Tuesday, May 10, 2005

PANEL DISCUSSION: What is required to create a Canadian IT industry that is successful/profitable and produces technology that is accessible to and inclusive of people with disabilities?

Host: Doug Brolly (RBC Royal Bank bis Group)

Panelists: Jim Tobias (Inclusive Technologies, USA ), Gerard Goggin (Disability Studies & Research Institute (DSaRI), University of Queensland, Australia ), Kier Martin (Council of Canadians with Disabilities, Canada )

Panelist: Jim Tobias (Inclusive Technologies)

In the opening presentation of the institute, Jim Tobias provided insights into the workings of industry and identified opportunities for communicating with industry regarding accessible technology. His presentation focused on two concepts—product ecology and the accessibility value chain.

Product Ecology

Using a series of animations, Tobias illustrated that products do not exist in isolation, but interact ecologically in dynamic relationships that change as new technologies emerge to compete or cooperate with existing products and other new products:

• primary products perform a primary function (e.g., a pencil and paper record information);
• secondary products (e.g., pencil sharpener, stapler) support primary products;
• product categories cooperate (e.g., pencil, sharpener, paper, and stapler);
• product categories compete (e.g., computers compete with the pencil and paper for recording information; various kinds of paper clips and clamps compete with the stapler for fastening pages);
• products that once performed their function well (e.g., computer diskettes) become inadequate and obsolete when new products with greater capabilities emerge (e.g., recordable CDs).

For technology to be accessible to people with disabilities, mainstream products must interact with assistive technology, and mainstream products must support accessibility while interacting with other mainstream products. As an example of how product ecology affects people with disabilities, Tobias described how English captioning was omitted from many early DVDs, despite the massive storage capacity of DVDs.

"DVDs are meant to be distributed universally and globally, and when they developed the protocol, they had huge numbers of spare tracks for text, because they knew they'd have to have sub-titles for all of the different languages. At first blush we thought 'Oh great, that's going to be wonderful, you know that we've got all this room.' But in fact, for many English-produced early generation DVDs, there were no English sub-titles available. If the film was spoken in the English language there was no English captioning available—they had literally used up all the space for other languages. Therefore we had to go back in there and fight for something that we never thought we would have to fight for."

English was omitted from the captioning because the movie industry had assumed that all English-speaking viewers would listen to the audio track, and only non-English-speaking viewers would need captioning. Tobias commented that this omission could have been avoided if people with disabilities had been involved at the development stage.

"The lesson that I take away from that particular one is that when engineers come to us and say 'Oh don't worry about it, there's so much spare capacity, I mean you'll never, never run out of space, so you could put anything you want in there,' we have to kind of smile and say 'Yes I'm sure you're right, but can we just be in that meeting where they sit down and apportion out the text capability?'"

Tobias emphasized that product ecologies are extremely complex and not necessarily predictable. For example, podcasting—a method of subscribing to audio programs that are automatically downloaded to computers, iPods and other portable music players—has created an unpredicted use for portable music players.

"We never would have guessed that something like that would evolve. So we're kind of trying to hold on to this accelerating luge [a small racing ice-sled] of technology and trying to understand what the implications are for people with disabilities. We're not in the research and development headwaters enough; we're kind of at the estuary, where all of this stuff winds up and we need to forge upstream so that we can get into that space and give some early comments on what's happening with these products over time."

The Accessibility Value Chain

In a business value chain, Tobias described products increasing in value because of their interactions with other products and the actions of other companies, and even customers.

"An idea that's very common in industry, but I don't think is well understood outside of industry, is the value chain; meaning that not only my company, but everyone upstream and downstream from me has a role to play in increasing the value of my product. It's counter to the nineteenth and early twentieth century view of commerce which was very competitive and very zero sum. A value chain concept says 'no, that's not really true,' that there are ways that you can cooperate with people up and down stream from you that can make your product much more valuable."

To illustrate, Tobias explained that the unpredicted emergence of podcasting has added value to the iPod (and other portable music players) because it has provided a new use for these devices.

Tobias listed and described seven "links" in the accessibility value chain, all of which have roles to play in ensuring that technology is accessible to people with disabilities:

1. platform vendors
2. tool vendors
3. application developers
4. value-added resellers
5. purchasers
6. end users
7. research/policy

Platform vendors like Microsoft and Sun are "at the top of the value chain, which is earliest upstream…Most of those companies have accessibility programs with some pretty good guidance and resources on accessibility. If it's [a platform] not run by a company, like XML or HTML, there's a standards body and most of those have accessibility committees. So there's a lot of work going on at that level."

Tool vendors are companies that make aftermarket tools and utilities like add-ons, extensions and third-party controls which provide enhancements to other software. Tobias described tool vendors as "kind of invisible links in the value chain, to people who are not in the industry… We need to make sure that they're taking accessibility into consideration as well. Third party controls are a major source of inaccessibility right now in software applications and dynamic websites, so this is an area that's undergoing some accessibility exploration right now, kind of hit them over the head with a stick and feed them a carrot and try to get them to go in the right direction."

Application developers are the main participants in the software industry. They have opportunities to gain "upstream" guidance about accessibility from platform and tool vendors, but should be incorporating universal design in their practices. "I ask software companies to keep track of the feature requests that have to do with accessibility…to make a category on the list of features that says 'accessibility,' and then a list of what those features are… And then use accessibility as a tie-breaker if there is competition—and there is ferocious competition for getting features into new versions of a product. If one feature adds a little bit more accessibility or usability than another, use that argument to break the tie and go for the similar useable feature."

Value-added resellers (VARs) customize and re-sell existing products. One type of VAR is system integrators who purchase, customize and re-sell software (e.g., installing a company's logo, stationery, address book, etc. in Microsoft Outlook). Tobias identified them as important links in the accessibility value chain because they "are kind of the last mile out to large organizations and so to have them sensitized to accessibility, to have them understanding the accessibility features of the product and how it fits the needs of the organization that they're selling to, is a very important and very often missed piece." VARS usually cannot add much accessibility, but they can protect accessibility features from being overwritten or unimplemented.

Purchasers select and procure products for large organizations. Due to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, purchasers in U.S. federal government agencies are responsible for the accessibility of the products they purchase. "They're the kind of gatekeepers into the public sector. If you as a company understand what your [products'] accessibility features are, you should be able communicate it to these purchasers. On the other side, purchasers should have access to expertise about accessibility."

Tobias said industry has much to gain from consulting with end users with disabilities, because they are a "gold mine" of information about accessibility. "I really encourage companies to reach out through advocacy organizations or however they recruit people with disabilities, to average users, very sophisticated users, policy-oriented users—the kind that wear a few hats as the consumer but also advocate—they can be very valuable in getting that information out there."

Industry needs what the research and policy communities have to offer, because companies do not understand their customers as well as they should. Getting their attention, however, isn't easy.

"We need to make our very impressive statistics look like the market research numbers that they get from other market niches. If we have lots of numbers with lots of money and lots of users with suppressed demand, users who want to be able to use these products and they're frustrated—how many times does a company have a chance to sell to somebody who's been waiting at the door for five years to get in to be able to use a piece of software?"

In closing, Tobias said "We need to make sure that we're coming to them as partners and that we make an effort to understand their business and that we try to match up technologically sophisticated folks on our side of the picture with their own technologically sophisticated folks."

Discussion:

Steve Jacobs (IDEAL Group, Inc.) asked how advocates for accessible technology who understand the value chain can use that knowledge to exert a positive influence on industry. Tobias recommended being opportunistic by understanding individual industry contacts and crafting a message that is specific to a particular audience.

"If you have a contact in the regulatory department, you have to craft a message that makes sense to that person. You cannot go and talk to that person about technology; first and foremost, if, you know on the other hand if you have a technology contact, someone from an R & D centre or what have you, you have to have a message in hand for them as well. It's the sociology of organization; it's nothing more sophisticated than that, nothing more technological than that."

He recommended a shift in mindset for disability organizations towards "left-wing marketing".

"It's a skill. If you can learn Sociology and Psychology, trust me, you can learn marketing. It's a hell of a lot easier, it really is, it's a mind set, it's a change of perspective, you're really talking about kind of a left-wing marketing, if you think of it in political terms. Its extending the customer base, right, that's the argument, and we just have this new idea of who the customer is. We're going to hit them as individual consumers, organizational users, all of that stuff, it really is business savvy and understanding how these companies work and why they're structured the way they are."

Laurie Beachell (Council of Canadians with Disabilities) asked Tobias to discuss the difference between engaging industry in a targeted initiative for a specific problem versus a more systemic approach through regulatory reform. Tobias responded that regulations are necessary to get attention from industry but that they are less effective for implementation, citing the example of the Americans with Disabilities Act in the US . "Our experience has been that regulations were necessary to get the attention of industry, but they made terrible implementation tools." He suggested that the Canadian system is more collegial than the American system because it has more integration between the public and private sector.

Gary Birch (Neil Squire Society) raised an ongoing concern about the cycle that advocates for accessible technology sometimes find themselves in when trying to work with industry. He described a number of experiences participating in large IT companies' accessibility groups. In one particular instance, the Neil Squire Society had built a prototype within the company's accessibility group which, based on a company's technology, was shown at a trade fair and produced excitement. In the end, however, the accessibility group has limited ability to move the accessible product out to the company's design group, and the company developed subsequent products which were completely inaccessible.

"They did invest, they came up, they traveled, they sent us technology. And then new versions came up that totally wiped out all the work we had done. The internal accessibility people didn't even know where to begin to try and fix that. They said, 'well, those are decisions made by product engineers.' And they didn't even seem up to the challenge of trying to change that. So that's the kind of cycle we find ourselves in, with, frankly, very little resource in the sector, it's very hard to keep coming back to them."

Tobias acknowledged that there are many difficulties in influencing industry to develop accessible technology and there are drawbacks to using only an economic argument to appeal to industry. "The downside of buying into the business strategy idea is that you die by that same sword." He noted, however, that companies are truly only ever motivated by the bottom line, but that "Companies can't do everything that's profitable. They can only do what is most profitable."

Tobias explained it is very difficult to get companies to invest in accessible technology because they are uncertain how their investment will affect sales.

"If a company has a million dollars to spend on something, advertising people can go into a meeting, and they can say with absolute certainty 'if you give us this million dollars it will result in three million dollars worth in sales,' because they keep those measures, they know those numbers. The best we can say is, 'If you give us a million dollars, we're pretty sure you'll get a few more sales.'"

Tobias suggested that value-added resellers who customize and re-sell existing products have the potential to successfully produce accessible IT. Gary Birch was quick to point out that these types of companies (especially in the software industry) tend to be reactive, and by the time they have created an added-value product, the next version of the product upon which it is based has come out, making the accessible value-added product obsolete. Tobias agreed with Birch and gave an example of Microsoft Windows and AT companies that develop screen readers. "These companies were getting the new version of Windows the same time it became available to the public. It took nine months to re-engineer their screen reader to match up with the new version of Windows. During those six to nine months you were out of luck if you needed to use a screen reader." Tobias stated that Microsoft has now recognized this problem and is doing a better job of involving AT companies in their development stages, but most companies have not.

Panelist: Gerard Goggin (Disability Studies & Research Institute (DSaRI), University of Queensland)

Gerard Goggin presented the paper, "The Business of Digital Disability," in which he defined and explored what he called the "paradox of inclusivity and information technology (IT)" both in Australia and internationally. His presentation opened with background information about DSaRI and the collaboration between DSaRI (Australia) and Dis-IT partners (Canada), followed by an exploration of his thesis on the paradox of inclusivity and IT, including a history of IT in Australia and a synopsis of the discussions of this paradox in an international context. He concluded that there has been an historical shift in the twentieth century from the national government, or welfare state, to the world of business as the source of authority and power in the development of inclusive technologies. He offered several strategies to consumer advocates and researchers for responding to this shift and commented on the need for "co-regulation" among community, industry, and government partners. "As much as we need a market-driven approach and self-regulation, we also require the guiding, custodian and directive roles of our standards-setting bodies, regulatory agencies, and governments."

Goggin suggested that collaboration between Canada and Australia is particularly "fitting" for a number of historical and cultural reasons.

"Both [countries] have relatively small populations with medium-size economies and domestic markets, by global standards. Both Canada and Australia had their experience with colonization, questions of belonging, of achieving just settlement with their indigenous peoples, and the difficulties that distance in geography raise. …I think the two countries share more issues than many other countries do—of economic sustainability, prosperity and living standards—in a time when the realities and ideas about nation states are transforming; and also issues of equality and citizenship for all members of our societies, particularly members of marginalized groups. When much discussion of developments of the information and communication technology focuses on industrial powerhouses worldwide, especially the US , there is much to understand and debate in the experience of other countries and regions, especially our own."

Goggin introduced his thesis of the paradox of inclusivity and IT by first identifying information technology and communication technology as "the master themes of our age" because they are "at the interface of social, cultural, and industrial transformations in our lives," and "technologies are critical to our systems and productions but also of consumption." IT is particularly important to disability research and issues because it plays an important role in "the way that disability is conceived, experienced, and framed in society." Goggin and his colleague Christopher Newell describe the role of technology in the lives of people with disabilities in terms of "intimate relations." They recently co-edited a special issue of Disability Studies Quarterly in which various debates about disability and technology, and the "intimate relations" between them are explored, including issues to do with life and death, ethics, embodiment, and power. Goggin acknowledged this experience of co-editing with Newell as the process by which he came to articulate the paradox of inclusivity and IT.

"One of the things that we've been struck about is that disability is often invoked as a warrant for the development of new technologies, yet in that process the kind of rhetoric of those claims and the promises are not often interrogated or thought about. Nor are the uses, the unexpected uses, and ends of technologies scrutinized. One of the issues is the introduction of new technologies can often have accessibility built in but can also create new forms of exclusion."

To illustrate the paradox of inclusivity and IT; Goggin related a story about traveling to the institute from Australia . When he and his colleague Tim Noonan, arrived at the Vancouver Airport from Australia and made their way to catch their connecting flight to Winnipeg, they encountered a series of inaccessible self-service check-in kiosks. When they remarked on the lack of accessibility to airport staff, "Her reply was quite instructive, because with a wry and long-suffering tone, she said that point of the new technologies is to cut jobs." Goggin's story illustrated that, in general, people's "understanding of the power relations of technology did not incorporate disability and accessibility" and that "22 years after the 1983 International Year of Disabled Persons, information accessibility is still not routinely considered."

"This [story] for me encapsulates the paradox of inclusive technology. On the one hand, it would appear that the arguments, once you sketch them, are compelling. [Inclusive] technology would be accessible, easier to use, and more attractive for many people. IT businesses would have more customers, more revenue, and would be more profitable. But as we know, there are cases—although there's some positive recent advances—where the needs and uses that might be imagined for people with disabilities are overlooked, omitted, neglected, or not considered. This has really profound economic, social, cultural and personal costs. It is a lost business opportunity."

Goggin turned to international discussions of the paradox of inclusivity and IT. He on two recent reports, the 2002 US-based World Institute on Disability report, How to Create Disability Access to Technology, and the 2004 US National Council on Disability report, Design for Inclusion: Creating a New Marketplace. The World Institute of Disability report offered a number of recommendations based on interviews with stakeholders and disability activists. Goggin summarized these recommendations as "the important quality of accessibility champions; the need to value disability and people with disabilities; the need to weave accessibility into the DNA of the company; and to talk about things such as publicizing and marketing a company's accessibility policies and products internally and externally."

Goggin listed some of the findings and conclusions from the National Council on Disability report, which included that:

• a market for universally designed products and services exists
• universal design principles can be incorporated into current design practices; products designed to be accessible sometimes do not actually met the needs of users with disabilities
• legislation is both a facilitator of and barrier to universal design; that many barriers to universal design remain
• Recommendations from this report included the message that "you can both be good and do good through inclusive technology and make money at the same time. Or, in the strong version of the claim, doing good in this manner can and will make you money."

Goggin cautioned that inclusive technology requires long-term communication among different sectors in society. "Actually achieving this can require much coordination, commitment and action between the non-commercial, as well as commercial sectors, institutions, and actors."

Goggin shifted to a discussion of the Australian experience of inclusive technology, particularly in relation to the 1991 and 1997 Telecommunications Acts and the 1992 Disability Discrimination Act. The 1991 Telecommunications Act included a definition of "universal service," which suggested that telecommunication service should be accessible to everyone. Accessibility in this case, however, was "defined as a geographical concept. So within wherever you were within the nation, you should have access to telecommunication." Issues to do with disability and accessibility, however, were not part of this definition of universal access. Goggin commented that even policy makers who were not familiar with disability issues noticed the inadequacy of the definition of "universal service". "A whole set of issues around disability and accessibility were becoming much more clear even to policy makers who have not been more familiar with them, such as the need to recognize the communications of Deaf people, for instance, and provide access to TTYs [text telephones] at affordable rates." Both the government and the former monopoly telecommunications carrier, now called Telstra, did not provide for these accessibility issues.

A year later, the 1992 Disability Discrimination Act ensured that discrimination against people on the basis of disability was illegal. Goggin explained, however, that "the telecommunications industry sought and was granted an exemption from this Disability Discrimination Act for a number of years." Thus, disability was missing from the definition of accessibility in the Telecommunications Act (of 1991) and telecommunications was missing from the Disability Discrimination Act. Government policy changed, however, after a case against Telstra (then Telecom Australia ) was taken to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission [HREOC], which ruled that Telstra was required to provide accessible text telephones. As a result, the 1997 Telecommunications Act finally included a definition of "universal service" that included accessibility for people with disabilities. Goggin referred to this sequence as the "first phase" of inclusive technology in the area of telecommunications in Australia , "in which we can observe a lot of resistance on the part of the dominant carrier about the possibilities for inclusive technology. In this first phase, there was kind of a shared assumption that disability was an extra cost, a bit of a nuisance, and should not be allowed to interfere with the historically significant task of telecommunications reforms."

In response to this first phase, the disability and consumers movements mobilized with a focus on laws and policies. There was also much dialogue between the telecommunications industry and the disability consumer movement.

"Ironically, through this period in the 1990s, there'd actually been a lot of dialogue particularly between Telstra, the main carrier, and the consumers in which the disability movement was involved in. It was actually a very good process. A consumer council was set up in the late 80s that's still going today which genuinely gave consumers and organizations of people with disabilities some input into corporate policies."

Since 1997, the second phase of activity in Australia , there has been the rise of self-regulation, whereby the responsibility for regulation in a number of areas has been given to industry itself. This shift was in part influenced by the ideology of the conservative Liberal-National Party government which was elected the previous year. In 1997 the telecommunications industry established the Australian Communications Industry Forum (ACIF) which assumed responsibility for regulatory issues that had been, until then, the responsibility of the Australian government. Goggin introduced the ACIF Disability Advisory Body (DAB) as a case study of international interest because the DAB, "which is drawn from broadly represented disability organizations and chaired by our colleague Christopher Newell, has provided a key meeting place for consideration of not just current but future telecommunications issues." Goggin commented that in Australia , "industry self-regulation has been very important. It's been institutionalized. It's really kind of co-regulation in a sense—because it's buttressed by a legislative framework. This body of the ACIF develops guidelines, and then the regulatory body in Australia , the communications authority, approves that code, and then it can be enforceable." He closed the case study of the ACIF DAB by emphasizing the importance of the communication between industry and consumers with disabilities. "This self-regulatory process is very much in its aspiration and its operation, I suppose, driven by the industry and the consumers having a kind of dialogue between those two parties."

Goggin next described the role of Australia 's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) in the development of inclusive technology. "The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has been very crucial for at least symbolic action." For example, in 2000 the HREOC found against the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games for their refusal to make the Olympic website accessible. Goggin commented that overall, "the Human Rights [and Equal Opportunity] Commission is just not seen as central from the perspective of industry, government, or regulatory actors." Goggin identified the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission as more effective than HREOC because it "is seen as quite central and quite powerful." Goggin suggested that the ineffectiveness of the human rights approach to making inclusive technology in Australia is due to government politics. "The Human Rights [Commission] has also just been systematically undermined by our conservative [Liberal/National Party Coalition] government since it took office in 1996."

Goggin pointed out, however, that this same government has supported important research on disability and IT. "There's been quite a lot of interesting research work that's occurred. And some of it is actually funded by the government through particular provisions in the Telecommunications Act that came about by happenstance." On the other hand, he added that the government has, in the case of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), put what it considered to be "industrial innovation" ahead of accessibility issues.

"There has been a whole-of-government neglect of inclusive technologies, all the more surprising given that research is available. The government prevailed over the ACIF with respect to Voice over Internet Protocol. The government just wanted that ushered through—what they saw to be industrial innovation—and didn't want the disability accessibility processes and requirements applying there."

Goggin offered several recommendations and suggestions. He repeated his earlier assertion that "the spotlight has swung from focusing on the state, to focusing on business," and suggested that making an economic argument to industry for inclusive technologies is more effective than human rights or social responsibility arguments. "Rather than persuading business to do things for altruistic good corporate citizenship reasons, [persuade business] to do so out of its own self-interests. There is a lot of promise in this new conversation on business and inclusive technology." He commented that in Australia in particular, these economic arguments are important to make, as there has been a "failure of inclusive technology to materialize in a widespread way" despite general disability discrimination laws that were passed in the last fifteen years.

He pointed to Bruno Latour's Aramis, or the Love of Technology, and "actor-network theory" as a useful strategy for understanding disability and technology. Latour's motto is to "follow the actors." This method is useful in understanding the future of inclusive technology, Goggin suggested, because "those who have an interest in the technology, who invest in it—financially, emotionally, and otherwise—are the actors who can tell us what we need to know about the strange and contingent ways that technology is created and what we can do about it."

Goggin offered a number of recommendations for achieving inclusive technology and business success, including incorporating disability "into all aspects of the design and shaping of technology," acquiring strong models for fostering partners and instituting "systems of co-regulation," and including disability in discussions of disability and technology at the national level as well as in discussions about innovation.

"Disability, in some way, still seems to be missing when we talk about innovation. So when we think about the whole discourse of innovation—democratic innovation, open-source innovation—I haven't yet seen disability talked about in that respect and I think it's a really interesting area and in some ways captures the speed at which this happens."

He emphasized the important roles that people play nationally, as well as at an every day level. "In the world of international trade rules, standards-setting activities, and the power of transnational corporations, as national actors we need be all the more creative…We need to continue to devise genuine partnerships between people with disabilities, and those who do not identify as people with disabilities, such as myself, to establish and maintain relationships, in service of ending oppression." He called for disability issues to be included in national, regional, and global policy in the areas of innovation systems, technology, and economy. Goggin emphasized the need for openness and honesty in the "long struggle" for inclusive technologies. "To bring about inclusive technologies I suspect we will need for a long time to come to openly, honestly, and generously discuss matters of power, injustice and practices of exclusion. People with disabilities as we know still face a long struggle to be accepted in society, as equal members of their national communities and cultures."

Goggin closed with the following encouraging remarks.

"So, as the state reinvents itself, at the most general level we need a re-emergence of the governments that act in the interests of all their citizens and non-citizens. And I think we need human rights law, policy, and practice that puts disability at its heart, and instantiates this—inclusive technologies—and provides a permanent, unalterable political and ethical framework, in which we can collectively bring about inclusive technologies, a fair and just society, in which the business of digital disability may prosper."

Monica Ackermann (Assistive Vocational Technology Associates) asked Goggin how the disability rights movement has informed technology and telecommunications development in Australia . Goggin responded that the disability rights movement "has been incredibly important," however, due to lack of resourcing, there have been difficulties in achieving an organized national disability movement. Tim Noonan (SoftSpeak Consulting) explained that "people actually use their holidays, their vacation time, to do their disability activism work, or their presentations as consumers." Noonan also commented that the disability rights movement has been effective, though not aggressive. "I'd say that Australia doesn't really have a history of very aggressive disability rights, but certainly in places it's been quite progressive, pretty much coming from a conciliatory perspective. But that perspective may be biased because of my grounding in the blindness field."

Goggin described why the disability rights movement has been especially effective and involved in the telecommunications technology area.

"There are a good number of people with disabilities who have been involved in the telecommunications, policy and advocacy standards area in Australia since the late eighties. And some of those people have been key figures in the [broader] consumer movement as well. So there's been a strong alliance between the consumer movement in telecommunications and the disability organizations."

Francis Charrier (Dis-IT Research Alliance) inquired about the role of open source and free software implementation in the paradox of inclusive technologies. Goggin suggested that open source technology has a role in discussions about innovation and the new economy. Jim Tobias (Inclusive Technologies) suggested that open source technology embodies a myth of technological utopianism that offers much promise but little follow-through, particularly regarding accessibility.

"I'm thinking specifically of the Linux-oriented accessibility work that has been done, especially the Gnome Accessibility Project and others. You were talking along the lines of technological utopianism—we have this view, that with better and more technology all the time it's going to be better for more people—I think that that is something of a myth that is embodied in much open source work. It's unfortunate that the follow through which is in the nature of a proprietary business—the support, the documentation, the ability to reach somebody who can speak authoritatively about how you do or do not turn something on—is entirely missing in the open source community, especially with respect to accessibility."

Panelist: Kier Martin (Council of Canadians with Disabilities)

Kier Martin, Coordinator of Programs and Services at the Independent Living Resource Centre (ILRC) in St John's, Newfoundland, approached the session topic from the perspective of consumers with disabilities. The St John's ILRC Community Access Program (CAP) site is consumer controlled, open to the public, and uses Web-4-All, a package of assistive technologies developed by Industry Canada and located in many public internet access sites across Canada . The ILRC-CAP site provides consumers with hands-on access to adaptive technology, one-on-one and group training, and offers information and support to the disability community, private sector, government, and schools. Martin emphasized how the ILRC-CAP site is committed to self-assessment, where people with disabilities decide for themselves what kind of technology works well for them, as opposed to third party assessment.

"We follow the model of a self-assessment tool. What we do is invite people to come in, put their hands on the technology, try out what they want. I'm not going to sit down and tell anyone, 'this is what is going to work best for you.' People come in and try out, and pick what works best for them. It might be a laptop, it might be a standalone machine, it might be a voice output system, big keys keyboard. People just try everything out in combinations and pick what works best for them."

The St John's ILRC-CAP site is overseen by a steering committee made up of local businesses, accessible software developers, academics, volunteers, and consumers. Many youth with disabilities have gained employment in the IT sector through internships with the Web-4-All Program and CAP program. The site also offers a computer club that meets every week for which the topics and activities are chosen by the club members. The computer club addresses what Jacquie Ripat (University of Manitoba) referred to at the 2004 Dis-IT Summer Institute as the affective, or emotional, aspect of technology because it offers a safe space for people to interact with technology. According to Martin, the computer club makes the technology less intimidating. "What a lot of people say about this computer club: it's empowering, and it demystifies technology."

Martin summarized what people with disabilities do not want to have in their information or adaptive technology products. He referred to past research with which the St John's ILRC has been involved, including Web-4-All and the participatory action research project, Women and Adaptive Technology (WAAT). In Martin's experience and from recent research findings, people with disabilities do not want a medicalized or institutional look to their adaptive technology. "They like anything that's nice looking—so it's not medical, it's not beige. People don't like beige." People with disabilities also do not want high costs. For example, the more expensive voice browser, JAWS, need not be the only option offered to consumers with disabilities. "There are a lot of high-end web browsers and [technologies] like JAWS, it's kind of like the Mercedes or Cadillac of voice browsers, and you're looking at a price tag of about $1500. There are a lot of other products out there on the market, that work well, and people just want to hear all their options."

Martin added that people with disabilities do not want unseen products or third party assessment, which gauges people's adaptive technology needs according to their disability only. "Limited to their disability-specific boxes, a lot of people go through assessments by third parties on a regular basis. They're assessed by their disability, not what works with them." He explained that third party assessment often results in people with disabilities eventually discarding the AT [adaptive technology] product and making comments like, "'I never knew how to use it, I never really liked it, so I gave up on it. I put it on a shelf, it's never been used again.'" Martin pointed out that people with disabilities often feel "over-teched" from a lack of training and peer supports for using the technology, as well as from having too many devices with little or no access to support and assistive technology that does not work well in all aspects of life (e.g., school, work).

Martin addressed the myth that technology can solve all access problems. He acknowledged that both consumers and developers need to be involved in order to make technology accessible.

"There's no special little USB compatible magic wand that you're going to plug into your computer and it's going to make all your web pages accessible. People need to be made aware upfront that it's going to take a lot of training; it's going to take dedication to figure out how to use those products. Vendors also need to know that there's going to be people calling in and saying, 'how do I fix this? Where's the best place to get it fixed? Where can I get upgrades, service agreements?'"

Martin discussed what he called "the old is new," which is the missed opportunity by industry to recycle or refurbish older AT products. Often AT users still use old versions of technology and have no desire to upgrade these products. "They don't want to let go of their old products or their old computers. It still works well for them. Refurbishing and offering older products to consumers is a little-supported market. Someone's computer gives up…or they've lost that original CD for that product, but it's what's worked well for them in their life, they still want to access that software. A lot of times it's hard to track down these older versions of AT. Many people do not want the upgrades."

Martin then discussed what consumers with disabilities do want. Like all consumers, they want:

• variety, stylized, customized technology
• portability
• access
• choice
• mainstream look and name
• support and training
• cost efficiency

He also outlined what "the ideal consumer" would be for business. The ideal consumer would:

• be well-informed
• be willing to take a risk
• know what they want or don't want
• ask questions
• have relationship with company

Martin emphasized the importance of the relationship between consumers and IT/AT companies, which includes service agreements and repeat service. "What I look for in a lot of companies; if a product is upgraded in the next year or two, what's my service agreement? If a new version comes out, I want that new version. I think some of the smaller vendors in our community have really latched on to that to get people to keep coming back." He discussed how smaller companies in Newfoundland offer service agreements that ensure that consumers will be informed of any available upgrades, that upgrades. These upgrades will be ordered in at the consumer's request, and their technologists will be trained in "some of the bugs and glitches that you're going to encounter if you upgrade."

Martin concluded by recommending the universal access model in the development of information technology. This model ensures that technology is accessible to everyone, including consumers with disabilities. The appeal of the universal access model is that people with disabilities are included in all aspects and stages of the development of technology, including the design stage. Martin suggested the need for evolving disability access guidelines to ensure the success of the universal access model in the development of technology. "Universal access will continue to change, therefore access for people with disabilities is going to continue to change, and that's the reality with the new operating systems."

Discussion:

Deborah Stienstra (University of Manitoba) asked Martin to describe what he sees as the tensions between adaptive technology and wireless technology and the role that wireless technology plays at the St John's Independent Living Resource Centre Community Access Program (CAP) sites. Martin responded that wireless is affordable and made available at the ILRC CAP sites, and gave an example of how wireless improves accessibility.

"The wireless relationship has opened up a lot of avenues for myself and other interns. Ideally, some of them will talk about smart card technology over the years, wireless technology. Being able to go into a bank, for example, and being able to access your banking information wirelessly would be an ideal situation for folks. So wireless has bullied its way right into the centre, it wasn't an option not to offer, support and explore it. It's also affordable."

In response to a question by Marcia Cummings (Rogers Communications Inc. and Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians), Martin described how smart cards and Web-4-All work at CAP sites. When smart cards are inserted into a computer that uses Web-4-All, the user's preferences (AT programs and settings) start up automatically. When the smart card is removed, the computer returns to its previous configuration. The combination of smart cards and Web-4-All follows the universal access model: smart cards offer privacy and individual accommodations for individual users, thereby making Web-4-All accessible to everybody.

"What really needs to happen with initiatives like this is larger companies need to come on line, and see the potential: how people grabbed up those cards and we couldn't keep them in our site. People started going around to other Community Access sites, [asking] 'Where's your Web-4-All?' We did a Web-4-All project in our province and [since then] 84 public internet sites have Web-4-All units and other adaptive technology. Most importantly, youth with disability were hired in every one of those sites to train technicians, train librarians, train teachers of the potential of the products."

In response to a question from Mary Frances Laughton (Industry Canada), Martin described the need for evolving requirements regarding accessibility and technology, using smart cards as a case study. "The smart cards were great until Windows XP came out, then suddenly because the smart card devices ran on serial ports, Windows XP didn't support that driver, so we installed the service pack for XP and then it worked for a while. And [then] Service Pack Two came out, and all the lights went on in the hallway."

Joan Wolforth (McGill University) picked up on Martin's discussion of third party assessment and related it to McGill's adaptive technology lab and students with disabilities. She agreed with Martin that it is important for each student to choose their own adaptive technology, rather than for a third party to assess students according to their disability. She suggested that the reasons for third party assessment have to do with how funding agencies operate, how industry markets products, and employers' adaptive technology standards. Monica Ackermann (Assistive Vocational Technology Associates) added that employers tend to list adaptive technology according to disability, not to individuals. For example, a list will read as follows: disability: blind, AT: JAWS; disability: blind, AT: Kurzweil; disability: mobility impaired, AT: Naturally Speaking, etc. Wolforth summed up the problem with third party assessment and disability-specific technology. "Some of the work we have to do with the way that industry markets products, and also the way that agencies fund products, is to build in that very thing that you're saying. It should not be a third party decision, it needs to be an individual's decision about what they like to use."

Laurie Beachell (Council of Canadians with Disabilities) raised the topic of the digital divide, pointing out that people with disabilities are part of what "we generally, as an advocacy association, describe as poor." He asked Gerard Goggin and Jim Tobias if there are statistics in Australia or the United States about the access people with disabilities have to technology, adding that there are no such statistics in Canada .

Gerard Goggin described the current research on access to technology for people with disabilities in Australia as "patchy," mostly quantitative studies by the Australian Bureau of Statistics regarding the number of people with disabilities who are connected to the internet. He commented that the "counting activities" to produce these statistics are "driven by notions of the information economy and in some sense around the rhetoric of the digital divide debate." Tim Noonan (SoftSpeak Consulting) added that many of the statistics in Australia dealing with disability are often related to aging.

Jim Tobias described the statistics about people with disabilities' access to technology in the United States as "little snapshots," including statistics on household use of information technology from the National Telecom and Information Administration and statistics on users of audio description services from the American Foundation for the Blind. He agreed with Beachell that it is important to acknowledge the digital divide in research on inclusive technology, stating, "if we only serve the leading edge super-crips, we really haven't done our job."

Beachell's question sparked a discussion about the digital divide. The discussion included both anecdotal and qualitative research evidence of certain populations among people with disabilities who do not access technology. Audience and panel members offered reasons for the lack of access to or interest in technology—what Michelle Murdoch (Council of Canadians with Disabilities) called "a big disconnect" between people with disabilities and technology. For example, Tobias said people with disabilities who do not access technology tend to be "people who are older, less well off, less educational attainment, and have acquired disabilities by aging. They are socially isolated; we know from aging in general that they have very poor information networks, they don't learn about products, they don't have peers who use technologies, and that's the bulk of people with disabilities." He gave an anecdotal example of an older person who reads the newspaper and is losing reading sight, who would likely resist reading the newspaper over the internet using a screen reader.

"We're asking them to make two technological leaps in one. We're asking them to use a computer and then we're asking them to use a screen reader or a screen magnification program; it's not easy to set up, and it's really too much to ask. So they shed the function, they just slough it off and they say, 'well, I'll get my news from the radio.' From a market perspective that's terrible."

In response, Deborah Stienstra conveyed some findings from the Dis-IT Research Alliance's e-Democracy research on electronic government consultations.

"Accessibility standards generally are geared to only a certain type of user, and they don't address poverty, they don't address fear of technology—the affective issues around technology. They don't address isolation or some of the mental health issues that come up with public use of technologies. The ways in which people engage with technology don't get addressed at all in how we respond to access more generally. We don't have statistics about how, in the best possible world, you would interact with information technologies."

Michelle Murdoch added that in her research project, Women and Adaptive Technology (WAAT), the women she interviewed were well-educated and who, "by mainstream society standards are significantly physically impaired." Murdoch described the women's resistance to using technology as a "big disconnect," the reasons for which are complicated and unclear.

Kier Martin offered anecdotal evidence of students with learning disabilities who experience emotional, or affective, barriers to technology. Martin paraphrased the comments of these students, concluding that for this population group, there is a stigma attached to technology.

"Their answers are so different. 'I feel like a nerd, I feel like an idiot. I'm sitting at the back of the classroom, I'm the only one with a computer, no one else has got one. Everyone knows I'm different, why do I have a computer?' There's a stigma attached to it."

Beachell summarized the discussion from a community advocacy perspective, calling for the need for statistics and data to effect social change and increased access to technology for people with disabilities using the economic argument. "If we think creation of change is based on some of our economic argument and marketing, and we don't have basic data on who our market is, we have a huge challenge in front of us in how we present our argument."

Steve Jacobs (IDEAL Group, Inc.) initiated a discussion about the role of technology in literacy. He cited data from The Hadley School for the Blind which indicates that speech synthesizers and screen readers are eroding the number of students who learn to read Braille. This comment sparked a spirited debate amongst participants and panel members about the relationship between technology, literacy, and education.

Marcia Cummings advocated strongly for the importance of learning Braille, calling it irreplaceable and superior reading literacy. "There's no way that you can compare reading a book in Braille or reading it with your eyes from the printed page to reading it with a screen reader off of a computer screen; there's no substitute…I don't consider someone who's used a computer all their life as being literate." Jim Tobias offered a different perspective. "I'd be perfectly happy if kids learned Braille for labeling purposes only, so they can read the numbers on the elevator or something like that, if they always had what they needed to get speech output."

Tobias framed the discussion as "normative versus descriptive," where normative describes how things "should be," and descriptive describes what is actually happening. "I'm reminded of the old days in the Polio epidemic when clinicians forced people to try to walk with braces and crutches, and never allowed them to use wheelchairs, even though those were much better mobility devices. So I can speak heatedly about it, but I don't know which side of the argument I'm on."

Tim Noonan (SoftSpeak Consulting) framed the argument as people who are "pro-Braille" and people who get labeled "anti-Braille" and advocated an approach that is "more middle line." "I am by no means anti-Braille, although it's very hard not to be labeled anti-Braille by some super-emphatic Braille advocates unless you fully endorse it, in every context. I actually am pro-Braille—but when it is right for the person and their situation. I am a very strong advocate of blind and low-vision students being skilled-up in Braille literacy."

Goggin framed and summarized the discussion as a "question about literacies" and cautioned against the use of categories with normative charges that privilege reading Braille as a superior literacy to reading using technology. "The illiteracy charge, I find, is the bit that's not helpful, because that carries such a strong normative charge. …It is about literacies, and the complex changes in those, with respect to technologies."

ROUNDTABLE: Are accessibility standards, regulations, guidelines, etc. the way to achieve a Canadian IT industry that is successful/profitable and inclusive of people with disabilities?

Host: Doug Brolly (RBC Royal Bank bis Group)

Presenters: Helen Maskery (Maskery), Ian Brodie (Canadian Standards Association), Dave Dougall (Research In Motion), Susan Mazrui (Cingular Wireless), Mary Frances Laughton (Industry Canada )

Presenter: Helen Maskery (Maskery)

Helen Maskery addressed the session topic from the private sector perspective. She stated that; on their own, standards, regulations, and guidelines are not sufficient to make the business case for achieving accessible mainstream ICT in the private sector. "Standards and guidelines and regulations definitely have a role to play, but in terms of driving a business case they are not the answer from the private sector." She asserted that although accessibility is the "right thing to do," there is not a big enough market to compel industry to include it in their criteria of adequacy for developing IT, adding that "in business you can't always do the right thing."

In her PowerPoint presentation, Maskery described effective ways of making the business case to the private sector, the definition for accessibility, "anywhere, anytime by anyone," and how standards, regulations, and guidelines are useful once the business case is made. She concluded with the example of Network Equipment Building Systems (NEBS), a model that has been very influential in the telecommunications industry, to illustrate her assertion that standards and regulations must be reinforced or validated by independent, standardized methods.

The business case is the economic argument for making IT's accessible. At the 2004 Dis-IT Institute Laurie Beachell (Council of Canadians with Disabilities) commented that it is important for the disability community to learn to make an effective economic argument for making accessible IT's. This dialogue continued at the 2005 Institute. According to Maskery, the business case comes from the following economic considerations, in order of most effective to least effective:

1. actual lost sales
2. increased sales in current or new markets
3. potential for lost sales
4. higher margins

"The business case does not include accessibility or usability, and in business, you can't always do the right thing. The thing that really hurts in the private sector is market sales; if you can actually point to something that says, 'you have lost x millions of dollars because of Y', you've got a direct causal relationship that will get people to pay attention to you. Increased sales, either in the current or new markets is another way to get companies to make changes, but may not be enough in and of itself. There will be hesitation unless you can prove absolutely that the result of doing Y will make them X million dollars in return. The potential for lost sales can also be a big motivator, but again, in and of itself it may not be enough because it's in that potential category. Another area of the business case which is an even harder to make is in terms of higher margins. The cost of doing business for a company is affected by how much it costs to develop the technology to get the product out there and support it once it's out there. There are three ways you can maximize profit when looking at margins: (1) You can sell at a higher price, which is not something you to want to hear because the cost of assistive technology is already high. (2) You can reduce the cost of development via guidelines and standards. (3) Finally, if you can show that there is a direct relationship between designing for usability or accessibility and a reduction in the cost of support (call centres, returned products, etc…), then you've got a potential angle."

Maskery also suggested taking consumer demand into consideration when lobbying industry to make accessible technology "because if the consumers don't buy then you don't make money." Ultimately, Maskery concluded, "it all comes down to money."

Software engineering, compared to other types of engineering, is a relatively new science or skill. "Some people in the industry have referred to it as still being a cottage industry." Maskery explained that not many companies are at the highest level of process.

"The maturity of the software development process is not that established yet, there's a lot of talk about it and there's a lot of driving towards it. However, when you think about taking standards and guidelines and try to insert them into organizations, a lot of times the process isn't there to be able to receive them. That's just part and parcel of understanding who we need to influence with the standards and guidelines in what way."

Maskery discussed what she called "one answer to the business case" in recent research done by her company, Maskery, for Industry Canada. Maskery (the company) investigated what it would take to make a business case in five mid-to-small companies for delivering accessible and usable technology. For the study, deified accessibility as products that are usable "anywhere, anytime by anyone." According to Maskery, all five companies were compelled by this definition of accessibility and were persuaded to design to accessible standards, because it spoke to enterprise-wide solutions and would help with their business case.

"As soon as we put this definition of accessibility in front of the people we were interviewing, they said, 'that is fundamental to my business.' Because this [definition of accessibility] then talks about the challenges: they've got enterprise-wide solutions, where mobility doesn't necessarily mean it's wireless, it means the individual is moving around and needing to be effective in different places at different times, and it could be at any time of day and night. And so it was unanimous. The five companies that we talked to said, 'this is fundamental to my business, now if you can help me with this problem, now we're talking, because now you're going to help me with my business case.'"

Once the business case is made, Maskery asserted that standards, regulations, and guidelines are useful in order to:

• combat negative myths (e.g., making accessible ICT is too expensive, too much effort)
• develop mainstream ICT that is usable anywhere, anytime by anyone
• prove the product is usable anywhere, anytime by anyone through standardized testing
• enforce procurement of ICT that is usable anywhere, anytime by anyone

Maskery identified the US Telecommunications Act of 1996, particularly section 255, as an example of accessible procurement that is not being enforced effectively, and emphasized the need for the Government of Canada to enforce accessible procurement. She sited Maskery as a prime example of why it is important for the Canadian government to enforce the procurement of accessible ICT.

"My company does a lot of work for the public sector, and I've seen a lot of the huge multi-million dollar RFP's [requests for proposals] go out for content management systems, government-wide systems, this, that and the other. Throughout the 200 to 300 pages of the request for proposal I'm looking for anything that says, 'accessibility or usability,' and it's not there. The government is not including ways in the RFP's that allow me to be able to go to any of the big mainstream vendors and say, 'include me in your proposal because I can give you a winning edge because we can do usable access tools.' That's because any company that includes my services in their bid is at a disadvantage now because I cost money. I'm in the private sector and I charge for my services and the services of my company. Now, because of the way the evaluation process goes with price-for-point. If there are no points for usability or accessibility, then there is no way that any IT vendor can get a benefit from having me or any of us on their team. Therefore having the standards and legislation can help drive appropriate procurement processes of which the Accessible Procurement Toolkit is one of the support mechanisms."

Maskery concluded by discussing Network Equipment Building Systems (NEBS) as an influential model for making accessible ICT in telecommunications. NEBS provides a set of published criteria used to assess whether or not network equipment will plug and play safely in the service provider's network, recognizing three levels of compliance which supports the product development process. Independent certified verification companies perform the assessment, and service providers and governments require that products meet the NEBS criteria. Maskery offered NEBS as "an example of different ways of looking at standards and regulations and some of the things that need to be considered by the private sector."

Discussion:

Following Maskery's presentation, Laurie Beachell (Council of Canadians with Disabilities) initiated a poignant debate about the tension that exists between the business case and human rights arguments for accessible IT. Beachell was concerned about the implication that the responsibility rests on the disability community to make the business argument and that the private sector does not respect the diversity of the disability community nor does it feel any obligation or responsibility to be inclusive.

"Certainly, the disability rights community has to get better at doing the business case. But if there is not a right here, if there is not also an equality argument to be presented in this, and if there is not some regulation and enforcement at the outset—not after having conducted a business case plan, and presented it and got some buy-in, but a requirement—I get worried. I'm worried that in your presentation the 'you' who must do this, 'you' who must do that, is the disability rights community."

Beachell was critical of the business case because it has "no requirement on business and companies to be respectful of the diversity of our community, to be respectful of the nature of our community and to find ways in their plan that they are inclusive—not that we have to convince them to be." He emphasized his point by bringing up the Council of Canadians with Disabilities' current struggle with VIA Rail's purchase of inaccessible passenger cars which is currently at the Supreme Court of Canada.

"Our community has to get better at the business case, but if it's not coupled with an obligation, a right and a responsibility to create a more inclusive society, I believe we will be exactly where we are right now in having to fight Via Rail at the Supreme Court of Canada for buying inaccessible passenger rail cars, because we have no regulations, no enforcement, and no mechanism to make them do it."

Maskery agreed with Beachell, but identified the need to make the economic argument to industry to get more immediate results. "I would agree 100 percent with what you're saying. What I'm trying to reflect here is how the mentality is within the private sector and how the decision-making goes on. Until it gets to that point, what other ways have we got to influence?"

In response to Beachell, Jim Tobias (Inclusive Technologies) elaborated on the nature of the phrase "business case," calling it a "subtle political totem" or a "peace pipe." Tobias described how the business case is not necessarily only about the bottom line, but can also include stakeholder, political, regulatory, and human rights issues that are difficult to measure.

"Many internal organizations give input into the business case or decision being made. I see the same factor used as a negative in one case and a positive in another, because the underlying politics—the stakeholder issues, the regulatory issues, the sense of justice and equality and what have you—were being played on a level that corporations find hard to measure. Just because we use the phrase "business case," doesn't mean that it's only about dollars."

Gerard Goggin (Disability Studies & Research Institute (DSaRI), University of Queensland) explained that in Australia , consumers with disabilities have found it useful to draw on the economic argument (or business case) in tandem with a human rights argument to persuade industry to make technology accessible. "One of the ways in Australia that the disability consumers have consciously tried to deal with this is to always run a twin argument, a twin discourse. You run the arguments about the businesses, about the markets, and that they're incredibly important, then you run them in tandem with the argument about rights and about democratization."

Tobias pointed out that corporations will "spend money to stand in a place that's safe".

"Corporations, large organizations in general, are uncertainty reducing mechanisms; they're driven to clarify the environment in which they work because they can't make decisions with all of the raw information around them, so they'll spend good money just to reduce uncertainty. This is where those [regulatory] issues come into play." Beachell added that "regulation reduces uncertainty" because "you know what you are required to do." Regulation, then, can be a way to achieve an IT industry that is successful and inclusive of people with disabilities.

Mary Frances Laughton (Industry Canada) agreed with Beachell that the private sector should be compelled by an obligation and responsibility to make inclusive products. "We need to have the kinds of mechanisms whereby the industry meets the needs [of the disability community], that's the legislation side of it." She also identified a tension between the two ways in which the roundtable question could be answered:

1. "Are people with disabilities involved in the successful/profitable IT industry?" or
2. "Is the successful/profitable IT industry producing goods and services that can be used by people with disabilities?"

As a federal government employee, Laughton positions herself in the role of one who influences industry to incorporate accessibility into their companies. "I sit in the Information and Communications Technology branch of Industry Canada and my job is to push those [industry] folks to be considerate of the accessibility issues."

Presenter: Ian Brodie (Canadian Standards Association)

Ian Brodie's presentation described the Canadian Standards Association (CSA), the definition, limitations, and role of standards in Canada , and the CSA standard on barrier-free design for automated banking machines (ABM) and its impact on industry.

Founded in 1919, the CSA is the oldest standards organization in Canada. It is non-profit and member-based, which, Brodie explained, means that standards development activity is run by volunteers. "The committee members that develop our standards are volunteer members and they really make up the core of what CSA does, certainly in the standards area." CSA has published approximately 1700 consensus standards and is involved in 37 areas of technology. Brodie described accessibility as "a relatively new area of standards development work."

Brodie described standards as "living documents" that evolve over time, especially in the area of technology. They are developed through a consensus process that involves various stakeholder groups, including government, industry, and user groups. "What we call a catch-all for any other stakeholder that's interested is 'general interest' and that certainly can include academia that is doing work in that area." Standards outline industry guidelines and best practices and stipulate requirements for the safety, performance, and operation of products, processes, services, and systems. Brodie noted, however, that "really, standards set the minimum level" of requirements. Unless standards are referenced in legislation, they are voluntary in Canada . The responsibility to use standards lies within organizations, industry, associations, and other groups. These groups can and often do voluntarily implement standards into their corporate policy.

Standards can be precursors to laws (e.g., CSA Privacy Code), be referenced in laws, and can supplement laws. Standards can be reinforced by laws and go beyond laws, as in the case of forestry management standards which go beyond provincial requirements to allow forestry companies to sell globally. They can also address legal weaknesses (e.g., cross-border weaknesses). Organizations can implement international standards within their organizations in various divisions around the world. "Implementing standards at a global level certainly can help transcend borders."

According to Brodie, standardization is integral to the changing global marketplace and promotes economic growth and trade. "Within the global marketplace today there is more of a trend towards having global standards so that organizations that are in many markets can basically try to design their product to meet one type of standard. We're certainly not there but we're moving towards that." Brodie explained that standards can influence the research and development of new technologies, build competitive advantages, increase public confidence in products and services, provide compatibility with foreign markets, and solidify market leadership.

He focused on CSA B651.1 Barrier-free design for Automated Banking Machines (ABM)s, published in 2001, as a case study for exploring the impact that accessibility standards can have on industry. During the 1990s a number of human rights complaints by people with disabilities about the inaccessibility of ABMs prompted the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) to conduct a study on the accessibility of ABMs, the results of which "indicated a low level of accessibility." The Canadian Bankers Association (CBA) conducted subsequent research on existing standards and consulted with the disability community in order to address the issue of accessible ABMs, which culminated in a report.

In 1997 the CBA approached the CSA in order to develop a standard. This work fell under the jurisdiction of CSA's technical committee on barrier free design. A subcommittee was then formed which included

• manufacturers
• financial service groups
• users
• regulators
• Industry Canada
• Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA)
• other organizations

The first edition of the CSA B651.1 was published in 2001 and in 2005 the review process for the development of the second edition of B651.1 will begin because, as living documents, standards "change to reflect what industry or technology changes are occurring or what is happening within that sector of industry to make sure that they're current." Brodie described the impact of this standard to be significant in increasing the accessibility of ABMs. "Basically all the banks now are requiring manufacturers to meet B651.1." Of the 32,000 ABMs in Canada , half are bank-owned and half are what are called "white label machines," which are ABMs often found in convenience stores and gas stations that have no affiliation to any financial institution. White label ABMs are not required to meet the CSA B651.1 but Brodie said that the 2005 Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act "might have an impact on the uptake and implementation of standards." Brodie concluded his review of the impact of CSA B651.1 on industry by relating a manufacturer's perspective, who commented that the publication of CSA B651.1 "spawned a whole new generation of banking machines."

The development of the second edition of B651.1 will address issues of keeping the standard current with respect to software, security, and wireless technology. "Some of the issues which we found were a bit either ambiguous or certainly need clarification or was more of an oversight with the current edition is knee space, allowing front on access, and graphic symbols." The CSA will also be considering product certification for accessibility in the form of a label or sticker that manufacturers can place on ABMs "to indicate that that product is accessible or meeting a certain standard."

CSA is also looking at developing a standard for self-service interactive devices (e.g., kiosks, ticket machines). Internationally, Canada is involved in ICT1, a joint technical committee that recently established a Special Working Group on Accessibility and IT for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which is concerned with user requirements and an inventory of accessibility standards and gap analysis.

Discussion:

James Watzke (British Columbia Institute of Technology) brought attention to the political climate in which standards are created. He pointed out that the Canadian Bankers Association (CBA), invested money in the research and production of the CSA bank machine standard. Watzke raised this issue in response to Brodie's presentation but also in response to Laurie Beachell's (Council of Canadians with Disabilities) earlier commented that rights, obligations, and regulation need to be a part of the industry decision-making process. Watzke gave another example in which the Canadian Bankers Association invested money in research at the British Columbia Institute of Technology with the intention of creating a standard.

"I can tell you that they gave my R & D [Research and Development] group quite a bit of money to do the research with the understanding that this was 'going to lead to a standard.' Well, we delivered, but that initiative evolved differently. Mostly because at about the time we completed the research, component standards—as opposed to a single standard for an entire ICT—which are becoming more and more necessary and common in the CSA and ISO due to the rapidly changing nature of technology, came on the radar screen. What we're going to have are component standards—and then you can, in your mind, figure out how much more complicated that makes the world. We may lose in the end because that's also a reason for an industry to say, 'That's too much trouble. Instead of one standard, we now have to participate on six standards committees, because our product has six of the components that CSA or ISO might be working on.'"

Gary Birch (Neil Squire Society) asked Brodie to elaborate on what motivated the financial institutions to require their manufacturers to adhere to the standard. Brodie responded that the catalyst for this decision was the human rights complaints made to the Canadian Human Rights Commission regarding inaccessible banking machines. He added, "I think the banks are realizing that with the demographics and older population, there's certainly the aspect of wealth management...and certainly the next generation of people are users of technology."

Tim Noonan (SoftSpeak Consulting) described the political climate in Australia that compelled the Australian Bankers' Association ( ABA) to create standards for accessible banking to be similar to the situation in Canada —the ABA was also motivated by human rights complaints to the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). The ABA gave a commitment to HREOC to develop four industry standards to do with telephone banking, web banking, ABMs, and electronic funds transfer point of sale. These standards were not developed through Standards Australia because "the process was perceived to be very slow." He fears that security and authentication issues in web banking will impede the progress that accessibility standards have made. "All of a sudden security has taken precedence over any accessibility issues, and the fight's going to be have to be commenced again from square one, I suspect."

Jim Tobias (Inclusive Technologies) pointed out the social environment in which banks and manufacturers operate. "The bank is the customer of the manufacturer, so it's really no skin off the bank's nose if the manufacturer has to make an ABM the way that the standard is going to dictate." He outlined how the banks and manufacturers would likely interact in the process the leads to the decision to create standards.

"It's very likely that before they decided to come together and work on a standard, each individual bank approached one or more of its manufacturers and said, 'would you do this for us?' The manufacturer then had to quote them a price for the entire R & D effort, which was probably too expensive and the banks quickly realized, as has happened many times in their business before, that if they all get together and work on it, then all the manufacturers will have to respond."

Tobias also noted that, in the international context, there is a "globalization of accessibility" that has a "tremendous potential power" to motivate industry to understand accessibility issues and to develop accessible technology.

Laurie Beachell (Council of Canadians with Disabilities) identified banking machines as a case study that is useful for understanding the politics of standards and how the disability community can use standards to achieve accessible mainstream technology.

"I think banking machines are a wonderful case study, in looking at where it began, the players, the time frame, what we need at this point is – so after all of that, how greatly improved is access? And for certain populations in the disability community, the access has not improved significantly … It has is in some instances improved in certain locales where you have a very active outspoken individual who has taken their local bank to the media and said 'I can't do business there.'  So what are the changes that occurred? ... I think we have to look at what was the factor that created change here and how significant was the change over a period of fifteen years."

Kier Martin (Council of Canadians with Disabilities) raised the issues of the inaccessible independently-owned white label banking machines which are not obliged to follow accessible banking standards. He pointed out that in rural communities in particular, "banks are closing up shop" and accessible bank-owned ABMs are being replaced by inaccessible white label machines.

Martin described attending a conference on technology and accessibility at which he encountered a "super machine" ABM that had speech output, Braille keys, and a brightly lit LCD pad. When he went to use the machine the day after the conference, however, it was no longer there. When Martin asked why the ABM had been removed, he was told, "'people with disabilities are gone, the conference is over…'" Martin concluded with a persuasive argument for why accessibility standards should apply to white label ABMs. "The banks allow these third party machines to access their company. Shouldn't there be standards tied on to that?"

Jim Tobias expressed his concern regarding the results of follow-up studies on talking ATM's now in the US.

"In tracking the utilization of the speech capability in the ATM's, banks have discovered it is insignificant. Now they look at this, and they have learned exactly the wrong lesson. You could blame its under-utilization on the fact that it was brought into existence via litigation, it was adversarial from the very beginning, and they wound up doing something they didn't really want to do. They developed a one size fits all solution [that turned out to be only useful for a limited number of people]".

Tobias argued that US banks now believe that accessible technology costs them lots of time and money and ultimately is not utilized by many people. Tobias's concern lays in future adaptations and litigation.

"We know that the technologies are going to evolve and how are they [banks] going to respond the next time we come at them with a request for another kind of accommodation? We really have to think about this because it's their business, and they're going to have to live with the decisions that we force on them."

Presenter: Dave Dougall (Research in Motion)

Dave Dougall, the Accessibility Program Manager at Research in Motion Limited (RIM), offered a case study of the impact of accessibility standards and regulations on RIM as a Canadian manufacturer of wireless telecommunications technologies. RIM has experienced dramatic growth since the launch of the BlackBerry in 1999. In 2004, RIM introduced an Accessibility Program to ensure the proper focus was being placed on the accessibility of BlackBerry devices.

Dougall explained that RIM developed the BlackBerry "to provide a premier mobile email solution," but coincidentally, it also "became the device of choice for a large segment of the deaf and hard of hearing community." He pointed out that the accessibility of the BlackBerry was not a result of regulation.

"It's interesting to note in the context of our discussion today, that the initial success of the BlackBerry within of the deaf and hard of hearing market was not directly a function of regulation, but rather through the fulfillment of a mobile communication need that that particular user community required not unlike the general population that uses BlackBerry. Certainly it has helped that the BlackBerry is a device that people want to be seen with it and it's grown into a mainstream high status product, used by investment bankers, lawyers, celebrities, people on the go, including people that are deaf and hard of hearing."

Dougall pointed out that accessibility regulations add "another dimension" to the already highly regulated marketplace of telecommunications (e.g. FCC in US, Industry Canada in Canada ). He commented that the smaller market size of countries like Canada and Australia require information technology companies from those countries to develop products that are targeted for larger markets, including the US, Europe, and the newer emerging markets in Asia and Latin America. He emphasized the importance of harmonizing global standards.

"Canadian companies are very cognizant of world-wide regulatory and compliance requirements that must be met in terms of selling into those countries. As a manufacturer developing a mass market product, regulations adopted on a country-specific basis that are unique to that country and not consistent with the regulations in place in other markets can in fact create barriers to market entry or barriers to a product remaining in market."

To make their products accessible according to the US requirements for hearing aid compatibility, RIM's Certification and Compliance Department tracked the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) 2003 modification of the Hearing Aid Compatibility (HAC) Act  of 1998, which now requires wireless phone manufacturers and wireless phone service providers to make digital wireless phones effectively usable with hearing aids. RIM joined the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), which had initiated the HAC Incubator Group. This group is comprised of cell phone manufacturers and carriers, whose purpose was "to work closely together to develop solutions for industry-wide technical challenges such as hearing aid compatibility with digital cellular phones." Dougall also mentioned the ATIS Product Labeling and Outreach Efforts working group which ensures that standards and legislation are implemented through user guides and product packaging. "There are many steps in the chain, not just the engineering aspect but that important communication aspect of what the legislation actually means and how it's being brought to market."

Since the success of the BlackBerry, RIM has received an "increase in the number of accessibility inquiries over the past two years which has led to the formal implementation of an Accessibility Program." That same year, RIM hired an Accessibility Consultant in order to familiarize the company with US legislation in particular, focusing on Section 255 of the US Telecommunications Act, and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

The RIM Accessibility Program includes Dougall as Accessibility Manager and an Accessibility Coordinator, who is formerly of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB), and has a background in ergonomics, human factors, and assistive technology. Dougall emphasized that raising awareness of accessibility issues within and outside of the company is an ongoing priority of the RIM Accessibility Program.

"It is an ongoing challenge within our organization and with our carrier partners as well as our end customers, to raise the awareness level of accessibility requirements, and how that relates to the features of the product, as well as the service infrastructure that needs to be in place to support them."

Dougall reviewed the core areas on which the RIM Accessibility Program focuses:

• Training and Awareness
• Inquiries Management
• Product Development Process (PDP)
• Outreach Program

He explained that training and awareness is "critical both internally within our organization as well as externally with our carrier partners and our customers. We have conducted accessibility awareness training sessions with our contact centre managers and team leads to start to socialize them to the types of inquiries that we're getting and how our product features relate to those inquiries." Inquiries Management, it follows, is concerned with the development of processes and procedures with RIM's Contact Centre. Dougall noted that there are often "subtle nuances" to accessibility inquiries which requires a more "holistic understanding" from the company.

"You seldom get two inquiries about accessibility that are worded the same way or that you could use an FAQ standard response for that particular individual. There are often many subtle nuances, users looking at the challenge or the question that they have from a slightly different perspective. It requires individuals within the organization that have a more holistic understanding of the product features and accessibility features and how the two are coupled so that you can properly inform the customer, the carrier or the sales rep what the options are in order to assist that end user."

The Product Development Process, Dougall explained, requires involvement at all of the appropriate phases in the "product life cycle." For example, RIM includes accessibility requirements and features in the market requirement documents, which "feed into engineering." Accessibility requirements are also included at the design and implementation stage, "providing feedback to the engineers in terms of translating the market requirements into product features that will meet the expectations of the various disability communities and treating those elements as an inherent aspect of universal design." Dougall also mentioned that involving the disability community in beta testing products is something RIM recognizes "as an important element moving forward." He mentioned the challenges of the "Commercialization Phase," which includes accessible documentation formats, training material formats, and information for RIM Contact Centre and sales representatives, as well as to RIM's extended carrier partner organization around the world in multiple languages.

As part of its Outreach Program, RIM has participated in many accessibility events in 2005 including the Section 508 IDEAS Conference in Washington, the Wireless Centre of Excellence at the SHHH Conference in Washington DC, the Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA) 2005 Conference, the California State University Northridge (CSUN) Conference, the CTIA Accessibility Workshop which was a new initiative that was held at the CTIA Wireless Show in New Orleans, and the TDI Conference in July. Dougall emphasized the importance of outreach and communication about accessibility when he said "We certainly recognize the importance in establishing ongoing dialogue with the consumer groups representing the various disability communities since there is so much to be gained in terms of increased dialogue and information sharing."

Dougall stated that there are "inherent tradeoffs" in making accessible products. For example, sacrificing battery life for an additional accessibility feature is a difficult decision. The overall cost of a device is another important tradeoff to consider when adding accessibility features to products, which is easier to do with software than with hardware. "The beauty of software is such that it doesn't become an incremental cost to the device, whereas there are other features that do directly impact upon the hardware cost of the device, and it becomes a different conscious tradeoff that needs to be made."

Dougall stressed how "it's important to continue to foster an atmosphere in which universal design inherently takes into consideration all potential user communities including those with disabilities." He suggested making features that are perceived to be accessibility features available as part of the standard product, which presents these features as beneficial "to the masses" and will likely not increase the cost of a product.

"In this case, regulation is not required, and the free market forces will bring forth these features. The key is to have a better understanding in terms of usage case scenarios, for the particular user communities and disability groups. Relaying that information to manufacturers such as ourselves helps us  understand how we  can modify a particular feature that's already in a product, tweak it to make it more accessible, or whether there are new emerging features of products that could be added."

Dougall concluded that "promoting harmonization of the different standards and policies and guidelines from a global perspective is a very important element to consider." He referred to the speed of technology development as holding "exciting promise" for accessibility issues as well as an "ongoing challenge to ensure that any policies and regulations that are in place are kept up to speed with the change in the technology landscape, and to ensure that the legislation has the ability to be modified accordingly as different technology elements are introduced."

Presenter: Susan Mazrui (Cingular Wireless)

In a presentation delivered via the web, Susan Mazrui defined and discussed the pros and cons of accessibility standards, regulations, and guidelines, and concluded with recommendations for how to encourage industry to make accessible IT.

According to Mazrui, accessibility standards cannot eliminate all barriers in all situations.

"The tough thing about accessibility standards is the fact that, given the wide range of tools and practices people use to address disability, individual preferences cannot always be addressed. Sadly, some people will be left behind. When you're developing standards, something that's consensus-based, you get to a point and say that is the best we can do."

She recommended, therefore, technical standards as an achievable goal. "Technical standards are absolutely essential when interoperability is required." She added that if technical accessibility standards are uniformly adopted proactively, they can bypass the need for regulation.

Regulation is, however, closely linked to accessibility standards. A positive aspect of regulation is that participation becomes mandatory for businesses, which produces consistent solutions for accessibility. Less positive aspects of regulation occur in the language used, which, Mazrui explained, can be "somewhat vague," "open for interpretation," and "can include loopholes." "A company can feel" she said "that they're doing the right thing and by following regulations yet these may not provide enough specificity or may be too specific and limit the creation of innovative accessibility solutions.

Regulation can be effective in situations where a market incentive is missing to make technology accessible. "If there's interoperability, if there's a standard interface that's needed, sometimes you need rules and regulations to get companies to agree to develop a technical solution." She added that industry technology specialists must be an integral part of the regulation development process and that effective regulations must be "technically feasible," should point to "known solutions or well-tested standards," and "provide corrective measure rather than punitive enforcement." They should also be developed with input from people with disabilities, make clear the role, if any, of assistive technology, and should directly impact all parties responsible or involved in ensuring the accessibility of products.

"A variety of different perspectives needs to be addressed for solutions to be effective. Only by working cooperatively with manufacturers (mainstream and AT), service providers, and consumers can we address the access needs of people and prevent or preclude access are being inadvertently eliminated."

Mazrui outlined the important role of guidelines, which can "provide 'tools' that help in building in solutions." She commented that "sometimes people will attempt to do the right thing, but if they don't understand the underlying reason, they may have serious problems." She gave the example of an OCR (optional character recognition) handheld device, introduced more than twenty years ago, that was flawed in a manner that might have been prevented if proper guidance had existed.

"It was introduced for the blind community. But the problem with the handheld device, however, was the fact that it had no method of determining you were on the line that needed to be scanned, except through sight. And so you actually had to be able to see the line to scan it effectively. That was an obvious fatal flaw to people who are blind -- but they had not been invited to the design table."

Guidelines that provide the explanations behind the accessibility requirements, can be updated, can help designers determine success, and can "help clarify requirements for products and services which have not been developed in the initial release of an order."

Mazrui gave recommendations of initiatives to encourage industry to provide innovative and accessible products and services, including:

• purchasing power of federal government
• tax and sales incentives
• good publicity, awards or other public recognition, which adds value to a company's brand
• awards of recognition
• requirements that are technically feasible and unambiguous
• opportunities for industry to establish relationship with disability community

Mazrui offered a closing anecdote about the way in which accessibility issues are communicated and integrated into development of products at Cingular Wireless.

"The work that we have in Cingular Wireless includes a Wireless Access Task Force. These happen to be individuals who represent major disability organizations who are very knowledgeable on disability access issues. But the reality is, the interaction that we have from product managers to senior executives, to engineers, seems to be a major influence on the decision making process. …There's so many competing interests in businesses today, that having that personal commitment, as well as leadership support, is essential."

Presenter: Mary Frances Laughton (Industry Canada)

Mary Frances Laughton described the Government of Canada as both a regulator and an organization subject to regulation. She provided a series of examples of the way in which the Government of Canada is a regulator and its impact on industry. She began with what she considers to be the Government of Canada's most successful policy, the Common Look and Feel guidelines for Government of Canada websites.

" Canada was the first federal government to adopt the Web Content Accessibility guidelines from the World Wide [Web] Consortium as its national standard, and we did it slightly differently from the. The Americans decided to set a date at which everything would be accessible. Canada decided that everything would be accessible back to the year dot."

Laughton reported that since the December 31, 2002 deadline, 97 percent of the government web pages surveyed meet the Common Look and Feel guidelines. This move on the part of the Government of Canada has stimulated growth in the accessible design industry.

"A whole slew of new accessible web design companies developed in Canada . It has created an industry sector; there are at least 35 companies which truly can claim to be accessible web design companies, right across the country from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island. Have accessibility standards achieved a Canadian IT industry that is inclusive of people with disabilities? The answer to that question is absolutely, they are helping."

Laughton offered another example of the Government of Canada as a regulator regarding captioning on television.

" Canada was also the first country to mandate, through its regulatory agency, a 100 percent captioned day. In 1998, CTV [Canadian Television] started to launch 100 percent of its prime time captioning, and we were the first country to achieve that. That was a regulation. The problem with that regulation is that there were no standards that went with it."

Laughton discovered the impact of regulation without standards while experimenting with closed captioning by watching TV for a week without audio. She knew the regulation was fine, but it soon became obvious that without the support of a standard, the captioning was incomplete and hard to follow.

"That was the week that my brother was being held in Bosnia, I would be watching the CBC news, I'd hear the story, and then I'd hear, 'and now we'll hear from Anna Marie Tremonti on location' … silence … total silence. My mother would inform me about what was going on, so I was better off than most people who are deaf, but I gained a true understanding of the importance of standards because we didn't have standards for captioning. We had the regulation, and it was a fine regulation, but there were no standards to support it."

Laughton next discussed the Telecommunications Act, managed by Industry Canada, as a positive example in which "regulation and the standard were done in conjunction with each other and with the [disability] community." She explained how the "terminal attachment regulations" of the Telecommunications Act have positively affected both the disability community and industry.

"That has a very profound impact on the disability community. It means that large button telephones can be attached to the telephone line provided they meet the Industry Canada spec. Before that, the only thing that could be attached to the telephone line was the ordinary black Northern Telecom telephone. That regulation has allowed entrepreneurial spirit to develop things that as long as they meet the standard, which is defined for terminal attachment, people with disabilities can be fully included in the telephony role of Canada ."

Descriptive video, on the other hand, is regulated by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), but standards are missing.

"Described video is captioning for the blind; it's where, in a television broadcast, when there is no dialogue, what is happening on the screen is described, so somebody knows what's going on. There are no standards for described video, and therefore, while we have a regulation that it must happen, there are no standards for how it must happen."

The Communications Policy of the Government of Canada, states that all federal government material must be available in multiple formats but this policy is not supported by guidelines. Laughton explained that the guidelines exist, but have not yet been adopted.

"The problem is the guidelines, which are very necessary to be able to support that policy, have not yet been adopted. So what is 'multiple formats?' What does it mean? How does it get done? Those guidelines exist; they were created by my office [Assistive Devices Industry Office] in full consultation with the disability community. We had multi-meetings with the disability community. The government has set the policy but has not adopted the guidelines."

She invited the disability community to provide input to the Government of Canada, "to tell us what's missing. We need to know what's wrong." She gave the example of the problem of inaccessible white label banking machines as "a place where regulations and standards are going to be necessary, and we're going to take that on as an issue to try to see how we can solve it." She added that the role of the federal government is "to try and take the issues that are presented to us and do whatever is necessary, be it policy, standards, guidelines, regulations, and make it happen, so that we can be an inclusive society, at the same time as generating an extremely vibrant industry."

She called the banking industry in Canada "a watchtower of accessibility" and attributed this success to standards, regulations, and policies. She concluded by calling for collaboration between various sectors, including government, industry, academic, and the disability community and acknowledged that the Dis-IT Research Alliance continues to facilitate this kind of fruitful collaboration.

"It's a matter of a collaborative work; where we have the government, the not-for-profits and the industry working together. Dis-IT is doing just that; it's bringing those partners together to move forward in a very positive way, so that we will have the most vibrant and inclusive IT industry possible."

Discussion:

Marcia Cummings (Rogers Communications Inc., Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians) said that the BlackBerry is inaccessible to blind and visually impaired users, and commented. "I still want a talking BlackBerry. Right now I have a talking Nokia phone, which has software that makes it speak and I can do text messaging and email on it, but I'd still like a talking Blackberry." Dougall responded that "making BlackBerry usable for the visually impaired is a key part of my mandate." At this point, however, the difficulty for RIM is in finding a third party screen reader package that is compatible with the J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) platform on which the Blackberry runs. He added that "there are constraints in terms of what RIM can do as a company from a hardware perspective."

Kier Martin (Council of Canadians with Disabilities) pointed out that another user group that gets excluded from IT products that are marketed specifically to blind users, are people with learning disabilities. He gave an example of a company that developed a handheld device that had a built-in speech synthesis engine that was avoidably inaccessible to people with learning disabilities.

"The company didn't think of it at the time; they said 'oh we're going to build a handheld device specifically for people who are blind or visually impaired,' and forgot there was a whole other section of the community that could take advantage of the speech synthesis engine. What they had done was built the product so that the screen is turned off when the voice output system is working. So just a word of advice if you're going to build a speech synthesis engine into your product, let the screen work and there's going to be a lot more people that are going to be able to use your device and a lot of people are going to pick it up."

Gerard Goggin (Disability Studies & Research Institute (DSaRI), University of Queensland) pointed out that the BlackBerry is not the only mobile data device that has been inaccessible to people with visual impairments. "I haven't quite understood the analysis of why, not just Blackberry, but other mobile data providers and text providers didn't think about blind users when they conceived their systems, but I think it's a complicated thing."

In response to Goggin's comment, James Watzke (British Columbia Institute of Technology) identified the "corporate culture" of RIM as a potential source for understanding how to appeal to industry to create accessible technology. He asked if there was "something special" to learn from RIM about how to achieve inclusive IT. Dougall responded that, ultimately, it comes down to open-mindedness in the people make up the corporate culture.

"RIM has a very unique culture and structure unto itself, and is a very fast-paced and dynamic environment that way. But at the end of the day the people are very open to ideas and they are very responsive to understanding the requirements of the user community, and the specific use cases for the product."

Return to 2005 Summer Institute - Inclusive Information Technology and Business Success final report