Kill Accessibility - Another Response

I read with great interest a recent post by Gary Barber on his Blog entitled Kill Accessibility. Its the sort of nicely provocative Blog piece that appeals to me - and unusually for me with my ongoing attention defict, I read it all the way to the end.

Gary's piece makes the point that most developers don't really care about accessibility, and moreover pay lip service if they acknowledge the fact at all. He puts this down to the fact that few if any developers are AT users themselves.

This is the truth - but anyone with the ability to think 5 minutes ahead, will realise that this is not always likely to be the case. There are two types of people in this world, the "Disabled" and the "not disabled - yet" Ive been arguing for some time that the best motivation to think about access and accessibility is pure self interest. I have a healthy selfishness gene, verging on the sociopathic perhaps, but I know that I am now getting closer to 50 years old and in 10 years time I want to still be doing stuff online and unless I have good AT and good access that wont happen. (Notice we spoke of two aspects to access there - two sides of the same coin of course)

But perhaps the issues actually go wider, did we take a wrong turn somewhere along the line when the Access community became the access (and accessibility) industry. I have been aware of many examples over the years when  the driver for activity within the field is not impact but an ongoing search for profit or funding. I make no distinction here between the Not for profit sector starved of funding, and the private sector with pressure for cashflow and ROI. There is the potential that as a result both sectors focus on the low hanging fruit, dealing with one website at a time, advocating high end assistive technologies - or as a management consultant once said to me

"You cant take small steps across a chasm"   

We need to acknowledge this challenge, we are all aging and have a need for accessibility now or in the near future. Alongside this is the problem of access to Assistive technology. Increasingly then I begin to think that the concept of Universal design is not in itself the solution, that principle needs to be coupled with the integration of pervasive access technologies that operate from within the cloud or on portable and mobile platforms.

By building in accessibility not as a set of standards, not as a bolt on but drawn from the internet itself we may have an opportunity to create a network that is intrinsically accessible, the tools and resources that we use would be based upon a core principle of universal access.

There is some fantastic work being done in this area, and it is crucial that these projects link closely together, projects like Inredis, AEGIS and Raising the Floor need to integrate not only with eachother but also with the key technology drivers such as Microsoft, Apple and Oracle. It may be that we need to kill accessibility in its current incarnation and look again at where our research, development, energy and funding are going if we are not going to be having this conversation in 10 years time and still saying that for significant parts of the population the benefits of communication, collaboration and community are denied.

So lets continue to make a case, companies will understand that there is a market for products delivered via accessible channels, developers may see that self interest and the interests of those around them demand access be made available, but we then need to ensure that the response to this self interest is not simply to try to place a sticking plaster over the wound, or even to try to sew the gaping edges together, rather it is to create a platform which facilitates that universal access.

That platform cannot be left in the hands of well meaning but probably misguided folks like me, nor can it be safely left solely in the hands of an Access Industry or Public sector, but instead within a growing ecosystem within which, each has a part to play. What those roles are and how they integrate together is beyond my tiny brain but Im sure that  there are others out there with the brainpower to think it through.

So perhaps we can't kill accessibility just yet, but maybe as we begin to co-ordinate our efforts in a common direction we might at least be able to put the sheets on the death bed, and take a shovel out to boot hill, just in case.

Workshop on Expanding Disability Access with Wireless Technologies

Ok now this is worth a watch - its an important event as the FCC recognised the importance of wireless and mobile technologies for people with a disability. It reflects my own experience in both the UK, europe and the Middle East which suggests that the key battle ground for accessibility is no longer the PC (however much still needs to be done) but is increasngly around portable devices and especially mobile phones.

The Access collective has a section on mobile solutions so watch out for it

and so the time is near and so I face the final curtain .......A personal review of the last 10 years

As I leave AbilityNet in two weeks I thought this was a good time to look back at what weve done and the things that im most proud of from that period. Im going to look ahead to the potential of the next stage of my career in another Blog.

One of the things in which I take most pride is in the development of teh concept of remote assessment, along with the team, especially Karen Maxwell and Pamela Hardaker we took this from an idea to a whole approach which sought to match services to need. This was enhanced by the development of the online self assessmnet tool and ultimately by the AAC and Easy assessment tools. This suite of tools, which are increasingly hard to find, offer users and professionals a structure by which assessment could take place, reducing the cost of identifying a solution to as little as possible.

The success of the concept, was one which I then applied t a range of other ideas. I wanted to explore how we could exploit web 2.0 technologies such as YouTube, Moodle, wiki's etc to reach tens of thousands of people without barriers of geography or cost. The success of that approach should have been clear to all, and my own personal commitment to it is shown that Im still maintaining these types of resources after many years.

Some of these ideas needed some funding to allow us to experiment, and the Communication Aids Project which we secured with John Liddle, took AbilityNet into the education sphere and the importance of early intervention. That work still has echoes in our work today such as the Play at IT and Low cost AAC projects

From an early stage we recognised that AT wasnot enough to bridge the digital divide. Access was reliant not only on having personal technoogy but also on the availability of Accessible digital content. With Robin Christopherson I was able to nurture the growth of the accessibility team from its early days and saw it establish itself as a genuine leader in its field - networked with some of the best in the world.

If the web was one network to build, Iwas fortunate also to be involved in building a physical network of locations and partners, from Scotland to Bristol with core resources and partners that would play a big part in the community hubs created through the Swicthed on Community projects.

Im writing this in Qatar where I'll be basing myself over the next two years. And that tells you much about those last 10 years. When we started I travelled to Newcastle, Edinburgh and on a really good day Dublin. But over those years AbilityNet became part of a much wider network and as a result I’ve had the chance to travel from one side of Europe to the other - from Turkey and Poland to Ireland - from Greece and Italy to Latvia. Throughout that travelling I was always struck by how the passion and commitment of those who want to bring about digital inclusion was universal.

I’ve taken the opportunity to see some of those places as well as work there, the Parthenon in Athens, the last supper in Milan the Warsaw ghetto and Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque in Istanbul and I’ve enjoyed them all - and I’ve appreciated the many people I’ve worked with showing me something of the culture and history in which we are trying to embed digital inclusion.

So ultimately it has been about the people I’ve worked with. The users of technology and the lives we’ve been able to impact upon. It’s easy to measure success by numbers of people helped. But it’s also important to measure success by the depth of impact on each person we have helped, balancing the superficial aid to 1000 people with the life changing impact on 100 - a balance of both needs to be sought and one loses sight of that at the risk of neglecting those in greatest need.

I’ve spoken about some of the many people I’ve worked with - in the UK, colleagues at AbilityNet but also those involved in digital inclusion in government and business, as well as in schools and charities. I’ve been able to work with colleagues from huge corporations such as IBM and Microsoft, as well as the European commission e-Inclusion team. and the principles we hold in common is far greater than differences in strategy and policy that might arise

I have to mention a couple of people we lost along the way, especially Dorothy and Dace. When you work closely together those losses count, but it’s those of us who carry on with the day to day work that I’m looking forward to collaborating with in the future. I want to see the partnerships I’ve had a role in, with Enable Ireland, with Telecentres europe, with Teleservicios and Barcelona Digital continue to thrive - so feel free to stay in touch - my email is davebanesaccess@hotmail.co.uk and you’ll still find me on twitter and YouTube and my personal blog all with the same name. Ive recorded by final AbilityNet Podcast, but I’m not quitting podcasting and I have a new podcast I’m working on called the access collective which you can find on iTunes and the usual places

10 years ago I joined AbilityNet to be told that the team I was leading was at best unmanageable, total mavericks with an anarchc streak running right down the centre. At our first meeting we agreed that what we wanted working for AbilityNet to be "serious fun" and for so much of the time that’s just what it has been

So to paraphrase Jerry Garcia and Douglas Adams I can only say what a long strange trip it’s been, but in hindsight so long and thanks for all the fish

The ethics of pirating ebooks you already own - a continuation

I read with interest the article by Randy Cohen on Gizmodo (see link above). In which he argues that whilst it may be illegal to download an ebook without paying for it, it isnt unethical, as long as you own a copy that you have purchased from a bookstore with money going to author and publisher. In doing so he introduces the moral dimension to what is an increasing acrimonious debate. Publishers are keen to "do a CD" where we all went out and bought music we had already purchased in a new format to take advantage of new players, and equally keep to avoid "doing an mp3" where we noticed we had bought the music twice already and just ripped or downloaded it to a new device.

Complicating this debate is that despite the reduced costs of distribution and production of ebooks as compared to both hard and softcover books, publishers are determined to squeeze every drop of blood out of the techie book buying market in a bizarre attepmpt to re-enact scenes from classic horror novels - but with more screaming.

Itnot even as if we get the added features of DVD's that sort of convinced us it was ok to update our VHS collection, we get a couple of mb of data to read at our leisure.

So in my view its ok to go into Tesco, buy a top 20 paperback and then have an electronic copy available - ESPECIALLY - if the print copy is not something you can use because becaise you have a print disability.

its not ok for publishers to offer special schemes where those poor disabled people can be tested to make sure they are disabled enough to have discounts, its not enough for publishers to claim that ebooks have to be this price to support investment in new technology - they have to produce electronic versions of texts, in accessible formats at a price that anyone can afford.

The whole point of books is that they are universal, something anyone can access regardless of time and place - as new technology offers increased universal access to reading we need to make sure that we pay a fair and reasonable cost for usage - regardless of format.

So it may well be illegal to download a copy of a book you have paid for - its probably equally illegal to photocopy it onto larger print - but that doesnt make it unethical or immoral. The sooner publishers and somne authors recognise this, the sooner the ebook explosion will actually happen - and everyone will benefit

Enabling Technology - Time to stir things up

Now hear me out, but let's be honest, quite often accessibility is a bit boring. We are  all well meaning people and committed to social change and all that stuff. But when it gets down to it, when you really get down to it, we are all just a little bit geeky. Im sure that when the creators of "Big Bang Theory" were seeking inspiration, at some point someone said have you tried following these people on a11y threads. The writers must have looked at us and said "oh thank you god thats the first series in the can" 

So its time to have some fun. Ive written before that we needto rethink the language of accessibility if we are to gain widespread popular interest. One of the areas to consider is the term assistive technology. Assistive isnt a real word. Where else do we see that term ? Its one we made up in once upon a time, not really expecting anyone to ever actually use it. My definitions recently have become increasing vague culminating in "stuff that helps people do stuff" which even by my standards is a trifle imprecise.


So ive reverted to talking about "enabling technology" its easier to understand and doesnt have the "right on" clenched fist sense of "empowering technologies" Importantly it gives us a great hashtag (sorry for the use of the term) #ET


Why is this great, well because it takes us into a whole new world of popular litigation. The Geeks Vs Stephen Spielberg. We can take that iconic amblin logo and revamp it as a guy in a wheelchair, with a guidedog in a basket watching a GPS system. Now thats how you find your way home ET.


It would be great, and would help us get drinks in bars and get invites to better parties ..... hmmm perhaps my motivation is not altogther altruistic .... but whatever -"accessible but fun" thats   my marching call !