Meeting with DCC about Real Time Passenger Information System for Dublin
Thursday, 11 March 2010
A Real Time Passenger Information (
CFIT have been working behind the scenes on helping to ensure that there is an accessible
Writing papers for ICCHP 2010
Tuesday, 02 March 2010
It's that time again when our favourite conference is coming around the 12th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs will be held at the Vienna University of Technology July 14 - 16, 2010 (Pre-Conference July 12 - 13).
ICCHP focuses on all aspects related to Assistive Technologies (AT) and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for people with disabilities. Changes in awareness and understanding of disability as well as social and legal frameworks, driven by Disability Rights and Independent Living Movements led to what is known as eAccessibility, Universal Design or eInclusion. User involvement and user centred design are core to what ICCHP is all about bringing together all of the partners needed for true social innovation and an inclusive information society.
Josh has had two papers accepted for presentation at this years conference.
Starting the VICON project
Monday, 18 January 2010
Mark and Josh recently attended the kick-off meeting of a major new European project that NCBI are partners in. It's called "VICON". VICON is all about the development of virtual testing of consumer products and user interfaces. The needs of people with sensory or dexterity impairments are generally not considered when designing user interfaces (UIs) for mainstream consumer products. Also existing interfaces and controls rarely fulfill the accessibility requirements of users with visual, hearing, and dexterity impairments. VICON will focus mostly on those with mild to moderate age-related impairments (hearing reduction, macular degeneration, etc).
As the “user experience” is a given more attention by an increasing number of manufacturers - as they rightly indentify it as a way to improve the quality of their product line. Hence VICON aims to improve the accessibility and inclusivity of consumer products. The focus will be on consumer products (ICT and non-ICT products); these include ”infotainment” devices such as digital cameras, mobile phones, TV and Radio, as well as white goods such as household appliances (fridges, cookers, etc.).
VICON will explore the entire design process of UIs of consumer products, from concept, to product and (particularly) UI specification, virtual testing and feedback from Virtual User Model prototypes. VICON aims to develop an advanced Virtual User Model (VUM) in a virtual prototyping environment that supports the specification, building, and evaluation of user interfaces - hardware and software - for controlling and interacting with consumer products.
The Virtual User Concept will be based upon testing the use of the VUM throughout the entire development process. Special focus lies on addressing real time interaction/accessibility needs of user groups with minor to moderate physical impairments. As such, Virtual User Profiles (which are a customisable library of virtual people) shall respond to new interaction paradigms in order to improve consumer products.
The other main partners in VICON include the University of Bremen (BIBA and TZI), Fraunhofer FIT, DORO, ARCELIK and RNID - Royal National Institute for the Deaf.
Training and templates for accessible documents
Thursday, 03 December 2009
We've been working on a problem faced by many organizations: how to create accessible MS Word and PDF documents. With some public sector websites containing up to 99% of their information in downloadable documents, this is an extremely important but badly neglected issue for accessibility.
We were asked by South Tipperary County Council to create MS Word templates and a user guide to enable their staff to produce County Development Plans and other documents that are as accessible as possible. The templates enforce structural markup using MS Word styles. The user guide explains how to maximise accessibility for each type of content - text, images, data tables, forms, etc. - and how to convert to even more accessible PDF and HTML formats. We hope to roll out a general 'tools and training' package in 2010 to help more organizations with this tricky but important process.
Meeting with Minister Eamon Ryan
Thursday, 03 December 2009
CFIT's Mark Magennis recently met with Eamon Ryan, Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, as a representative of the TV Access Coalition to discuss preparations for the analogue television switch-off and the protection of vulnerable consumers, including people with disabilities. A report of the meeting and the state of play with regard to the 2012 digital television switch-over in Ireland is available on the TV Access website.
Web accessibility training
Thursday, 12 November 2009
We're running our next web accessibility training course on 23rd and 24th November in Dublin. See our training page for details.
CEN/CENELEC Guide 6 Training
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Josh and Mark recently attended training on CEN/CENELEC Guide 6 (PDF, 400kb) - Guidelines for standards developer to address the needs of older persons and persons with disabilities.
Guide 6, which is the European equivalent of the ISO/IEC Guide 71, provides a framework and guidance on when and how to bring information about the needs of older people and people with disabilities into the process of creating technical standards for products and services. This could be anything from telephones to child seats to public toilets.
We believe Guide 6 offers a very useful structure for identifying issues of relevance to people with disabilities and how they relate to any standard that is being developed. It would be useful for developing not only international standards, but any type of standard for any product or service.
The training, held in Madrid, was provided by the Stand4All project. Stand4all will be providing the same training in other locations in future, including London in January 2010. We would recommend it to anyone with an interest in standardisation and how to get the needs of older people and people with disabilities taken into account. Contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.
Contributing to the Postive Ageing Strategy
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Ireland is developing a National Positive Ageing Strategy which will set a framework for future policies, programmes and services for older people in Ireland. We are contributing to an NCBI submission with our views about the need for older people to be digital included. That means digital connectivity, digital literacy and digital accessibility.
Web accessibility is a big issue here, with more and more public bodies adopting online channels as lower cost ways of providing information and services to the public. This benefits everyone, but only if these services are accessible and the people who need to access them have the required literacy and connectivity.
The accessibility of digital TV is another important issue. It's notable that the National Health Service in the UK is now offering its NHS Direct health information and advice service on Freeview digital terrestrial television (DTT) as well as on the web and by telephone. This reduces the number of unnecessary GP visits paid for by Government and is a huge cost saver, so we can expect similar initiatives here in Ireland. But older people must be able to operate their DTT receivers. Given that the current DTT receiver specfications do not even specify an easy to use remote control, this is an issue of concern to us.
Usability and RIA User Test Video
Monday, 21 September 2009
Joshue O Connor was invited by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) to give a presentation on accessibility, WAI-ARIA and Rich Internet Applications (RIA) at the recent Techshare 2009 pre-conference workshop.
The workshop was entitled “Web Applications Enabled with WCAG 2.0 and WAI-ARIA" and involved a video presentation of an informal user test (with friend and colleague Stuart Lawler) of a well known RIA (Google Reader).
Watch the video!
The video footage got some great feedback from people at the conference so we have decided to publish the results on our site. Download the "User Testing of RIA" Video [WMV,104.5 Mb]. This video is not captioned.
The video presentation aimed to examine the usability of rich internet applications as technologies such as WAI-ARIA, and APIs like Google's Axsjax - become an increasingly accepted feature of the developer landscape. How will users of Assistive Technology respond to these changes? Will they have to learn more complex ways of navigation or different modes of interaction?
The presentation and video hoped to demonstrate the importance of user testing RIAs to ensure that the reality lives up to the promise.
Methodology
The user test took place in the CFIT usability lab and is very informal. There is open discussion between test facilitator and test participant as issues arise while the user interface and functionality are explored.
While the purpose of the test was originally to explore the use of WAI-ARIA in the wild, in this case during the test it was found that the Google Reader contains only a small amount of WAI-ARIA functionality. Therefore is best to view the test as an examination of the user experience for a blind screen reader user when using an RIA, and not solely as an exploration of WAI-ARIA.
The test participant used JAWS 10, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox version 3.5 and 3.2.
Test Outcomes and Observations
- Labeling of elements was generally poor. This is totally avoidable and a surprise considering the interface was developed by Google.
- Google reader is an interesting example of a great idea that is poorly executed. In terms of intuitive RIA usability it does not perform well. When the WAI-ARIA enhanced version is activated there is nothing to indicate what you have to do to get to the extra functionality. Even if the link for ‘Click here for ARIA enhanced interface” had the extra text “Press ? for list of commands” that would have made the whole experience easier.
- However, once the user has climbed the steep learning curve and has been orientated it does come into its own – but that is a steep curve!
- The keyboard command to give the user the list of short cut keys in Google Reader does not work with JAWS 10, in virtual PC mode. Or in the common mode used by many blind screen reader users. You must de-activate the PC Cursor (Insert+Z) and toggle between different modes to successfully interact with the interface itself and to take advantage of the Axsjax/ARIA stuff. Way too complicated! But is it the shape of things to come, as other RIAs follow suit?
- Will the AT user may be put off using these kind of applications due to this switching of modes? Very likely, initially anyway.
- Problems with help: Insert F1 – added to virtual buffer. Text not placed in virtual buffer- so where is it coming from? Therefore there is an inconsistency with how screen reader help and support works (with JAWS) and any other screen readers that use a virtual buffer.
- Stuart comments
It’s a different experience – turning off the virtual cursor
andI would like to see a way of interacting with the virtual cursor
were very interesting and gave an insight into how the user feels like he is moving into a new mode of browsing. - Interesting behaviour – in different browsers – and Virtual Cursor settings gave certain elements focus and others where ignored/invisible.
- Use of the text “Add a subscription button on the left” is useless.
- Also notifying the user somewhere that the Virtual Cursor had to be off – is vital.
- The average user will not be able to deal with changing Virtual Cursor – on and off – on top of the complexity of learning extra commands.
- Focus issues – the screen reader user cannot read character by character easily, due to virtual cursor being turned off.
- Totally Different experience – or realm of browsing.
- Will layered commands be an option to deal with more complex Web Applications (such as in JAWS 11).
- In Internet Explorer when the virtual cursor is off the ARIA/Axsjax stuff won’t work. IN Firefox it is working, but the buttons won’t work properly with the Virtual Cursor on.
- JAWS didn’t go into ‘Forms mode’ when the “add a subscription” button was activated in Firefox.
Pre-judging the Golden Spider Awards
Friday, 11 September 2009
We're taking part in the judging for the 2009 eircom Golden Spiders Awards. We're carrying out a pre-judging standards conformance analysis on each entry.
The purpose of this is to weed out any entries that fall so short of adhering to web standards that they can't really be considered as suitable winners for best practice awards such as these. Basically, we're looking for serious breaches of code validity, accessibility and browser compatibility. Entries would fail for things like missing Doctype declarations, major incompatibilities with popular browsers or the lack of any structural markup. From what we've looked at so far, no sites are getting everything perfect, so the trick for us is to weed out major bad practice without setting the bar too high. It's a delicate operation!
User Testing WAI-ARIA enabled Web Applications
Monday, 07 September 2009
Joshue O Connor has been invited by the Web Accessibility Initiative to give a presentation on WAI-ARIA at the upcoming Techshare pre-conference workshop.
Entitled “Web Applications Enabled with WCAG2 and WAI-ARIA” the workshop aims to provide training for developers who want to learn more about creating accessible Web applications. It introduces the key concepts of Web accessibility standards including W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 and WAI-ARIA - Accessible Rich Internet Applications, to demonstrate how these can be implemented in practice to provide accessible and usable Web sites and applications.
The workshop includes contributions from different speakers including Michael Cooper - W3C/WAI, Steve Faulkner – TPG, Andrew Ronksley - RNIB, and Artur Ortega – Yahoo! and provides an opportunity for questions and engaging discussions.
Josh’s presentation will be entitled “Usability and WAI-ARIA" and aims to examine the usability of web applications that use WAI-ARIA as it becomes an increasingly accepted feature of the developer landscape. How will users of Assistive Technology respond to these changes? Will they have to learn more complex ways of navigation or different modes of interaction?
This presentation hopes to demonstrate the importance of user testing WAI-ARIA enabled applications to ensure that the reality lives up to the promise.
Running accessible ICT procurement seminar
Monday, 07 September 2009
We're co-hosting a seminar on Accessible ICT Procurement with the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design.
It'll be held at the NDA offices at 25 Clyde Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin on Thurs 24th September from 9.30am to 1pm. The keynote speaker is one of the major international experts in ICT accessibility, Cynthia Waddell, Executive Director and Law, Policy and Technology Subject Matter Expert at the International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet (ICDRI). She's the Cynthia in Cynthia Says. The seminar is free but spaces are strictly limited. If you'd like to attend, RSVP to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , 01 608 0456, giving dietary requirements.
This seminar will examine EU and Irish policy in this area, strategies for achieving accessible ICT systems through procurement and experiences from both industry and the public sector of dealing with accessibility in the procurement process for ICT systems. These may be internal or external facing systems such as websites, intranets, smart card systems or kiosks. The full agenda is as follows:
- 9:30 – 9.40am Welcome and opening by Dónal Rice, Senior ICT Advisor with the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design.
- 9.40 – 10.40am Keynote by Cynthia Waddell.
- 10.40 – 11.15am EU and Irish policy, Alan Dalton, Accessibility Development Advisor for the Excellence through Accessibility Awards, Dónal Rice.
- 11.15 – 11.30am Coffee break.
- 11.30 – 12.00pm ICT Procurement Toolkit and strategies for accessible procurement, Dr Mark Magennis, Director of the NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology (CFIT).
- 12.00pm – 1.00pm Panel Discussion: Case studies and experiences. Facilitated by Dr Mark Magennis. Discussants from both industry and public bodies will examine the challenges and opportunities of accessible procurement. Speakers to include SSB Bart Group (USA), Henry Poskitt from Frontend, and a number of speakers from public bodies (to be confirmed).
- 1.00pm Light lunch served.
Postscript
Here are some photos from the day itself. The first is of Cynthia Waddell's presentation in the NDA, the second is of Donal Rice (NDA CEUD), Mark Magennis (NCBI CFIT) and Alan Dalton (NDA).
Auditing for nurses
Friday, 21 August 2009
We're doing an audit for the National Council for the Professional Development of Nursing and Midwifery. The interesting thing about auditing this site is that almost all of the information (probably close to 99%) is contained in PDF and MS Word documents, not HTML. These documents include all the standard content types - structured text, complex images, data tables, even application forms that have to be made accessible using mark-up. So the biggest issues are around the extent to which the PDF and DOC formats are accessibility supported for these types of content and allow these types of content to be presented in ways that users' assistive technologies can read and interact with.
This is such an important issue in Web accessibility, which tends to revolve around HTML accessibility. Making HTML pages accessible is great, but what if all the information is held in potentially inaccessible other formats? Food for thought.
Working on Spex Day
Friday, 14 August 2009
NCBI is running a fun event for schoolchildren called Spex Day. We're helping to make sure the website, www.spexday.ie, is accessible. It's still in development at the moment, so don't write to us and complain just yet!
Spex Day is being held on Tuesday the 13th of October. It's a great opportunity for schools to get involved with NCBI and have fun at the same time. Schools will get a free educational pack about visual impairments with interactive lesson plans and cardboard glasses frames for the kids to decorate and wear for the day.
Real Time Bus Info on your phone
Written by Joshue O Connor Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Wouldn't it be great if blind and vision impaired people could have an easy way of working out bus routes, and also find relevant 'up to the minute' transport information? Imagine being able to do this in a city your have never been to before, wouldn't it make getting around so much easier?
We are working with a group of partners on developing an accessible application that we think will do just that and also have it delivered straight to your mobile phone!
Developers from the Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (
We aim to deliver this much needed information in a way that can be accessed by everyone using the mobile phone technologies that are widely used today.
Mobile Phones are becoming increasingly sophisticated and allow the user to perform a broad variety of tasks. We have recently seen a new prototype of the application, and it looks very promising.
Discussions with the Mobile Manufacturers Forum
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
We're talking to the Mobile Manufacturers Forum about the accessibility of its new website www.mobileaccessibility.info. This is potentially a great resource to have because, as well as giving generic information about the accessibility features available on mobile phones, it allows consumers to state their specific accessibility needs then lists mobile phone models that meet them.
Unfortunately, the website, and particularly the key 'Find a Phone' feature, isn't accessible! It also has some general usability problems too. So we're helping them put this vital piece of the functional jigsaw into place.
At the knowledge society strategy launch
Written by Mark Magennis Tuesday, 21 July 2009
Today I attended the launch of the Government report "Technology Actions to Support the Smart Economy", which outlines Ireland's knowledge society strategy - heralded as our way out of the current economic mess. This is very important for social inclusion because it will play a major role in determining whether people with disabilities will be able to benefit from future digital technologies or whether the digital divide between them and the rest of society will get even wider. From this point of view the report is very disappointing.
The actions outlined in it focus almost exclusively on infrastructure projects in digital and green technologies with no regard for other social implications. However, Eamon Ryan, Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, admitted that this was in order to meet the immediate need to implement ready solutions that can create jobs and economic opportunities. Issues around digital inclusion, accessible e-government, digital literacy and universal access, although not central to this report, are recognised and will be an important part of the complete strategy, to be developed during the coming year.
Watch this space.
User testing for Enable Ireland
Tuesday, 14 July 2009
We're doing some pro bono (that's free to you and me) work for Enable Ireland on their new website. We've carried out an accessibility audit against WCAG 2.0 and we're now running user tests involving people with disabilities and assistive technologies. It's raised some interesting issues about what is 'navigation' and what is 'content'.
Authoring the UN accessibility toolkit
Thursday, 25 June 2009
Mark Magennis has been commissioned to write and edit part of the G3ict e-accessibility toolkit for policy makers. G3ict is a flagship advocacy initiative of the United Nations Global Alliance for Technology and Development. The toolkit is intended to give policy makers information on how to implement accessible technologies in line with the requirements of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Mark will be writing the introduction to digital accessibility as well as editing the technical resource sections to ensure they can be easily understood by policy makers. This includes people at all levels of administration within all national governments, from Ministers down. Many of these will have a low level of technical expertise and little or no previous understanding of accessibility.
Presenting at the IIA Web 2.0 seminar
Friday, 19 June 2009
Joshue O Connor will be giving a talk at the Irish Internet Association (IIA) seminar "Demystifying WCAG 2.0 and Web Accessibility". Josh's talk will be on 'Transitioning from WCAG 1.0 to 2.0'. He’ll be looking at how WCAG 2.0 differs from WCAG 1.0 and what these differences will mean to website owners and developers.
The seminar is on 24 June at Fitzwilliam Hall, Dublin 2. To find out more and to register, go to the IIA website.
User research on audio description
Thursday, 18 June 2009
We're facilitating a batch of interviews and focus groups in Dublin and Cork on audio description. These will be carried out by OCS Consulting as part of research commissioned by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI). The BCI is currently reviewing the Access Rules which specify quotas for the amount of subtitling, audio description and Irish Sign Language on Irish television. At the moment, the quotas for audio description are almost non-existent. Only RTÉ is required to provide any audio description and that amounts to only 1% of programmes on RTÉ One and RTÉ Two. These may be repeats shown at off-peak times like Sunday afternoon or Wednesday morning. With digital television, it will be possible to include audio description with all programmes and individual viewers can switch them on or off. Because of this, NCBI, both alone and together with its partners in TV Access, is calling for very large increases in audio description quotas across all Irish channels, plus the introduction of minimum quality standards. This research will feed into the review process.
For news and info on TV access services, see the TV Access website.
Involvement in the Knowledge Society Strategy group
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Mark Magennis has been invited by the Minister for Communications, Eamon Ryan, to work together with Irish technology industry leaders in a 'high level group' to develop a Knowledge Society Strategy for Ireland. This invitation came about as a result of having met with Sean Power, the former Minister of State for the Information Society, to talk about accessible digital television in particular and digital inclusion in general. Being involved in this group will help us make sure digital inclusion is at the centre of information society developments in Ireland. Looking at the way policy is developing in this area, not only in Ireland but all around the world, there is a danger that inclusion will take a back seat to technological and business issues. Even within the inclusion agenda, the focus often tends to be on broadband infrastructure with little attention paid to accessibility issues or digital literacy among disadvantaged groups.
In the mad rush to the 'smart economy', we have to make sure that older people and people with disabilities won’t become increasingly excluded from education, employment and new forms of social interaction due to inaccessible technologies or lack of skills and opportunities.
Talking to RTÉ about digital TV receivers
Friday, 12 June 2009
Through the TV Access coalition, we’ve been in discussions with RTÉ concerning the minimum receiver requirements (PDF, 340Kb) for digital terrestrial television (DTT). These spell out the technical and functional capabilities that all DTT receivers will have to meet in Ireland. The intention is to create an appropriate standard for an affordable set top box. Our view is that this basic standard should include basic accessibility requirements such as access to subtitles and audio description and easy to use remote controls. However, the current minimum specification falls well short, hardly mentioning accessibility at all. For instance, it isn't even specified that there should be a raised dot on the '5' key of the remote control. This is astonishing since it's more-or-less an industry standard for keypads. TV Access is in continuing dialogue with RTÉ about this important issue.