Access For All

The Kessler Foundation and the National Organization on Disabilities commissioned Harris Interactive to conduct the 2010 Survey of Americans with Disabilities. Among the findings they identified that employment represents the largest gap between the two groups. Of all working-age people with disabilities, only 21% say that they are employed, compared to 59% of people without disabilities – a gap of 38 percentage points. People with disabilities are still much more likely to be living in poverty. People with disabilities are less likely than those without disabilities to socialize with friends, relatives or neighbors, once again suggesting that there are significant barriers to participation in leisure activities for this population. The second-largest gap between people with and without disabilities is regarding Internet access. 85% of adults without disabilities access the Internet, whereas only 54% of adults with disabilities report the same – a gap of 31 percentage points.
Source: Kessler Foundation

VERITAS is undertaking a survey among designers and developers that will help to better understand the design and development process of products and services for people with disabilities and functional limitations as well as older people.
If you are a designer or developer active in the design and development process in the automotive, smart living spaces, workplace, ehealth and/or infotainment domain, then they kindly invite you to complete the survey:

• Automotive
• Smart living spaces
• Working environment
• E-health
• Infotainment

The questionnaires have been designed to identify the industrial user needs of designers and developers per application sector in terms of procedures followed for the design and development of new products and their potential relation with the older people and people with disabilities in VERITAS project. Its evaluation will be the basis to implement appropriate tools and methodologies in order to increase awareness and need for accessibility.
Data provided by participants will not be distributed outside the project, nor will individual data allow tracking of the respondent’s identity. The data will be considered and analyzed only in an aggregated anonymised format.

Ofcom has commissioned a study to develop future scenarios based on the services required to promote social and economic inclusion of older and disabled people over the coming 20-year period. From these scenarios, the study identifies the key technological developments required, including a detailed discussion of drivers for or barriers to change, and a quantification of the technologies’ impact on wired and wireless networks.

• Assisted living technologies for older and disabled people in 2030 – Research report
• Assisted living technologies for older and disabled people in 2030 – Annexes

This report is inline with the urgent need that was expressed by speakers addressing some 80 delegates at a seminar held at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills , London, on June 15, and organised by the charity PhoneAbility in collaboration with BIS. Experts working across the field of disabled and older people have called for a national overall coherent plan to develop fully integrated systems and services which meet their needs.

Additionally, a consultation inviting citizens, businesses and researchers to share ideas on how best to use information and communications technologies (ICTs) to help older Europeans live more independently, and more generally to establish new ways to put ICTs at the service of the most vulnerable members of society, has been launched by a high-level panel established to advise the European Commission on the functioning of the Ambient Assisted Living joint programme (AAL JP). The panel is chaired by former European Commissioner Meglena Kuneva. The public consultation is the first step towards meeting the target of doubling the take-up of independent living arrangements for the elderly by 2015 set by the Digital Agenda (see IP/10/581). The consultation runs until 1 July 2010.

According to a survey conducted on behalf of the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation by a consulting firm specialising in information technology for people with disabilities, 52 % of the Danish government websites are not fully e-accessible to people with various types of disabilities.
A total of 226 government websites were tested, including pages that are directly covered by the agreement on the mandatory open standards and a variety of other government websites. Individual pages were tested in terms of compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA standard and with the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) standards.
The survey shows that almost half of the websites examined (48 %) have little or no serious accessibility problems, whereas the other half of them (52 %) include only some essential functions or are loaded with content that may not be available. Every tenth public website has been proved to be less accessible than it should.
According to the Danish Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Ms. Charlotte Sahl-Madsen, “The results are not very satisfactory, because we expected a more positive development after the political agreement on open standards in 2008.”
There are still many public websites that are not fully IT accessible to people with various types of disabilities, according to the same survey. Therefore, ministries, regions and municipalities should be more willing to use IT solutions in order to ensure greater accessibility for all.
Furthermore, the Ministry will launch in 2011 a new eLearning tool that will provide instructions and guidance on how documents and websites can become more accessible. “The Ministry will also examine whether there is any workable international experience, we can bring into play”, says Ms. Sahl-Madsen.
Web accessibility includes, e.g. accessible design for screen reader users, access for people who cannot use a mouse and who ultimately use the keyboard alone when they need to use various functions or download content from a website, etc.
During the ministerial conference in Riga in 2006, EU member states decided to set a goal of 100 % accessible public websites by the end of 2010. However, this has been proved difficult for all countries and none of the member state is expected to reach the target before the end of 2010.
Commenting in this regard, Mr. Michael Bach Petersen, the Head of the IT and Telecom Agency, stated, “We are not alone in our challenges to ensure accessibility of public websites. Problems exist in all EU member states. We will intensify our participation in the single European work towards achieving common strategies, tools and methods to ensure that all citizens have equal access to public information and to digital public services.”
The Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has already launched a series of initiatives designed to support the authorities’ efforts to develop and maintain accessible websites. These initiatives will be further evaluated and strengthened in order to maximise improvements for the benefit of the large group of citizens with disabilities. The initiatives include an information campaign, development of accessibility eLearning and other tools to support public authorities’ work towards web accessibility.
Source: eGov Monitor

Accessibility is becoming an ubiquitous topic nowadays, with many authorities and experts putting a lot of effort on pushing forward accessibility of software applications. Despite this fact, many ICT applications and systems are not fully accessible yet.

The development of accessible software applications requires a strong effort from developers and software designers. With the additional encumbrance of taking into account different kinds of accessibility requirements, guidelines and best practices, and different user interface implementation technologies, developers are faced with a daunting task. Therefore, the highly specialised skills required for developing accessible software sets aside most of them.

Starting from this lack of accessibility, the ACCESSIBLE EU FP7 project was established to contribute to better accessibility for all citizens, to increase the use of accessibility standards, and to develop an assessment simulation environment (including a suite of accessibility analysing tools as well as developer-aid tools) to assess efficiently, easily and rapidly the accessibility and viability of software applications for all user groups.

Actually the main goal of ACCESSIBLE is to develop appropriate open source assessment and simulation tools in order to fully support and incorporate accessibility constraints for the design and development of accessible new applications.

The ACCESSIBLE Consortium kindly invites you to participate in its first international Workshop that will take place on 13 July 2010 in the context of the 12th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (ICCHP), in Vienna University of Technology, Austria.

The main objective of this workshop is to promote the innovative results of the ACCESSIBLE project related to the accessibility assessment and simulation technologies, to a wider community of potential users and to offer significant support to interested parties (ICT developers, designers, etc.) in order to encourage and empower them to contribute towards the inclusive ICT vision.
At the end of the Workshop, an award ceremony will be given to the organisation or to the developer of the most accessible software application (Web, mobile), according to the accessibility tests (WCAG 2.0, mobileOK) that are going to take place with ACCESSIBLE assessment tools. The ACCESSIBLE Award evaluation expert committee will be composed of well-known scientists and experts in the accessibility domain.

For more information about the ICCHP conference and the ACCESSIBLE Workshop, please visit the web page of ICCHP or the projects web page.

A new international research report commissioned by ACCAN (Australian Communication Consumer Action Network) reports on 16 high-speed broadband applications that can provide enormous benefits to people with disabilities. The report was conducted between November 2009 and January 2010 and discusses the uses of broadband applications in Europe, the United States and Japan. “This is ground-breaking research into how the innovative use of high speed broadband can deliver potentially life-transforming services for consumers with disabilities,” Allan Asher, CEO of ACCAN said. “If Australia were to adopt these uses it would set the standard in international best practice with this platform.”
Download the report here.