2004 Summer Institute : Final Report

Market Forces Driving the Design of More Accessible ICT

Common Industry Business Objectives

Increase:

• Sales
• Productivity
• Competitive advantage
• Market share
• Net profit

Big Emerging Markets (BEMs)

Assistive Technology (AT)

"Any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities. Link

Universal Design (UD)

A philosophy for designing and delivering products and services that are usable by people with the widest possible range of functional capabilities.

From an industry standpoint it is impossible to design ITC products and services that are accessibly by everyone under all circumstances.

Electronic and Information Technology

Includes information technology and any equipment or interconnected system or subsystem of equipment, that is used in the creation, conversion, or duplication of data or information. The term electronic and information technology includes, but is not limited to, telecommunications products (such as telephones), information kiosks and transaction machines, World Wide Web sites, multimedia, and office equipment such as copiers and fax machines. Link

More Accessibly Designed ICT

Industry term meaning to enhance the accessibility of ICT to extents that are:

• Profitable
• Technically possible
• Economically feasible
• Market/customer-driven
• Self-sustaining in the marketplace

Global Market Forces Driving the Design of More Accessible ICT

Setting the stage…

Canada’s Business Advantages

KPMG 2004 study of competitive alternatives deemed that Canada's cost of doing business were, overall, the lowest.

• Advanced software development and Telecom equipment manufacturing   Link
• Electronic systems development and testing and Web and multimedia content development   Link

Consumer Trends

Driving the design of more accessible ICT

• Mobility
• Desire for personalization
• Higher expectations
• More technologically equipped

Evolving Marketing Philosophies

Driving the design of more accessible ICT

• 70's Product line extension
• Mid 70’s Market segmentation
• 80's: Niche marketing
• Early 90's: Value added reselling
• Mid 90’s: One-to-one marketing   More detail

One-to-One Marketing

• Markets of billions evolving into a billion of markets of one
• Focus on individuals, not mass markets
• Share of customer replacing market share

Technology Trends

Driving the design of more accessible ICT

Decreasing:

• Size of devices

Increasing:

• Processing power
• wireless connectivity
• Web services (e-commerce and e-gov)

The Impact of Wireless Communications on Designing More Accessible ICT

Bandwidth Comparison

• Canada: 100%
• United States: 100%
• Europe: 106%
• Asia: .02%
• Latin America: .04%

More data

Transcoding HTML into XHTML Basic

• Faster, less expensive, easier if a site is designed for access
• Transcoder   Link

Wireless Device Innovations

• Fastap
• Unitap
• FlashReader
• Chinese Input

Voice Portals to the Web

can provide access to people who cannot read.

• Trend toward providing telephone access to the web
• Text-to-speech
• Voice portals   Link

Other market forces driving the design of more accessible ICT

Characteristics of Aging

• Can't see, hear think or see as well as they used to
• 52% have some type of disability.
• 33% have a severe disability.

Blindness Population

• 180 million people worldwide have a visual impairment
• 40-45 million persons are blind.
• 90% of the worlds blind population live in developing countries
• Approximately 50% of the world's blindness is the result of cataracts
• China accounts for about 18% of the world's blind population

More data

Impact of Aging on Vision

• Decreased visual acuity, contrast sensitivity and color vision
• Contrast and Chinese Characters   Link
• Test Colors Application   Link   Algorithm
• Color symbolism by culture   Link
• YoYoDesign’s color picker   Link

Accommodating Low Vision

• Low-Vision Access Portal   Link
• Accessibility Test   Link

Canadian Literacy Statistics

International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS, 1996)

• About 22% of adult Canadians 16 years and over have serious difficulty dealing with printed materials; and
• Another 24-26% can deal only with material that is simple and clearly laid out, and material in which the tasks involved are not too complex.

Simplified English Content

More detail   Tutorials

• Significantly reduces the cost of language translation
• Reduces ambiguity
• Speeds reading
• Improves understanding for people using English as a second language
• Reduces liability of misunderstandings

Simplified English Content

A few comical rules (Author unknown)

• One should never generalize.
• Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
• Be more or less specific.
• No sentence fragments.
• A writer must not shift your point of view.
• Don't overuse exclamation marks!!!!
• Who needs rhetorical questions?
• The passive voice is to be avoided.

Interpreter

Definition

One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.

Ambrose Bierce (1842 -1914), The Devil's Dictionary

Text-To-Speech Synthesis

• Provide access to people who cannot read
• Less expensive than digitized speech
• Human-like quality
• Minimum maintenance
• Advanced text to speech examples:

Chinese   French   Greek   Portuguese   Italian   Swedish   Spanish

Video-Search on Captions

Captions can be used to search for and retrieve video content, stored in data warehouses, in seconds! Here's an example:

• PBS News Hour: Link
  [Search for Paul Martin]

Dynamic Graphs

Web-based graphs and charts accessible to people who are blind are also accessible be telephone! Click on the [D] link to access a dynamically-generated text description of each graph.

National Cancer Institute

Section 508 Educational Resources

• Top 12 free Section 508 Training Courses and Resource   Link
• Design ideas   Link
• Inventions originally designed to accommodate people with disabilities that are now mainstream ICT products.   Link
• Section 508 evaluation document   Link

Contact Information

Steve Jacobs
IDEAL Group, Inc.
2809 Bohlen Drive
Hilliard, Ohio   43026-9012
Phone: 614.777.0660
TTY: 800.750.0750
E-Mail: steve.jacobs@ideal-group.org
URL: http://www.ideal-group.org