Commenting on proposed revision of access rules for TV
Monday, 23 January 2012
NCBI is making a submission on the proposed revisions to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) Access Rules, which set targets for the amount of subtitling, audio description and Irish Sign Language (ISL) for each Irish TV channel. The TV Access coalition is also making a submission, on behalf of all its member organizations, of which NCBI is one. CFIT's Mark Magennis is Chair of TV Access.
Astonishingly, the BAI is proposing to actually reduce the requirements for subtitling, rather than increase them which is the norm in just about every other country. Reductions of between 15% and 47% depending on the channel are proposed. The targets for audio description and ISL are hardly being increased at all, staying at a mere 1% in 2012 and rising to only 2% by 2016 (and applying only to RTE 1&2).
These access services are becoming cheaper as an international market opens up and technological improvements make them easier to create and transmit. A greater emphasis on digital inclusion and universal access to television is being encouraged by the UN and the EU. The rapidly ageing population means that more and more people are in need of access services. It is therefore shocking that the BAI is giving them such low importance.
We are hoping our submission will persuade the BAI to modify its course.
At ITU meeting on audiovisual media accessibility
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Mark Magennis is at a meeting of the International Telecommunications Union's ITU-T Focus Group on Audiovisual Media Accessibility (FG AVA) in Barcelona today. Except he's sitting in his office because he's attending remotely using a rather complex set of remote access tools, including GoToWebinar. As co-chair of the Working Group on Access of Working Procedures, it's Mark's job to ensure that the meetings and the workings of the Focus Group are accessible to as many people as possible, including people with disabilities and people participating remotely.
There's a lot of work to be done to come up with a set of participation and collaboration tools and processes that are accessible, usable and reliable.
Giving a presentation on 'Joomla! and Accessibilty at Joomla Day UK 2011'
Written by Joshue O Connor Friday, 23 September 2011
Josh is giving a presentation on Joomla! and Accessibility, HTML 5 and WAI-ARIA at the upcoming 'Joomla Day UK' conference in London (24th and 25th of September).
See the conference website for an overview of Josh's presentation entitled 'Joomla!, Accessibility Markup Languages and you' .
Discussing digital inclusion policy and the UN CRPD
Wednesday, 07 September 2011
Mark Magennis last week attended the International Conference on Digital Inclusion and the Implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Seoul, South Korea. Mark was invited to present the situation in the EU and Ireland with regard to digital inclusion policies and activities. The conference was intended as an opportunity to exchange international experiences on implementing effective digital policies in line with the requirements of the UN Convention.
There was a lot to talk about. Since 2000, the EU has undertaken a wide range of policy initiatives, action plans, legislation, communications, standardisation, research funding and other actions with varying amounts of success. Progress has certainly been slow and there have been repeated failures to meet stated targets. However, as Mark explained, all of these activities have had some effect and there is a noticeable increase in awareness and activity in digital inclusion. The story over the last decade in Ireland has been similar, but the efforts of campaigners, representative organizations and other interested parties continues to have a positive effect and there is reason to be optimistic for the future.
Other invited speakers at the conference were Jonathan Hahm from the U.S. Department of Justice, who spoke about the trend of American Laws related to rights to access to information of the Disabled and Ronald McCallum, Chairperson of UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, who talked about the UN Convention and its importance as the main international policy driver for digital inclusion.
The conference was hosted by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security and the Korea Communications Commission.
Helping to make Dublin Transport more accessible
Written by Joshue O Connor Friday, 26 August 2011
CFIT are working with the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) to help ensure that the upcoming website for the smart card based Integrated Ticketing System (ITS) for Dublin transport will be accessible to people with disabilities and older people.
CFIT have been testing and auditing the ITS card website that will be used by the public to seamlessly access Dublin Bus and Luas services using the same card. The system has been developed by Hewlett-Packard Ireland (HP) and will be onstream later in 2011.
The for more on the Integrated Ticketing System see the RPA website.
Advising UCD on Universal Design of IT Systems
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
Antoinette Fennell is currently working with University College Dublin's Disability Access Officer Tina Lowe in her role of making Campus IT as accessible and usable as possible for students and staff of UCD.
Tina was recently appointed as Disability Access Officer and has a challenging task ahead of her. She is charged with ensuring that UCD is in compliance with the Disability Act 2005. According to Tina "By making a practical interpretation of the legal requirements regarding UCD’s accessibility, UCD now must endeavour to provide or arrange for and co-ordinate assistance and guidance to people with disabilities who access UCD". Her role, under the guidance of the Director of Access and Lifelong Learning, is to oversee and implement a Disability Access Action Plan to incorporate access to buildings and services. An Oversight Group has been established which will work toward the implementation of the Disability Access Action Plan for the campus.
The Disability Access Action Plan for UCD will be created in compliance with the Disability Act 2005 and will focus on the relevant sections of the Act (Sections 25 to section 29, Sections 38 to 40 and Section 47).
CFIT is supporting Tina in this work, advising on a number of areas, including IT, access to information and consultation with students and staff.
Developing a Universal Design Module
Tuesday, 12 July 2011
Joshue O Connor and Antoinette Fennell are delighted to be managing, in partnership with Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), an exciting new project for the National Disability Authority’s Centre for Excellence in Universal Design.
The project team, which also includes NUI Maynooth, the Institute of Technology at Blanchardstown, Dundalk Institute of Technology and Cork Institute of Technology, will develop a module on Universal Design suitable for teaching at first year degree level in 3rd level educational institutions in Ireland
The project involves developing state of the art content materials, including interactive simulation content, and preparing all relevant course work, assessment materials and support documentation for effective delivery of the module.
The module will be trialled in the five academic institutions mentioned above, on architecture, product design, computer science and information technology courses at first year undergraduate level over the course of the 2011-2012 academic year.
The aim of this project is to promote Universal Design teaching at the earliest possible stage of higher level design education. A key challenge is to develop content which is both usable by the lecturer while at the same time interesting and stimulating for the students.
iHCI 2011 paper reviews
Monday, 27 June 2011
Mark Magennis is reviewing paper submissions to the iHCI conference again this year. There are some papers on accessibility topics. Interesting work being done on Irish Sign Language avatars. Early stages yet, but it would be great to see this develop into automatic text-to-sign language processing. Also work on interfaces to word processors for people with occular-motor dysfunction and taking account of the needs of people with low-literacy in the design of information kiosks.
It's great to see students and researchers addressing issues that are socially important as well as interesting, challenging and personally rewarding. Our own recent experiences with supporting a University of Limerick student to make the RTÉ Player accessible to screen reader users has been very rewarding with great results, so we'll be looking to get more engagements like this in the future.
Involved in the ITU focus Group on AV accessibility
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Mark Magennis is involved in the ITU-T Focus Group on Audiovisual Media Accessibility (FG AVA). This is an initiative of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the United Nations agency for information and communication technology issues. Over the next 18 months, the focus group will work to define the issues, challenges and appropriate approaches in the delivery, use and enjoyment of digital AV media through broadcast, IPTV and mobile platforms. A wide range of issues will be addressed, such as captioning and audio description, receiver equipment and Electronic Programming Guides. This will provide a solid basis for future work by the ITU and other key constituents on the application of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in this area.
The first meeeting of the Focus Group was held in Geneva. Mark was unable to attend in person but was able to successfully participate remotely using a selection of tools including the GoToMeeting remote desktop access tool, a live audio stream, live real time text transcript and teleconference facility for providing remote input. This proved very effective, though with some areas for improvement. The group hopes to refine it's remote participation tools and procedures to make them maximally effective and accessible.
Working on Web Accessibility Audits for Bord Gais
Friday, 01 April 2011
NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology have just completed two accessibility audits for Bord Gais on their Bord Gais Energy and Bord Gais Networks websites.
Bord Gais are committed to improving the accessibility of their services to ensure easy access to all users including people with disabilities.
Working on Web Accessibility Audit of Phonesmart.ie
Written by Joshue O Connor Monday, 28 February 2011
NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology have just completed an extensive accessibility audit of the ComReg website PhoneSmart. PhoneSmart provides consumers advice regarding Premium rate services.
Premium rate services (PRS) are goods and services that you can buy by charging the cost to your phone bill. You can charge these costs whether you have a landline or a mobile phone - whether you pre-pay your phone bill by buying credit or pay a regular, monthly bill.
Premium rate services typically offer information and entertainment services, which can be accessed through landline phones, mobile phones, fax, interactive digital TV, the Internet or an auto-dialler on a computer. Premium rate services are promoted in newspapers and magazines and on television, radio and the Internet. They can also be promoted directly to mobile handsets.
ComReg are committed to improving the accessibility of their services to ensure easy access to all users including people with disabilities.
Involved in EU accessibility standardisation mandate M/376
Monday, 21 February 2011
Mark is once again representing ANEC, the European consumer association for standardisation, in phase 2 the European Mandate M/376 work on accessibility requirements for ICT public procurement.
Phase 2 is scheduled to take approximately 18 months and will result in the publication of a European ETSI standard for ICT accessibility and the creation of an online toolkit containing guidance for public sector procurers on how to procure accessible ICT products and services.
At the W3C Web & TV workshop
Monday, 21 February 2011
Mark attended the Second W3C Web and TV Workshop in Berlin last week, presenting a position paper on Inclusive Web/TV services.
Web and television are going through a phase of rapid convergence in which people can now access television services through the internet and internet services through the television set. This has many accessibility implications, both for the design of consumer equipment and living room user interfaces and for the provision of essential access services - captions, audio description and sign language.
This W3C workshop aimed to bring Web professionals and broadcasters together to talk about how current and emerging standards such as HTML5 can be used to ensure quality, interoperability, accessibility and commercial viability of future Web/TV services.
Mark's presentation focused on the accessibility requirements for Web/TV services, the regulatory environment that is increasingly emphasising inclusion, and the relevant standards and best practice guidelines that are available for both Web services and TV services.
User Testing for Cavan Co Co
Thursday, 10 February 2011
We just completed a user test for Cavan County Council.The test involved several users who are blind and vision impaired putting the website through its paces. Cavan Co Co are very keen to improve the accessibility of their services and extend its functionality to the widest audience.
Working on Web Accessibility audit for the IDA
Monday, 31 January 2011
NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology have just completed an extensive accessibility audit for the IDA (Industrial Development Authority). The audit was of their main corporate website IDA Ireland.
The IDA are committed to improving the accessibility of their services to ensure easy access to all users including people with disabilities.
Exploring Accessibility of Digital TV Services and Equipment
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
NCBI CFIT is currently developing the National Disability Authority's Universal Design Guidelines for Digital TV. We need people to complete a survey on their current experiences with television services and equipment to inform these guidelines.
We want feedback from people with a wide range of disabilities and with a range of experiences of television services and equipment. We're not just looking for people who have Digital TV, so don't worry if you're not a technology wizard or if you have had the same service or equipment for a very long time! If you live in Ireland, any feedback at all is helpful.
Please note that the survey is available online, in Microsoft Word format and in printed format (including large print). The survey can also be done over the phone, if none of these formats are accessible to you.
The online version of the survey can be found at the following link http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/452961/Accessibility-of-Television-Services-and-Equipment
Please contact Antoinette Fennell by email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or by telephone at (01) 8821 988, if you would like to request the survey in another format or if you have any questions at all.
There are 9 sections in the survey. It takes approximately 20 mins.
Your contribution is crucial to ensuring that manufacturers and providers offer accessible services to Irish people.
Thank you very much for taking the time to provide feedback.
User testing the NDAs new eLearning training module. Get Involved!
Written by Joshue O Connor Wednesday, 19 January 2011
User Testers wanted
The NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology (CFIT) is looking for a small number of public sector staff to carry out user testing on an upcoming eLearning training module that is being developed by the National Disability Authority (NDA). The module will provide basic Disability Equality training to public sector staff in Ireland.
The training content of the eLearning module includes an overview of disability in Ireland, statistics and relevant legislation. The training will show some of the barriers faced by customers with disabilities and will explain how good customer service can get over these barriers. Trainees will learn how to engage with a person with a disability in a customer services setting.
We are therefore looking for a wide range of public sector staff, particularly;
- staff members with/without a disability, and
- staff members who are not based in an office.
If you are interested in taking part in this test, please get in touch with Joshue O Connor, Senior Accessibility Consultant, NCBI Centre For Inclusive Technology (CFIT).
- Email: joshue.oconnor[@]cfit.ie
- Phone: 01-8821980
Any information submitted will only be used to find suitable participants for this project. No submitted Information will be kept by CFIT after the testing has finished.
At the i2Web project kickoff meeting
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
Mark and Josh recently attended the kickoff meeting of the i2Web project at the offices of Fraunhoffer FIT in Bonn. i2Web is a new EU funded research project that NCBI CFIT is a partner in. The project aims to bring older people and people with disabilities into the design and development of accessible next generation internet applications, including Web 2.0, mobile and IPTV. It will do this by creating create virtual user models that can be implemented as visualization components in existing design tools and workflows. It has a lot of similarities to the VICON project which we are already involved in. But it also adds another element - adaptive user interfaces.
Lobbying on Transposition of EU Telecoms Directives
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
The accessibility and affordability of telephone and television services for people with disabilities has taken a major step forward with the introduction of the EU 'Telecoms Package'. This is a collection of amendments to important directives on universal service and users' rights regarding telecommunications services. It contains a number of clauses to ensure equivalent access, affordability and choice for people with disabilities. It has to be transposed into national law in all Member States by April 2011 and we are keen to ensure that we derive the maximum benefit from it.
Together with our colleagues in other disability representative organisations, we've drawn up a list of recommendations which we've sent to the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. These describe how we think the new regulations can be most effectively implemented.
Our recommendations include a call for ComReg to enforce accessibility standards for all telephone service providers. These should cover accessible billing, accessibility of information about products and services (both online and in print), availability of accessible handsets, access to the 196 free directory service, access to Total Communication services, provision of text relay access, and others.
Other recommendations concern access to emergency services and 116 numbers, quality standards and accessibility of digital TV services and equipment.
As well as NCBI CFIT, the organizations that have contributed to this are the Not for Profit Business Association, the Disability Federation of Ireland, People with Disabilities in Ireland, DeafHear and Gerry Ellis of Feel The BenefIT.
Making the case for accessibility at the Mobile 2010 Conference
Written by Joshue O Connor Tuesday, 09 November 2010
The Mobile 2010 Conference hosted by the Sunday Business Post, aims to showcase mobile technologies and services, explaining how they can work for business.
It will look at what Ireland needs to do to become an innovation hub in the mobile space; delivering cutting-edge vision and strategy that will shape the mobile future. Josh is attending as part of a panel on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the mobile space.There is a tight mapping between what is good for accessibility, and also mobile web best practice.
Topics include:
- Recycling and the environment – the effects the mobile industry is having on our planet and what can be done to mitigate these effects.
- Encouraging responsible use of mobile.
- Social accessibility and inclusion – benefits of geolocation and accessible mobile apps.
You can buy tickets and find out more at the Sunday Business Post Mobile Conference 2010 website.
At W3C Technical Plenary in Lyon
Written by Joshue O Connor Monday, 08 November 2010
I just attended the W3C Technical Plenary meeting last week in Lyon France. I was there as a member of the HTML5 Working Group, the HTML5 Bug Triage SubTeam and the Protocols and Formats Working Group - so I was there for meetings and discussions relating largely to accessibility issues within these groups. There are over 70 working groups in the W3C.
It was a rather quiet TPAC this year, with seemingly little dissent or disagreement, on the surface anyway. At the main Tech plenary day on Weds there was a frisson of excitement when Tim Berners-Lee was rather critical of HTML5 relaxing its syntax rules (which I missed but there was some discussion after). Many of the group meetings were rather agreeable also, and there were some productive outcomes relating to furthering accessibility in HTML5.
Topics that were discussed ranged from Media Accessibility, incorporating Copyright Metadata in Video, ARIA and API mappings, Canvas Accessibility, future challenges for accessibility, Epub (HTML5 and the publishing industry), as well as advances in CSS such as use of @fontface (@fontface isn't really new), WOFF and animations using CSS3 transitions of which there are lots of examples online, some groovy, some less so.
There has also been some criticism about the power and influence that browser manufacturers have at the event, but this is the Web and for most people the browser is the Web, so I guess this dominance is a natural byproduct of this relationship.
Alternate Text for Images in HTML 5
A hot topic, or to be more accurate a hot topic that has morphed into a rather long ongoing debate - is text alternatives in HTML5. There are several change proposals to the current spec that were discussed and a draft document that was put together by several working group members (including yours truly) on advice and guidance for authors using alternatve text in HTML5.
There is a general consensus that this guidance should be outside of the HTML5 spec itself, so this is an example of how guidance can be normatively referenced outside the specification itself. There are several change proposals before the group at the moment, and we hope to distill them, narrow down the options and soon resolve this issue, which is like I say, ongoing.
Media Accessibility
This issue is a hot topic. Exactly how will HTML5 handle and display rich media like Video? This is yet to be decided. There is still no official container/codec for HTML5. There are many options from MPEG4, to Ogg, WebM. Flash Video is a proprietary solution for video that currently is in wide use via its ubiquitous plugin, but it is still not native to the browser and we (sic) are currently in the middle of a video format war with Apple, Adobe and Google amongst others, to decide exactly how you will consume your video content in the future. Flash may soon be a thing of the past, or at least certainly lose its current dominance as the main video platform for the web. The three most relevant codecs for HTML5 today are H.264, Theora, and VP8.
So why is this an issue for accessibility? Well, as just outlined a container format has the various tracks etc that are used to sync the video and audio files that make your viewing experience happen. However, there is also other data which will allow the time-line of the video to be marked so meta data such as captioning, subtitling and audio description can be attached, accessed and displayed as needed by the user. This information is very important to users with sensory disabilities and can be held within the aforementioned containers.
There is also the issue of copyright information which on first glance may not seem related to accessibility. However, if you are a creator of online content in a university you may be obliged to make your content accessible to your students and this kind of important information can also be embedded as meta data within the container, and clearly outline what your responsibilities are and/or any copyright limitations that may apply to the creation of transcripts, captions or other usage limitations etc. More information can be found on the HTML5 Accessible Media Wiki.
Canvas Accessibility
The Canvas API is, when combined with JavaScript, a way of painting pixels directly onto the screen to create rich media graphics and games. There are some very interesting and colourful examples online of the Canvas element in use. In terms of accessibility however it has a lot of potential problems because it has no DOM, no system caret, limited primitives and basically accessibility has to be completely bolted on!
What's the problem you may say? The HTML 5 spec is full of many useful elements and tools that allow developers to build accessible stuff that they could do without Canvas (indeed the spec recommends that when there are alternatives Canvas should not be used). The problem is that what developers will do with the toolkits they have just cannot be anticipated. They naturally like to build unpredictable things, and push the envelop, with is great and completely understandable. Therefore, it is necessary to try to make the Canvas element more accessible to people with disabilities to try and reduce potential problems down the line, such as those illustrated with the Mozilla Bespin editor.
There have been various proposals to 'bolt on' accessibility (which in itself is not desirable as the element should natively support it, but in truth this is by design as the use for the Canvas element is primarily visual. It is also very light and fast in terms of rendering), such a Shadow DOM, the accessibility DOM (aDOM) or expanding on the DOM concept with ARIA and support for Platform Accessibility APIs.
For more on the Canvas accessibility issue see the WebAIM website for some history, and for a much more detailed view on Canvas see the HTML 5 WG wiki on Canvas Element Accessibility Issues.
Epub and HTML5
Epub is an electronic publishing standard used by the International Digital Publishing Forum for electronic books used for reflowable content. This allows a book to be viewed on various portable devices for example. It currently uses XHTML/CSS for rendering the book and other standards to store metadata. Epub may be moving towards using HTML5 and CSS3. HTML5 provides a greater set of functions to be used in E-Books such as the Video element for example. Epub is used currently by Apple iBooks, Sony Reader, DAISY and others.
Our digital Identities
Another hot topic was our 'digital identities'. How can we keep them safe, what are the future use cases for our online profiles? Regarding the safety of our online identities, this is a very important issue and there was a demonstration at the Weds meeting of a plugin for Firefox that can be very easily used to not only see what username/password combinations are being sent over an open wifi network, but also how easy it is to adopt another persons digital identify and then log into their Twitter account, and lock them out by changing the password and then assuming their identify.
The potential for this kind of thing to cause chaos is rather alarming. Note, that these demonstrations were for platforms that use the insecure http:// and not the more secure https:// which is used by your online banking etc so don't worry too much! The point is, that there are serious issues underlying the architecture of the web that many people are not aware of. Session hijacking is nothing new, it has just gotten easier.
Currently we are in the very early days of adapting to the use of an online digital identity, this is usually in the form of a Facebook page, use of Twitter, LinkedIn and many others. For many this is a diversion, some fun, a way of staying in touch with friends. However, what if that profile was used as a more substantial form of identity to provide you with access to government services, or as a method of validating your identity in the real world as a form of passport? The potential for this is huge, as people are voluntarily revealing vast amounts of personal data, the issue of first exactly what your digital identity is, what it represents, and secondly what it can be used for are two very big questions.
Just a flavour..
So there is a flavour of some of the issues and hot topics that I encountered at TPAC. It was as always, an informative and enjoyable conference where I met old friends and made some new ones.
Working on the 24 Hour Universal Design Challenge
Thursday, 04 November 2010
Antoinette Fennell has been invited by the National Disability Authority's Centre for Excellence in Universal Design (CEUD) to be Design Team Co-ordinator for their 24 Hour Universal Design Challenge 2010. This year's Challenge will take place in Dublin on 26th-27th November.
Mark Magennis has been invited to sit on the Judging Panel - so this provides a fantastic opportunity to introduce CFIT to the design professionals from all over Ireland who are taking part in the event.
The Challenge - which aims to promote Universal or Inclusive Design among Ireland's top designers - invites design professionals from a range of disciplines to compete on one of 5 teams. The teams are set a design brief, on the basis of which they have 24 hours to develop a design concept that meets the requirements of that brief. Over the 24 hour period, the teams will work with a design partner (a person with a disability) who will inform, advise and directly contribute to the design process.
The aim of the event is not for the design teams to come up with specialised design solutions for their design partner, but rather to use the experiences of this team member to inspire creative inclusive design solutions in mainstream products.
At the end of the 24 hour period, the teams will pitch their design concept to a public audience and a high profile panel of judges. A Judges' Choice Award (assessed using strict criteria) and a People's Choice Award (selected by audience vote) will be presented.
Improving the Telecommunications Customer Service Experience for People with Disabilities
Thursday, 04 November 2010
CFIT is currently working with a subgroup of the Comreg Forum on Telecommunications Services for People with Disabilities on a Mystery Shopping exercise between now and early 2011.
The aim of the exercise is to evaluate the effectiveness of the customer service of telecommunications service providers, in relation to customers with disabilities. The outcome of the research will be to provide feedback to service providers on a summary (to be made public) and individual (to be kept confidential) basis.
The mystery shopping exercise, which will be conducted by people with disabilities, will aim to assist service providers in enhancing their related staff training programmes with a view to improving the overall customer service experience for customers with disabilities.
Squashing Accessibility Bugs in HTML 5
Friday, 01 October 2010
Joshue O Connor recently joined the
The Bug Triage sub-team reviews bugs entered in bugzilla that may relate to the mission of the task force. Bugzilla is a system that allows us to track issues within HTML 5 and other specifications.
Major activities are:
- Review bugs that appear to be related to accessibility, to determine whether the task force needs to take ownership of the bug;
- Monitor new bugs entered for relevance to the task force mandate;
- Provide additional information about task force bugs when the issue is unclear;
- Determine whether the task force should push back on bugs whose proposals are rejected, and if so carry out the necessary steps;
- Check that the action for fixed bugs is acceptably carried out;
- Raise issues to the overall task force as needed.
The HTML A11y Bug Triage sub group meets weekly to track new and existing bugs in the
Working on the transposition of EU Telecoms Package
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
Regulations governing the provision of telephone services to people with disabilities have been given a shake up by new EU directives. These directives, comprising the so-called Telecoms Package, must now be transposed into national law in all Member States, including Ireland. The deadline for transposition is May 2011.
We've been working on behalf of the Not For Profit Business Association, teasing out the important issues for people with disabilities and producing recommendations for the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources outlining how these can be implemented.
The biggest issues are within the updated directive on Universal Service and Users’ Rights which now provides for equivalent access, affordability and choice for people with disabilities and mandates access to emergency services, which has been a problem for deaf and hard of hearing people.
Preparing for Include 2011
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
CFIT has had two abstracts accepted for an International conference on Inclusive Design.
The theme of the Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre's Include 2011 conference is 'The Role of Inclusive Design in Making Social Innovation Happen'.
We'll be presenting the results to date of the VICON project and discussing the potential role of virtual users in promoting inclusive product design. Before that happens, though, we must turn the two abstracts into papers, to be submitted by October 15th. This gives us a great opportunity to reflect on what we've done so far and to explore how the project can best contribute to the inclusive design agenda.
Include conferences take place in London every two years and they focus on issues central to inclusive and user-centred design. The Royal College of Art is the world's only wholly post-graduate university of art and design. Their Include conferences provide a wonderful opportunity to meet designers, researchers and policy-makers that have a comment interest in developing a more inclusive society.
Include 2011 will take place at the Royal College of Art, London, UK from 18th to 20th April 2011.
Further information can be found at the Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre website.
At the VICON project meeting in Sweden
Friday, 03 September 2010
Joshue O Connor and Antoinette Fennell will travel to Sweden on 7th September to attend the next VICON project meeting.
Now that we've finalised the user requirements gathering stage and started analysing the data, all of the project partners will use this data to build the first prototype of the Virtual User Model. We're expecting some very exciting discussion to take place in Sweden in advance of heading into uncharted territory!
Presenting at iHCI conference
Thursday, 02 September 2010
CFIT's Josh O Connor and Antoinette Fennell are presenting at the Irish Human Computer Interaction (iHCI) Conference at DCU on 2nd September.
The first day of the two-day conference ends with an Industry Session organised by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA).
Antoinette is providing an introduction to Universal Design as well as an overview of the VICON Project. This sets the scene for Josh's more technical presentation on Virtual User Models.
Developing guidelines for public services smart card
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
This week Antoinette Fennell has been developing a short guideline document for the Department of Social Protection (formerly the Department of Social and Family Affairs).
The proposed card aims to reduce the amount of benefit fraud in Ireland, while at the same time improving the efficiency of the wide range of social services. The card, in theory, has the potential to improve access to services for people with disabilities, for example, by reducing waiting times and allowing individuals a greater degree of independence when collecting benefits. However, if not introduced carefully, this technology could present new barriers.
We're interested in hearing your views on smart cards. We have so far received a lot of comments on the design of current smart cards (such as credit cards, hotel keys, and so on). But we would also like to hear your thoughts on application processes that work and don't work, or customer service approaches that you find particularly good or bad.
Defining judging criteria for the 2010 eircom Spider Awards
Thursday, 22 July 2010
We're once again involved on the judging panel for the eircom Spiders (the new name for the Golden Spiders). Our job is to assess all the entries against good practice standards in web design and inclusion. We did it last year but it ended up taking a lot longer than it should have because of the way we went about it (no fault of the Spiders). We feel in better shape to do it more efficiently this time, so here's hoping.
The major problem last year was defining minimum standards for accessibility and coding that were reflective of best practice, objectively measurable and not likely to rule out too many entries. For instance, we originally had one of the accessibility criteria as "text must be resizable in IE6" but 70% of the first batch of entries failed, so that was a non-runner. Similarly, 80% of entries had invalid HTML so we couldn't set the bar that high, but putting together a good definition of 'valid enough' proved difficult (suggestions on what to include would be welcome).
Added to that, there is the question of whether the criteria should be the same for all entries. For example, a Government social welfare website really ought to be 100% accessible. But an online interactive advertisement for a beer? Perhaps we can relax the rules a bit on that one. So, you see, it's not as straightforward as it might seem and it took quite a while last year to work through all these issues and come up with a judging scheme that was sensible, workable and defensible.
We have some new, better ideas this year, that will help us improve on all those criteria. We'll write an article after the judging about what worked for us and what didn't and how entries for web awards like the eircom Spiders fare against these sorts of criteria.
Developing 'Curriculum for training professionals in Universal Design' (CEN UD-PROF)
Friday, 02 July 2010
This week Joshue O Connor attended a workshop in the NDA offices aimed to complete work on the CEN 'Curriculum for training professionals in Universal Design' (CEN UD-PROF). The meeting was attended by representatives from Fraunhofer FIT, DIT, Siemens, ATRC, (University of Toronto), European Disability Forum, CEN, NSAI and our hosts in the CEUD.
Universal Design (UD) aims to design ICT products and services so they can be used by everyone without the need for specialised solutions or adaptations regardless of a person's age, environment, ability or disability. A crucial part of the approach is compliance with relevant standards and guidelines. It aims to develop technology that is robust, can be used on different platforms or in different contexts of use, as well as being usable by users with different skills.
In order for ICT industry to adopt UD principles, methods and solutions, the professionals involved will need to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills. This is a crucial condition for an effective, as well as economic, change in management and production process in the ICT industry.
Proposed CEN Workshop Agreement
The UD curriculum to be specified by this CEN Workshop shall identify the knowledge and skills that are necessary to successfully implement the UD approach in an ICT development process.
The training guidelines shall reflect the special training needs of ICT professionals, the conditions and context of training for professionals, and the different needs of different professional roles in the ICT industry.
First review of VICON project complete
Friday, 25 June 2010
The first (interim) review of the VICON project took place at the European Commission offices in Brussels in mid June. Josh O Connor and Antoinette Fennell of CFIT attended the review and Josh presented on the next steps that NCBI will take in the activities it is leading.
Now six months into the three year project, the initial data has been collected, through observations of people aged 65+ years using their mobile phones and washing machines.
The next step is to analyse this data and “translate” it into a format that can be used to develop the virtual user model. CFIT’s role in the project at this point is to contribute to the development of virtual humans and virtual environments – by providing real life data and specifications that make the resulting virtual model as realistic and “true to life” as possible.
Updates will be posted here on the CFIT website as the project progresses. In the meantime, further information can be found on the project website at: www.vicon-project.eu
Working on the Digital Agenda for Europe
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
A month ago, the European Commission released its new Digital Agenda for Europe. The Commission has set up a web page where you can register your intentions to carry out any actions in support of the goals set out in the Agenda. We've registered our intention to set up an online campaign promoting actions to support digital inclusion. This will be aimed at policy makers, digital society thought leaders and the general public and will be delivered through a range of online and social media. We're currently working on getting funding.
The Digital Agenda outlines the direction of the European Information Society for the next 5 years and is the first of the flagship initiatives under the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. It puts interoperability and inclusion at the centre of the Digital Single Market and commits to legislative proposals to ensure public sector websites are fully accessible by 2015. These are positive developments, albeit limited and ones that may take a while to filter through to actions and results in member states.
The Digital Agenda for Europe takes over from the i2010 Strategy which included e-inclusion as one of its three pillars but failed to deliver results on the ground (the targets agreed by EU Ministers in the Riga Declaration (PDF,180KB) were resoundingly unmet).
Auditing Waterford County Council
Friday, 28 May 2010
NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology have just completed two extensive accessibility audits for Waterford County Council. The audits were of the 'Welcome Waterford' and the main 'Waterford County Council' websites.
Waterford County Council are committed to improving the accessibility of their services from the built environment to the accessibility of their many websites, to ensure easy access to all users including people with disabilities.
User requirements gathering stage of VICON project complete
Monday, 24 May 2010
CFIT has just completed the first stage of a European project called VICON: Virtual User Concept for Supporting Inclusive Design of Consumer Products and User Interfaces.
CFIT researcher, Antoinette Fennell, spent April and May interviewing 23 Dublin-based volunteers ranging from 65 to 91 years of age about their experiences – both positive and negative – of two every-day products: the washing machine and the mobile phone.
Equivalent research was carried out by our project partners in the UK and Germany, so we now have feedback from approximately 60 people in three different countries.
Using the information collected during the interviews, and in particular focusing on the key issues that people reported with the products, VICON aims to develop a Virtual User Model: a set of computer-generated characters that simulate humans. The movement and behaviour of these virtual humans can be programmed in such a way to mimic varying levels of impairment in vision, hearing and manual dexterity. In theory, a designer could test and improve the accessibility of a product before it is even prototyped!
VICON also gives CFIT the opportunity to work directly with product designers and manufacturers, to communicate accessibility information to them, and hopefully to influence future designs of mainstream products.
VICON is an EU-funded project including the following lead partners: University of Bremen (BIBA and TZI), Fraunhofer FIT, DORO, ARCELIK, RNID - Royal National Institute for the Deaf and NCBI’s CFIT. Further information can be found on the project website at: www.vicon-project.eu
Reviewing papers for iHCI 2010
Monday, 24 May 2010
Mark Magennis of
The theme of this year's conference is "Crossing the Boundaries", something that we in CFIT try to make a possibility for the many people with disabilities who face unnecessary boundaries in trying to use everyday technologies. It's great to see an Irish conference dedicated to this topic and we're very pleased to be involved in the review process.
See you in Dublin in September!
Monitoring eAccessibility in Europe
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
CFIT's Director, Mark Magennis, has been employed as a National Expert on the Monitoring eAccessibility in Europe (MeAC2) project.
MeAC2 is the second phase of an EU-funded initiative to monitor the status and progress made in eAccessibility across EU Member States and selected comparison countries. It covers a wide range of technologies including the internet, digital television, ATMs and vending machines, fixed/mobile telecoms and domestic networks. Application areas being studied include eGovernment, banking, education, telecare services, assistive technologies and public procurement.
CFIT's role is to gather information about the state of eAccessibility in Ireland.
The data gathered in the first MeAC project proved to be very influential in providing a basis for European policy development in the field of eAccessibility. It revealed the extent to which accessibility was not being achieved across the EU and has been widely cited as evidence in calls for action and proposals for legislation.
Improving the accessibility of ECDL courseware
Tuesday, 11 May 2010
The world headquarters of the
The ECDL Foundation is "committed to ensuring that no one is excluded from pursuing our certification programmes and actively works to maintain the accessibility of our programmes to all, including people with disabilities. We have been working with our national operators and with disabilities groups to identify and eliminate major barriers to the accessibility of ECDL skills and will continue as part of the ongoing enhancement of ECDL Foundation's programmes."
Accessible MS Word forms for Equality Tribunal
Thursday, 06 May 2010
The Equality Tribunal came to us looking for help in making an MS Word form accessible to users of assistive technologies such a screen readers. Members of the public who want to make a complaint about discrimination have to fill in this form.
It's a tricky issue making MS Word forms accessible, especially since we want to produce one form that is suitable for everyone, including sighted and visually impaired people, those who use assistive technologies and those who don't. This rules out a lot of the techniques you can use for making a form that is optimised for screen readers, because the reuslts will be pretty weird for most people.
We're not going to tell you what we've done, yet, but look out for an article on this one day soon.
HTML 5 A11y Task Force meeting
Monday, 12 April 2010
Josh recently attended the HTML 5 Accessibility (A11y) Task Force meeting in Birmingham. The task force is a sub group of the HTML 5 Working Group which is involved in ensuring that the HTML 5 specification is going to serve the needs of people with disabilities, and will in short be an accessible and inclusive specification!
The meeting was very productive and there were attendees from Apple, IBM, W3C, RNIB, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, Opera and NCBI Centre For Inclusive Technology.
There were many topics covered in the meeting, including (but not limited to) alternate textual descriptions in HTML 5, the future of @longdesc, how validators should deal with incomplete structures (like missing alternative text), native semantics, WAI-ARIA, accessible multimedia and more.
Many thanks to Sally Cain and Marco Ranon of RNIB for being excellent hosts!
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
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
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
Today Mark Magennis of CFIT 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.