White Paper

An Information Society for All - the nonvisual way

A white paper published by VICS

September 2005

Introduction

The Visually Impaired Computer Society of Ireland (VICS) is a special interest group of the Irish Computer Society (ICS). In this paper we set out our vision of an information society that is fully inclusive to people with a vision impairment.

We want people with a vision impairment to be able to make effective use of all information and communication technologies (ICTs). We also call for all digital content to be accessible to people with a vision impairment.

What accessibility means

Electronic systems today use a screen to convey information to the user. This approach makes the system accessible to a sighted user but is inaccessible to the vision impaired user and actually disables this user from working with the electronic system. Accessibility means using any of three main categories of human computer interface, tactile, audio and large print.

The inclusive world

A world that is fully accessible to people with a vision impairment will show some of the following characteristics.

Human Computer Interface

Human beings interact with the world using all their senses and capabilities. In an inclusive world, the Human Computer Interface will recognise the multiple ways in which humans can interact with technology. Thus, a person with a vision impairment using touch and sound will be able to fully utilise ICTs. Such multiple access methods will be built-in to the operating systems. This will cover everything from desktop systems to laptops, Pdas, mobile phones, TVs radios and household systems such as burglar alarms, central heating systems, microwave ovens, washing machines etc. Being accessible to all means that there will be multiple ways of interacting with ICTs. Controls will be reachable understandable and capable of being adjusted by all, and it will be possible to enter and read all input and output information by all.

In the inclusive information society, information and communication media is usable in multiple formats. Media has become truly multimedia from a user's perspective. For example, an e-learning package might be run on a laptop. The learning material will be genuinely multimedia in nature in that it could be delivered in both a visual and an audible method. However, unlike today, the inclusive version will be complete in all delivery forms. This will benefit people with a vision impairment but it would also be of benefit to everyone. For example, an executive studying a particular subject could learn from the course material by reading the screen at his/her desk. Travelling home in a car, instead of listening to the radio, the executive could listen to the next module of the learning material.

Teaching

In an inclusive world, all courses will be accessible to all students irrespective of learning style or disability. This means that all course materials such as textbooks, lecture notes and educational software will be accessible.Teaching methods will need to evolve to benefit from and accommodate the more diverse student body that will have become a reality.

Broadcasting

All TV systems will provide audio description of programs on separate channels. TV handsets will be accessible.

The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web will become fully accessible to people with vision impairments. This means that all web authoring tools will by default produce web content that complies with accessibility guidelines such as the Web Accessibility Initiative. In addition web authoring tools will be accessible to vision impaired users thus enabling them to generate web content freely.

Mobile telephony

All mobile phone handsets will incorporate vibrating ring tones and will incorporate oral and aural methods of interaction in addition to the screen and pointer methods of reading and interacting with menus and text content.

Public Access Terminals

All bank ATMs, electronic voting machines and other public access booths will incorporate audio and tactile interfaces.

What is the current situation?

The Marketplace

Today with a small number of notable exceptions, products on the shelf cannot be used directly by people with a vision impairment. In effect today's ICT products disable people with a vision impairment.

Consider the range of ICTs on the market today. A visual screen interface is an almost universal feature. The screen usually forms the only way of interacting with the device. So much so that one might think that a screen is an integral part of a computer yet a simple experiment will illustrate that this isn't so. When typing a word processing document, Simply switch off the screen and continue to hit a few keys on the keyboard, then switch on the screen and you will see that the computer has continued to function without the screen. Many devices that didn't incorporate screens some years ago such as phone handsets or radios now have begun to incorporate screens as a regular feature. The commercial market, in concentrating almost all development effort in the visual interface has unwittingly placed barriers in front of people with vision impairments.

Today's solutions

People with vision impairments have been working with computer technologies internationally since the 1960's and in Ireland since 1980. This has been achieved by using audio tactile or large print methods.

The most popular method of interacting with a computer is through the audio screen reader. A screen reader is usually a software application that runs on a desktop computer and speaks the contents of the screen to the user via headphones. The user can control what is spoken by the screen reader by means of keyboard commands.

This type of screen reader application has recently become available for running on certain mobile phones using the Symbian operating system.

There is much that is positive in these types of solutions. Using such access technologies it is possible for a person with a vision impairment to use many ICTs and this has led in recent years to a significant improvement in education and employment opportunities. However, with a small number of notable exceptions, these types of access are bolt-on fixes. From a design point of view, a bolt-on solution has many disadvantages. It is usually an afterthought. It is usually expensive. It often lacks functionality. It is usually delivered on the market some time after the original item. From a design point of view, it is often an inelegant and inefficient solution.

From a practical point of view the bolt-on solutions are very expensive often costing twice the cost of the system to which they are intended to provide access and in many cases, don't work with the applications or content that a user wants to access. If a number of bolt-on access products are available for a particular computer operating system, this is no guarantee that an individual application package on that operating system will be usable. Since there is no labelling system indicating the accessibility status of an ICT product, often the only way to find out if a system can be used is to install and configure it with a number of bolt-on accessibility solutions and test it for usability. This investigation process can be time-consuming and costly.

Public Policy

The European Commission has stated an objective of an Information Society for all and in a recent communication calls for a set of policy changes to promote eAccessibility in member states.

Equality legislation is being passed in various countries around the world that seeks to ensure equal opportunities for people with disabilities. In Ireland, the National Disability Authority have published IT Access guidelines. There have been a number of policy initiatives in Ireland to improve the accessibility of web sites. Research reports so far such as Digital Democracy for All? Assessing Web Accessibility in Ireland And A Comparative Assessment of Web Accessibility and Technical Standards Conformance in Four EU states Show that progress is very slow.

More generally, the absence of a labelling system that indicates whether a given ICT product is usable or not, means it is very difficult to implement a purchasing policy to ensure an accessible hardware and software deployment.

The Solution

All the components of technology needed to make an accessible information society exist today. These access methods must be built into ICT products and no longer be confined to later add-on partial solutions. We commend the recent implementation of a built-in screen reading solution in the Apple Macintosh operating system. This is an initial illustration of the approach that is needed on every ICT product. We believe that universal adoption of built-in access methods will require a radical change to the design process and a strengthening of equality legislation. We believe that including access at the design stage will cost little extra and will be much cheaper than today's subsequent add-on solutions.

As an initial step, a simple labelling system will be needed for all ICT products indicating whether they are accessible themselves or could be accessed by means of an add-on solution.

Published materials such as books, magazines etc must be made available in accessible formats. This means that the published materials must also be available in audio, tactile or large print formats as a matter of course. Typically, most published materials are written in some kind of word processing system. As we have seen above, the original document could potentially be read by a vision impaired person by means of a screen reader. However, publishers normally only produce the final item in print. One simple accessible format would be to release the original electronic document. For complete accessibility and ease of reading, we support the xml-based Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) standard. As an initial step we call for all student textbooks to be made available in the DAISY format on the same day and at the same price as the print edition.

Recommendations

A new approach to design is required to ensure that the needs of all citizens are considered. We recognise that the problem lies with policy makers and financial decision makers who set marketing criteria for product designers. Therefore, we recommend that Design For All (DFA) be adopted. This approach will assist decision makers to "disability-proof" their decisions and thus ensure that criteria of accessibility are embedded in all product specifications.

Product architecture for all hardware and software should incorporate accessibility for all as a built-in feature rather than a bolt-on afterthought.

ICT Access guidelines need to be upgraded and given legal effect.

Public procurement should ensure that equal access terms and conditions are incorporated in all contracts in line with E.U. requirements.

Employment Equality legislation should be extended to ensure that Employer ICT purchasing contracts include equal access terms and conditions.

All ICT products, both hardware and software, should be labelled as to their accessibility status. This will facilitate the implementation of equality-based purchasing policies.

The DAISY format should be adopted as a standard method of making written publications available. Textbooks should be the top priority for publication in DAISY format.

People with vision impairments must publish their experiences with ICTs and contribute to the overall design process.

People with vision impairments must participate in the development of accessibility standards and labelling systems.