the internet and assistive technology to improve the lives of people with disabilities and empower vulnerable sections of society.

Organised by disability and ICT charity AbilityNet ( bit.ly/himPdh ) and supported by organisations including BT, Microsoft and Race Online 2012, the first Technology4Good awards ( bit.ly/gwQUvZ ) are looking for examples of charities, businesses, government organisations and individuals that have used digital technology to improve the work and home lives of others, including disabled people, the elderly and young children. Two Accessibility Awards are featured in the seven categories.
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By David Bates

There is now increasing emphasis on enabling more of the older and poorer members of the community to use computers to access information and to communicate with others. I see the primary need for non-computer-literate older people to be an inexpensive ‘net book’ with a very simple and easily-learned interface which will enable them to undertake basic tasks. But from where can such machines be purchased with suitable, simple software installed?

Like a new driver, learners are easily put off by technicalities – they just want to move forward by operating the controls without learning what goes on under the bonnet. This problem is especially acute for blind computer users, who have to control the machine in an unusual way: because they cannot read the text or see the cursor they must move it around the screen with the Alt, arrow and Tab keys, and then listen to the words under the cursor as they are read out with a synthetic voice. The link they require may be very visible on the screen, but it may well take the carefully listening user many keystrokes to locate it.
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A three-month-old project using ‘crowdsourcing’ to improve the accessibility of websites for disabled people has already helped to solve problems with 26 sites, including those of the BBC and a large UK building society, E-Access Bulletin has learned.

The Fix the Web project ( www.fixtheweb.net ), which launched in November and was previewed in our September issue ( bit.ly/eQDmpC ), recruits volunteers to contact website owners on behalf of disabled internet users who encounter access problems.
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