Thursday, October 26, 2006

PANEL DISCUSSION: "What key issues and challenges need to be addressed to bring accessibility and inclusion to ICT?"

Moderator: Roger B. Jones (World Accessibility)

Panelists: Steve Jacobs (IDEAL Group Inc.), Kier Martin (Council of Canadians with Disabilities and Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres), Joan Wolforth (Office for Students with Disabilities, McGill University)

In this opening panel the discussants addressed the question posed by Roger Jones "what are the key issues and challenges concerning the accessibility of information and communication technologies?" from the perspective of each of their respective stakeholder groups.

Panelist: Joan Wolforth (Office for Students with Disabilities, McGill University)

Joan Wolforth described the current status and importance of information technology in education, particularly at the post secondary level.

"We now live in a largely 'e' environment, from applications to universities and colleges that are on the Web right through the registration process, information on timetables and calendars or catalogues and right into the classroom in terms of the use of courseware such as WebCT which helps deliver course information, sets up chat rooms for students, delivers exams to students online now…We've gotten to a point now where, if a student is not in some way technologically savvy, they're going to have a real problem functioning at the post-secondary level."

Wolforth explained that almost all the information a student needs to enrol or prepare for classes, use libraries, facilities, and services provided by the university are available only on the Internet. The result for many students with disabilities, she argued, has been higher levels of independence than before. Whereas in the past a hard copy of the course calendar would have to be translated into Braille, today students with visual impairments can simply use a screen reader to get the same information without ever having to contact services for students with disabilities. Digital formats for books and journal articles have also allowed students to rely less on human assistance in libraries and often eliminate the need to have the book read into a cumbersome audio tape format. Class notes are also more easily accessible through WebCT. Wolforth said, "At many universities there is a full range of adaptive technology including up-to-date screen readers such as Kurzweil and JAWS for people with vision issues. We also have WIN and text help programs for students with learning disabilities, etc." However, Wolforth pointed out, there are limitations to these technologies.

"Sometimes the platforms that students have to interact with are not compatible with adaptive technologies. We will just get everything stable in our university, for instance, and then somebody in the administration will decide to buy a new version of WebCT which is not as accessible…Or we've got some students who have older versions of adaptive technology that only work with Windows 98."

Wolforth suggested that if decisions to upgrade technology were made at the same time across the university, the process would be simpler for updating adaptive technologies.

She also discussed the problems associated with establishing accessible web sites for universities where few people who think in terms of accessibility. "We have technical personnel who are purchasing and administering technology, making the senior decisions. The technical people in the libraries, universities tend to be extremely well distributed across all kinds of departments. So you have one department making a decision that another department doesn't know about."

Wolforth said also problems occur when professors set up their own websites, and use technologies, like Power Point presentations, which are not compatible with adaptive technologies, on their own sites. "We have challenges in terms of trying to centralize the training of our professors to conform to certain standards when they're putting up their websites, or putting up their WebCT pages." In this context, establishing standards that everyone conforms to in their web design is very complicated.

Wolforth discussed the challenges student's face getting training on new software, particularly because many, coming from high school, have little experience with adaptive technology.

"[Adaptive technology] just doesn't seem to have reached down into the school system in the way that it should have. So we are faced with students who have never seen a computer program that will read their books to them, for instance, or never seen a computer program that will let them dictate their work into the computer."

According to Wolforth, many students face financial barriers to accessing the technologies they need. Although there are programs that provide funding through student loans and bursaries, many do not qualify. Those who do quality face long delays and a complicated bureaucratic process.

Wolforth explained that inconsistencies between publishers and the availability of digital formats of texts also complicate the process. Issues of copyright are more complex in Canada than in the United States making it more difficult to get electronic copies of textbooks.

"Some publishers are very open about it, and some publishers are not open at all about sending us a digital format. We are still scanning printed material and turning it into digital format. We know it's originally being produced in digital format, but we just simply can't get it from the publisher, even if we show proof that the student has brought the print copy of the book before they send us a digital copy."

Wolforth also said that, with the popularity of the IPOD, students with visual impairments are able to listen to digitized reading materials instead of the old four track tape players. Wolforth concluded that overall in this field, there remain some important challenges but on the whole there is gradual improvement.

Panelist: Steve Jacobs (IDEAL Group Inc.)

Based on his experience in industry, Steve Jacobs provided an overview of some of the barriers to designing mainstream information and communications technology (ICT) products that are accessible to as many consumers with disabilities as technically possible and economically feasible. He used an acronym, "FOLD Pi" to organize these issues. Each of the letters of FOLD Pi stands for a group of these issues.

• F for Financial,
• O for Organizational,
• L for Legal,
• D for Design,
• P for Perception
• I for Informational.

Jacobs discussed how each of these barriers could be addressed through more effective communication between industry and communities of people with disabilities.

In his discussion of financial issues Jacobs explained that the wide range of types and degrees of disability is difficult for industry to grasp.  He also stated that retrofitting for accessibility can be an expensive process.

"The target markets are not very well understood by marketing people in industry. The term disability community can have a lot of meanings and it doesn't necessarily mean that each person that makes up the disability community has the same access needs, as I'm sure you all know. Another financial issue is that it is expensive to retrofit an existing product to make it accessible, so right away some people see red flags."

Regarding organisational issues Jacobs made two main points.

"People who are commissioned to drive accessibility throughout an organization are not necessarily in the best position to influence decisions at a high level in the corporation. It may be Human Resources, it may be human factors engineers, but they are not necessarily able to drive accessibility down from the top, which needs to be done in order for a company to begin embracing accessible design practices into the fabric of their design processes."

Secondly, he argued, "accessibility is often a minor issue when compared with other business issues like pleasing your stockholders and making a profit."

Next, Jacobs discussed concerns around legal issues.

"Within the legal realm there are many issues. For example, how do you measure compliance with standards and guidelines? One can view certain functionality of an application as being compliant; while someone else might not view it as compliant … that's an issue."

He also noted, in relation to legal issues "the belief that regulations unnecessarily restrict creative design and innovation is a fallacy."

Jacobs explained that mainstream market forces and design processes "can negatively impact the availability of accessible mainstream ICT." He cited two examples.

"Marketing and technology trends often run counter to accessibility needs. Cell phones are getting smaller as are the displays, and the keypads, when many people need larger displays and larger keypads. Individuals with disabilities are not integrated into the design or evaluation processes. This is a problem and it's an issue from a design standpoint."

Perception issues, Jacobs explained, prevent creative engineers and companies from designing more accessible products because of their pre and misconceptions about the access needs of people with disabilities.

"Many of the things they perceive as barriers are really a lack of information or a misunderstanding of information. For example, there are perceptions that there's no way that you can develop a business case for accessible design. Another perception is that cost is prohibitive. Another is that you have to sacrifice the aesthetics of a brand in order to make it accessible. Finally, it takes longer to develop a product and get it to market if you design it for accessibility."

In his discussion of informational issues, Jacobs argued, that accessibility needs to be integrated into the training of engineers and designers.

"Engineers and designers are not sufficiently exposed to accessible design practices at the university level. While some universities are beginning to integrate accessible design materials into their core courses, it isn't happening frequently enough. Another example of an informational barrier is that accessibility is often interpreted narrowly to only include people with disabilities. Accessibility can be looked at in a much broader sense to include people who are senior citizens, people who never learned to read, people operating from within low bandwidth environments or people driving a car that wish to access information."

Jacobs concluded that, "if we could come to some kind of a common understanding across all stakeholders of what the issues really are and leave emotions out of it, I think we could take a giant step forward in addressing these issues."

Panelist: Kier Martin (Council of Canadians with Disabilities and Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres)

Kier Martin discussed the barriers faced by people with disabilities in accessing information and adaptive technologies. The first barrier he pointed out was the cost of technology, particularly computers. Martin said, "though the cost of computers have come down significantly, the fact is, a lot of folks with disabilities still live in poverty and they don't have $400 or $600. The computer still might as well be $3000 to $5000." At the same time, adaptive technology has also remained very expensive, "so there's a need to explore other technologies: what are the sharewares, the quick fixes, and the demo downloads that people can use"

Martin noted that the assessment methods used to determine which adaptive technologies will work for different individuals need to be improved.

"In some areas folks have had great assessments done on what their technology needs are. In other areas it comes down to a lot of times an occupational therapist going on the web and ordering some magazines, and saying 'here's the product that I think that works for your disability, its going to fix everything for you.' So there needs to be more standardization of how folks with disabilities can self-assess themselves for what technology that they need."

Martin suggested that because more disability advocacy organizations are putting their resources online, it is critical to ensure that their online resources are accessible.

"There's a need for community to better develop some community space for our groups and consumers to come together to get feedback on how we're promoting technology. What's needed by consumers, what's needed by community groups, as we move towards, like other groups, like industry, like government, putting more and more of our resources online. We're asking consumers to not physically come to our building first, but to visit our webpage first. [This is] how a lot of folks are finding us, so we need to make sure that as much as our building is accessible, that our website is accessible, that our content is usable, that's its in a plain language that folks can understand."

He also suggested that because more resources are located on the Internet in stead of in the community than in the past, and because employers are weary of investing in expensive technologies they may not know much about, "there's a further need to demystify technology and the resources as they go online."

Another improvement Martin suggested was to enhance the promotion and availability of information about technologies so that people do not have to rely on "random Google searches" to find the information they need. This means, "finding the research groups like Dis-IT, finding where the most accurate information is around technology, and providing a little bit of direction."

Martin also mentioned the need for consumers to asses their own needs and know "where they want the technology to lead them." At the same time, accessibility needs to be built into the design of technology and networks as "a standard part of the way things are, just as a business looks at the security of a new network. They need to make the accessibility a step that's in there as well so that it's not put at the end."

Martin concluded his discussion with the observation that ultimately, all of these advancements in information technology and the availability of resources on the Internet should take place "at the speed of the consumer." He argued "we need to make sure the consumer base feels very comfortable in using online training and learning, and that they have a sense of ownership over that; that this is their online training, this is their online learning."

QUESTION AND ANSWER PERIOD:

Moderator Roger Jones asked the panelists to discuss Canadian legislation and compare it to the United States particularly Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Steve Jacobs pointed out that the US government is a large purchaser of Canadian IT exports.

"Close to 80% of Canada's IT exports go to the US and close to 50% of those exports are used by the US federal government. What that means is if a product is not designed to comply with Section 508 in the States, and you're designing ICT with the hope of the government acquiring your product, you will run into problems. That's a big motivator for at least taking a look at section 508 and gaining an understanding of what the current standards are and to taking a look at the functionality of a product to determine whether or not it meets those standards."

Joan Wolforth discussed the accessibility issues faced in education because of its status as a provincial responsibility. She said that provincial divisions inhibit the ability to set national standards on accessibility and information technology in post secondary education.

"One of the problems that we have as service providers across the country is trying to ensure voluntarily that all of our students, a) can have an equal opportunity wherever they study and b) that there is some transportability of benefits so that a student who is in British Columbia and wants to study in Nova Scotia, can in fact access the technological benefits that they have no matter where they study. That really is a key issue. Every other student [without disabilities] can move around the country; a student with a disability should be able to do that as well."

Kier Martin also discussed the role of accessible information technology in education. He noted that many students with disabilities choose to attend university online. Often the decision to attend one university over another is based on whether they offer accessible online courses. This can mean that students do not go to their first choice school, but have to go instead where there is access through the Internet.

Tim McIsaac (University of Manitoba) asked the panelists to discuss training for people with disabilities who do not have the time or capabilities to learn new technologies or programs on their own. He commented on the difficulty he faced in accessing training offered to non-disabled people in his workplace because the use of adaptive technologies was not part of the standard training for new programs.

"At my last job they were regularly sending people to a company that specialized in two day courses. I couldn't go to them because, even if I could take a laptop with a screen reader, the whole course is predicated on the idea that everybody uses a mouse which, if you use a screen reader, you don't really do."

Steve Jacobs responded to McIsaac's question by agreeing that there is a shortage of accessible training resources for people using adaptive technologies. However, he pointed out that the Internet is an excellent medium for people to subscribe to accessible training services from anywhere in the world.

David Donovan (Service Canada) commented on the public's low expectations of the government's provision of information in accessible or alternative formats and the resulting lack of engagement from citizens with disabilities. Donovan emphasised the need for clients and users to bring their needs and expectations forward to the government to raise awareness about their issues. He asked the panelists to discuss ways to raise awareness about providing accessible government information and services.

Kier Martin suggested that the commitment of the government to a certain level of accessibility should be stated on their website, and to have the guidelines spelled out there.

Joan Wolforth pointed out that sometimes information does not get passed on because it comes in the wrong format in the first place. She suggested that electronic format for posters are more likely to be widely distributed. She also suggested that more frequent reminders to departments like hers or to national professional associations of the services available would also be helpful in raising awareness.

Roger Jones asked the panelists to discuss positive developments in the field that will soon be available and to possibly tie it into the Dis-IT research findings.

Steve Jacobs responded first by discussing a US project called "Access Tomorrow" that he is involved in. The project aims to address the problems students with disabilities face when transitioning from grade school to high school because adaptive technologies belong to the schools they come from. Jacobs explained, "The student moves to another school and they have to go through a whole lot of trouble to get AT again. This project focuses on using open source assistive technology of which there are some very high quality products out there." He further stated that using portable smart drives can enable students with disabilities to execute programs off of smart drives. The goal is to "provide students with assistive technology that they can carry with them to any PC anywhere. They would no longer be restricted to using AT in a classroom."

Joan Wolforth emphasized the importance of research like that of the Dis-IT eLearning project in demonstrating to administrators that certain technologies are preferable because they are more accessible. This makes it more likely that administrators will consider these options in their decision making processes. She also said that because the Dis-IT eLearning research covered such a broad spectrum of people from students, to service providers, to administrators, it is more persuasive. Because of this, she said, it has also been effective in engaging people in discussion about accessible technologies and has started people thinking about these issues just from responding to the research questionnaires. She said that the research has already resulted in more accessible websites being designed and in more discussion of universal design principles, not only in technology and architecture, but in curriculum design and the delivery of accessible materials as part of the curriculum.

Wolforth also said that, due to the training and use of the technologies needed by students in university, once students with disabilities graduate from the university they are far more technologically savvy, and know what technologies they need. As a result, they are able to articulate this to their employers, are well prepared for the job market, and are more attractive to employers.

Keir Martin discussed a "geo spatial project" he has been involved with that focuses on making a map on the Internet of where disability resources are physically located in the community.

"Now that we have this pool of resources we found that it was very important to map on the web where these resources exist physically and put them in a format that is accessible for folks with disabilities so that they can go online and find out where different disability resources are. We're working with other provincial and national groups around emergency preparedness for people with disabilities so that we can ensure that shelters are accessible; that if people are using wireless devices that they're able to use way-finding navigation to move around a building freely and easily in case of an emergency. We feel that we're building the geography of Canada to be physically accessible and now we want to make the geography of Canada accessible online as well."

Phyllis Gordon (ARCH Disability Law Centre) commented on current concerns about attacks on network neutrality in the United States and Canada.

"Last weekend I went to the Alternative Telecommunications Policy forum in Ottawa which was largely attended by people who are advocates of community control and community use of the Internet for economic and social development locally, particularly aboriginal communities and small rural communities.  A key concern of theirs is the attack on network neutrality, in the United States in particular, where proposed amendments to the American telecommunications act that would end network neutrality has at least been stalled. Network neutrality, to my untechnical mind, means that packets of data can flow on the Internet and reach their source without control and without a price situation where you pay more for the higher quality packet getting delivered. It was reported at that conference that there is a danger that The [Canadian] telecom policy review panel's recommendations probably, if implemented, would mean the end of network neutrality in Canada."

She asked Steve Jacobs to discuss the divided position of the disability community in the United States on this issue, and the possible impact of price tiers on the Internet.

Jacobs said that he was not an expert on net neutrality, but wasn't aware that the U.S. disability community was divided on the issue. He said that advocates of network neutrality argue that any non-neutral scheme would allow ISPs to unfairly discriminate and control which data they prioritize, such as data from their own sponsors or media interests. He urged the conference participants to become more knowledgeable about net neutrality.

PANEL DISCUSSION:  "Is there common ground between bottom lines and human rights?"

Moderator: Cathy Moore (Canadian National Institute for the Blind)

Panelists: Phyllis Gordon (ARCH Disability Law Centre), Kathy Marshall (St. John's Independent Living Resource Centre), David Dougall (Research in Motion), Steve Jacobs (IDEAL Group)

This discussion aimed at identifying common ground between the human rights of people with disabilities, particularly their rights to access technology, and the bottom lines that companies must deal with. Each of the discussants addressed this issue from their respective stakeholder groups including business, people with disabilities, and the law.

Cathy Moore opened the discussion by observing that we often see issues like these as an either/or situation, with no middle ground. She suggested that this panel was an opportunity to resist that temptation and look for creative ways to bring bottom lines and human rights together. She said "there needs to be some thought here, some openness, and some willingness to learn, I believe from all parties, in order to tease out the dilemma of the requirements to respect the human rights and access, while at the same time understanding the pressures and the framework under which industry works."

Panelist: David Dougall (Accessibility Programs Manager at Research in Motion)

David Dougall began by discussing a number of factors that motivate a company like Research In Motion (RIM) to focus on accessibility. These included:

• customer inquiries about accessibility
• market opportunities presented by accessible products
• corporate social responsibility

"First and foremost," Dougall began, "as a customer-driven organization, we found that we were starting to get a large increase in the number of inquiries related to the accessibility of the BlackBerry. We needed to be able to understand what the issues were and to be able to respond to our customers." Dougall linked the increase in inquiries about accessibility to regulation, particularly in the United States.

"As a member of the telecommunications industry, we're subject to a heavily regulated environment, and our key market is the US. With some of the existing legislative framework in place – with Section 508 and Section 255, as well as the FCC Hearing Aid Compatibility Act – there are certain aspects of that environment that are paramount for RIM as a telecommunications manufacturer to be able to bring a product to market."

Dougall also noted that RIM's interest in accessibility was heightened by the market opportunity that became apparent when the company discovered that many people who are Deaf were BlackBerry users. "From an accessibility perspective, RIM experienced that early on in the sense that many members of the Deaf community were early adopters of the BlackBerry. That was before we recognized that they would be a core target audience for the product."

Corporate social responsibility was the third factor Dougall said motivated RIM's interest in accessibility.

"As companies grow, corporate social responsibility becomes a bigger element to look at. It can be clearly a win-win for companies, employees, and customers to be able to focus on products and services that meet the needs of all of the customers, including those with disabilities. It certainly is very gratifying for myself and for a lot of other people at RIM, like the engineering group that are involved in bringing some of the solutions to market that are tied to the accessibility components. People within industry are individuals and want to know that they are making a difference. I think that often gets overshadowed in terms of the context of profit driven organizations overall, but for the individuals themselves, that's still an important aspect to keep in mind."

After identifying those motivating factors, Dougall discussed some of the concerns companies have when designing for accessibility. Because RIM sells its products in a variety of countries which have their own standards, guidelines and regulations, he said "it's important and paramount for the accessibility community worldwide to focus on trying to bring harmonization of those elements [standards, guidelines and regulations] to the extent that it is possible, because overall it will provide much better solutions [for people with disabilities]."

Dougall also explained that companies concerned with making accessible products need to be able to protect the innovation which leads to competitive differentiation. Regulation, he argued, can undermine innovation. "Regulation can often lead to a more common baseline solution, as opposed to the optimal solution. Where an opportunity exists for differentiation that's not tied to regulation, in many cases that will actually bring a better and more optimal solution to the marketplace."

Dougall acknowledged that industry needs to address some of the issues raised during the conference's first panel discussion, particularly training and awareness.

"Those aspects are a really critical factor to bring forth to industry to help us understand what the requirements of individual user communities are, beyond 'this product doesn't work for me.' We need to understand why it doesn't work and how to bridge the gap between the specific 'where are you going to use it? How are you going to use it?' so that we can understand which feature functionality is on our road map and, moving forward, we can put that in the product."

Dougall added that it is easier to get corporate approval for new accessibility features when those features also have benefits for users without disabilities.

"To the extent that we can understand what some of the opportunities are, we can leverage the fact that, in many cases, they can be features and functionalities that are utilized by the mass market. In terms of getting internal adoption for a feature functionality, it's so much easier within a company such as ours to be able to explain it from the aspect of 'this is something that will benefit our entire user base, and that it also will be extremely beneficial for people of this particular disability community.' So trying to tie the two together is an important concept."

Dougall explained that some accessibility features present challenges regarding commercial implementability.

"We've seen a couple of situations within the industry where we have been struggling with implementation with respect to hearing aid compatibility; differences in network technologies make it inherently easier on certain networks than on others. It's a significant challenge in a regulated environment. If a regulation is in place that you're forced to meet, but at the end of the day there are distinctions between different types of products and it's easier to meet the regulation with one product than another, but you're really not given a choice; you have to make it work for both. There's a significant amount of energy that our company has been expending to an end [hearing aid compatibility] that is already met by one of our other products very well, but we're struggling to meet it with another. In my mind it's a question of 'is that value added?' I would prefer to look at options to address other accessibility requirements because we know we already have a product that meets that need."

Dougall suggested that optimizing a product for one disability community can inherently reduce the product's accessibility to people with other kinds of disabilities. "There are inherent tradeoffs that will happen. Features don't tend to necessarily coincide for each group. That's an important consideration, and that's where we look at software changes being much easier to make than hardware changes." He closed by noting that people working on accessibility solutions also need to be aware of how the product interacts with accessories and third-party solutions.

Panelist: Phyllis Gordon (ARCH Disability Law Centre)

Phyllis Gordon discussed some of the ARCH Disability Law Centre's recent work advocating for Canadians with disabilities in the area of access to ICT, particularly telecommunications. She began by defining human rights as "the fundamental values that infuse all aspects of Canadian life and include full inclusion, participation, and dignity. The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed with us on many occasions, making this the law of the land."

ARCH focuses on promoting the rights and inclusion of people with disabilities not only through the human rights commission and court challenges, but through alternative pathways as well. She said, "we believe it's essential to bring the equality values and obligations to wherever they can be heard and wherever they are applicable." She noted that it is often not economically feasible or practical to take large corporations to court for a lack of accessibility as a human rights violation.

"We don't think it's practical to try to take a major corporation to the Human Rights Commission; they can pay as many lawyers as they want to just keep tying us up. Rather, it's important for all of us to get to the regulator, whichever regulator it may be, if there is a regulator. We need to be bringing principles of inclusive design and inclusive thinking to the regulators."

According to Gordon, recent Supreme Court decisions have supported this means of advocating for the rights of people with disabilities. In a recent case, the Supreme Court held that specialized tribunals can interpret, use, and apply the human rights code of its jurisdiction. Gordon explained that this is a key case because it means that tribunals are not only governed by Charter principles, but human rights principles, such as the duty to accommodate, as well.

Gordon noted that she had recently reviewed the work ARCH has been doing and realized that ARCH's work has been about universal design in a very broad sense.

"We work on an unarticulated premise that all of us must incorporate universal design fundamentally into our structures, into government structures and into the ways adjudicators adjudicate. The goal is that a body such as the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will always consider inclusion as a matter of course. The correlated goal is that the telecom industry will recognize that all people living in Canada need telecommunication services, regardless of whether a particular segment of the market leads to a reasonable or a large profit."

Gordon said "there are two main arenas for our joint efforts: the granting sources and the regulatory regime… We need more people to get engaged in the policy and regulatory debate, where human rights values and fundamental principles of dignity and inclusiveness are addressed." She argued that accessibility advocates should not focus all their attention on government granting agencies. Instead, she said, they need to consider the regulatory environment more creatively and more actively. "The regulatory regime underpins everything that's getting done and actually governs it with respect to telecom."

Gordon also argued that it is also important that people with disabilities and major advocacy organizations are involved in the decision making processes of regulatory bodies. ARCH has been arguing for this in submissions to the CRTC, which led to the recent "deferral account" decision. This CRTC decision ordered Bell Canada and the other local telephone service providers to spend $32 million improving the accessibility of their products and services. That led, she said, to "some concerted national disability thinking –organizational thinking—on advances and requirements for telecom."

Gordon said that another arena where further engagement by the disability community will be required is the report from the Telecom Policy Review Panel. This review began under the former Liberal government but is being actively pursued by the current Conservative government as well.

"The focus of the review is to emphasize market forces and to downplay regulation. We think there are many, many concerns and if all of the recommendations from the report go through we're very worried that the fundamental framework of telecom regulation that exists today will disappear. The review pays a lot of attention to developing a national ICT policy, but neither disability nor universal design are mentioned with respect to such a policy, despite it having been clearly drawn to their attention by ARCH."

Gordon then discussed how disability was ddressed in three recent CRTC decisions. She said there were "strong references to disability" in the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and deferral account decisions.  The third decision was one that received less notice than the VoIP and deferral account decisions. In it, the CRTC considered whether to continue to regulate or to de-regulate the "local exchange" market (i.e., land-line local telephone services). The CRTC does not regulate the cell phone market, and was under pressure from Bell Canada and other "incumbent local exchange carrier" (ILEC's) to deregulate the local exchange market as well.

This decision (CRTC Telecom Decision 2006-15) opened the door to de-regulation under certain conditions, but included strong language indicating the CRTC felt that people with disabilities would suffer under de-regulation. Gordon quoted two paragraphs (440, 459):

"In ARCH's view, the experiences of disabled persons regarding terminal equipment [i.e., land-line telephones] and wireless phones indicated that when the Commission had forborne [abstained] from exercising its powers under subsection 27(2) of the Act [i.e., the section that deals with non-discrimination with respect to rates] or had not used those powers to ensure accessibility to persons with disabilities, it had failed to discharge its legal obligation of ensuring that persons with disabilities do not face discrimination in their access to telecommunications services [440]. …The Commission is not convinced that the operation of market forces will serve to discipline the behaviour of ILEC's with respect to…customers with disabilities [459]."

Gordon said this CRTC decision was reflective of the language and objectives of the Telecommunications Act and Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and "articulated a really strong understanding of the requirement to be ready to regulate when social issues come to the fore, and not leave everything to the market." She cautioned, however, that the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel's emphasis on de-regulation and market forces could eliminate the obligation to regulate if the regulations of social issues like accessibility are not clearly resolved.

"That language will be undone if the Telecom Policy Review Panel's approach goes forward. The entire economic regulatory scheme will go. Yes, it is true that persons with disabilities are now mentioned in the objectives, but I think that's a small victory. It's a small victory because what's been lost in the telecom review, and in this new perspective, is a sense of public good. I think Canada has already defined public good to include accepting everybody with dignity, and including everybody. I'm quite worried that the new regime will not be able to address disability in the way the old regime does."

Panelist: Steve Jacobs (IDEAL Group Inc.)

Steve Jacobs discussed the things that need to be done to bridge the gap between human rights and companies' bottom lines and emphasised the need for cooperation and mutual understanding through education.

"To arrive at a common ground, stakeholders need to meet in the middle. They need to foster a spirit of cooperation and understanding of each other's differences. And most important they need to respect each other. In order to meet in the middle a lot of education needs to take place."

Speaking first about people with disabilities, he said that consumers need to be more educated about the development process of products and how they are made accessible. "If you don't understand the process you can never hope to change it." He noted, "consumers need to understand that the forces driving accessibility today are not self-sustaining without external pressure on industry. "Cultural, organizational, moral, legal, ethical, all those market forces are not self-sustainable without external pressure. What is self-sustainable is profit."

Jacobs pointed out that profit does not necessarily mean simply raising the price. Accessible products can have larger markets, increase competitive advantage, be sold to more people, and therefore result in a lower price. Jacobs also pointed out that consumers need to realize that accessibility standards are different in different countries, which complicates matters for companies producing information technologies.

Shifting his focus to industry, Jacobs discussed the ways that industry is often uninformed about accessibility and the needs of people with disabilities as a market.

"Industry needs to understand how people with disabilities of various types access electronic and information technology. Many engineers who design products never learned that in college because it is not in the curriculum. Industry also needs to understand the potential for compatibility and interoperability issues between assistive technology and mainstream technology."

Jacobs also pointed out that there may be similarities between the way in which a blind person uses a piece of technology and the manner in which a person who never learned to read uses the same product. Thinking like this, he said, would shed light on larger potential markets for accessible products, and make companies more likely to embrace accessible design practices. It was this kind of thinking that lead the NCR Corporation, Jacobs' former employer, to develop a talking ATM. They realized that some of the fastest growing markets in the world (e.g., China, India) have large populations of people who never learned to read. In order to access these markets NCR Corporation developed a talking ATM, which is also accessible to people with visual impairments.

"ATMs are extremely important to developing countries because a majority of developing countries are cash-based societies; people keep money under their mattresses, pillows and buried in the ground for safe keeping. When this happens cash is not available to the government for capital projects like building schools, medical clinics and hospitals, so the government needed to figure out a way to bring that cash back in for investment purposes. ATMs can do just that. People never had bank accounts before."

Panelist: Kathy Marshall (St. John's Independent Living Resource Centre)

Kathy Marshall addressed the issue of how inaccessible information and communication technologies prevent people with disabilities from full participation in society. She pointed out that when discussing the accessibility of information technologies it is important to keep in mind the systemic barriers people with disabilities face in accessing technology. For example, poverty, unemployment, and a lack of education prevent many people with disabilities from being able to use computers and technology. She said, "Consumers really want to engage with business and industry and want to be consulted from the developmental stages, so that their viewpoints and ideas can be discussed."

Marshall listed the following as things that people with disabilities are looking for in information technologies:

• portability
• universal access
• choice
• the ability to mix and match the hardware and software to customize it to their own needs
• training and support
• instruments and technology that are functional with sustainable operating systems so that adaptive technology upgrades are not always necessary
• to be consulted in all levels of developing common ground approaches with business and profitability
• a mainstream look and name

She also discussed what people with disabilities do not want in relation to information technology:

• higher costing adaptive technology
• having to purchase packages that don't meet their individualized needs
• to be "overtapped"
• to be assessed by third parties

Cathy Moore concluded the panel discussion with an observation about the link between social and economic determinants of health including "access to good housing, access to employment, which render people healthier" and access to information and communication technologies. She said that access to ICT's "allows people to have independence, control over their own amassing of information and is good for our health." She argued that this insight can be used as an economic argument on the broader government public policy scale.

QUESTION AND ANSWER PERIOD:

Sheila Carlin (President of the Canadian Association of the Deaf), asked David Dougall to discuss the availability of a TTY function in Blackberries. She noted that the user manual does not mention the TTY function and she wanted to know if it is available, or would be in the future.

"A lot of deaf and hard of hearing people are using the device. As a user, I've been playing around with it and the phone option—TTY mode—is there, but in the instruction book, there's no mention of it, so the deaf or hard of hearing community is not aware. So my question is, does the TTY mode work in the Blackberry currently, or is that in process or do you have that planned for the future?"

David Dougall answered the question in two parts. First he addressed the instruction manual issue.

"It's not part of the printed safety guide, but we do cover the usage of it in the user guide which is on the CD. So that's where you'll find the information about it. What the BlackBerry actually provides however, is not a direct or native TTY solution on the device; it provides connectivity to an external third party TTY solution as required for cell phones in the US market. So we're meeting that requirement with that external connectivity."

Secondly, Dougall explained, that RIM is making efforts to investigate developing TTY capability in the BlackBerry itself, but there are several technical issues to overcome before this is possible. He explained

"RIM currently has resources investigating the viability of doing that type of functionality. Although it would seem to be a straightforward thing to provide a native TTY solution directly on the device, it's not as straightforward as it looks; there are several underlying technical challenges. This is a question that's come up on several fronts including being a hot topic in the US, given the fact that the TTY connectivity is the only mechanism by which people can have the E911 access to the public safety answering points in the US. Although the deaf and hard of hearing community have certainly migrated to other more prevalent solutions such as IP Relay, instant messaging and email directly, those elements are not tied into the other regulated aspect which is the PSAP's  (Public Safety Answering Point)."

He noted that this is related to bridging "the gap between the TTY technology, which is becoming quickly outdated, and having consistency of those various standards, because there are also many different TTY standards."

Henry Vlug asked the panelists to comment on the need for 'education' when his experience has been that large businesses and institutions know what they are obligated to do, but do not do it.

"I've been fighting with people who already know; in spite of the fact that they're educated, they just don't give a damn. Bell Canada knows that they have to follow human rights Legislation University of British Columbia knows what's required, they know the regulations. But they don't do it until we go to CRTC or we go to the Human Rights Commission. Once they are forced, they'll comply. When we talk about people being educated, when we talk about the business community, in some instances they know, but they still refuse. What do you think?"

Phyllis Gordon responded to this comment first by acknowledging that it is often difficult to get large institutions to fulfill their obligations.

"I know exactly what Henry's talking about; it's the most frustrating experience that we all share. I think this is where we do need to go beyond complaints-driven solutions. We need to be looking at procurement policies; we need to be looking at disability legislation standards and regulations, because the big players such as public institutions continue to avoid their responsibilities. It's going to take more time, but it is a solution that needs to be pursued more actively in Canada."

Steve Jacobs added to this by clarifying that the kind of education he was referring to earlier in the discussion was not about creating awareness of, or compliance with, laws. "The education I was referring to had nothing to do with the fact that people have to follow laws." He suggested that if someone does not want to follow the law, and laws are not aggressively enforced many people are not inclined to follow them—especially if they perceive following the law as costing them money—then an organizations' unwillingness to fulfill their legal obligations could simply be due to a lack of knowledge about why it is in their best business interests to do so. He suggested education should be aimed at creating "interest in the topic, the problem or to provide information that people may not have had before," to help them view laws from a different perspective.

Kurt Lynn (Canadian Hard of Hearing Association) noted with disappointment that both industry panelists said that industry's interest in accessibility is greater when an accessibility feature has benefits for non-disabled users rather than the smaller disability market.

"It's not my objective to demonize industry, but I find two examples we've heard this afternoon kind of sadly frustrating. One says that we should focus a lot of product development on dealing with an illiterate population in Asia while ignoring people [with disabilities] right here that may be illiterate, may desire literacy and are unable to access the same tools that everybody else has.  And David Dougall said something that to me epitomizes the exact issue of industry and what the market forces are. You were saying 'this [feature] satisfies this market requirement, and by the way, it's also useful for blind people.'"

Lynn continued, "The test to business, in my opinion, is to ask them 'what would you do without regulation? What would you do on your own? How would you set priorities without regulation or the threat of regulation, as a pre-emptive means?'" David Dougall responded with an example of how a company like RIM pursues accessibility initiatives regardless of regulation.

"I think it comes back to understanding the user requirements and getting a good sense of what is possible with the technology and where we can meet the needs. The example this morning that got me excited was Gary Birch's presentation on the work that he's been doing in retail and public services. I had no idea that that work was going on. There's an interesting opportunity that we can pursue irrespective of regulation. That's one example of how we would go about that."

Lynn commented that there are two primary windows of opportunity in product development where accessibility can be addressed.

"My own experience in industry says that there are only two windows for small markets and, unfortunately, disabilities represent a small market. We can intercept industry at the design time where it's cheap to implement accessibility. The other option is at the end of the development cycle. That says if industry will leave an open interface to whatever it is they're building, and don't worry about access for people with disabilities, but allow other people that are focused on that market segment to add value to it."

Dougall agreed with Lynn and noted, "we need to look at product development in the early stages, especially with respect to the hardware elements. There's typically an 18 to 36 month lead time in the development cycle for a product that may only be on the market between 18 to 24 months. There's a significant upfront development, so it still comes back to interacting directly with the user communities and gaining a better understanding of the requirements." He also described how RIM's open platform provides opportunities for companies specializing in accessibility.

"There are many excellent smaller companies that are focused specifically on accessibility requirements and understand the respective niches very well. That's part of RIM's strategy in terms of how we meet the needs of the various stakeholder communities, because a) we do not have the internal expertise and b) it makes sense to leverage those other external companies that already have that expertise. By providing an open platform for input and output peripherals as well as customized software solutions, that can go a long way to solving this problem."

Gary Birch (Neil Squire Society) asked David Dougall to discuss his experience in the information technology industry in a regulated environment. He asked, "How important is it to the people that make the decisions in large companies around these things that they actually have something that really discriminates them and makes them a leader in a regulatory environment?" in terms of what kind of features can we add on, "or how we can be creative in a product line, such that we meet this [requirement] better than anybody else?"

David Dougall responded by commenting on the impact regulation has had on product development at Research In Motion.

"There are two sides of it. It is easier to try to meet a defined requirement and engineers like that because it's very concrete and very tangible for them, but by the same context, it can constrain the ingenuity and possibilities as the technology evolves over time, and we've certainly seen that with respect to certain aspects of Section 508. So I think it will be very interesting to see how that evolves over the next eighteen months and you definitely are seeing there will be a lot of active involvement including companies such as ourselves and myself in particular in terms of looking at that legislation as it's redrafted. The government, as a vertical market for RIM, is quite important to us as a customer, so that is another direct aspect."

Jim Tobias (Inclusive Technologies) commented that the current theory of the market is underdeveloped as well as the role of market and non-market motivations in industry.

"What people outside of industry often don't understand is that companies don't do every single thing that they can do that's profitable. It's like when you go home to cook dinner; you don't cook everything you have in your pantry and your refrigerator, right? Companies do the things that are the most profitable for them and the most strategically aligned at that moment in time. We'd be deceiving ourselves if we thought that if we could make a really good case that there's at least one dollar of profit to be made above the five million dollars of investment we're asking the company to make that we've somehow made our case, we're absolutely wrong. It's just an example of how I think we need to delve deeper into the details of the business."

Tobias also pointed out that it would be useful to look at other movements such as the environmental, occupational safety and health, and gender equity movements that have struggled against a market approach and have been successful in many cases. He said, "in many cases, [these movements] have been much more successful than we've been. If we can understand what they did—how they organized, what they used within government, within public relations and public appeals –we can adapt those for our issue."

Aldred Neufeldt (University of Calgary) commented on the need to examine how and where creative innovations happen in industry.

"We have this somewhat naïve notion that if we approach Research In Motion, and if they would only do their thing, then certain problems will be solved. Well, it might or might not happen; large corporations tend not to be terribly innovative. It got started as a very innovative [company;] whether it continues to be innovative, that's always a big challenge. New innovation really comes around new entrepreneurs, just the way RIM started, just the way IBM started, just the way Microsoft started; that's where they were really creative."

Neufeldt argued the focus should be on new entrepreneurs because that is where new innovation really comes from. He said, "If we're really going to solve these problems we've got to figure out where the next creative edges are." In addition, he noted that though the legal strategy is part of the solution, we also "need to think about some strategies that keep the agenda upfront."

Phyllis Gordon reiterated that the Canadian government is implementing the recent Telecommunications Policy Review at an unprecedented speed. She said,

"The reason I'm pushing people to read and think about the Telecom Policy Review is that this is really being acted upon by government now; cabinet's issued a directive to the CRTC. It's going to be made into a regulation which will put priority on market forces. We've never seen any government report be acted upon so quickly. There's an election coming, and nobody has looked at the Telecom Policy Review outside of the business pages. I hope to be able to get something written, a citizens' analysis, not just a disability citizens' analysis, but a citizens' analysis of that major shift in telecommunications policy that's just a sleeper."

Marcia Cummings (Rogers Communications Inc., Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians) commented on the lack of marketing aimed at people with disabilities and used the example of the Blackberry.

"Companies need to learn how to target their markets too, it was Henry Vlug who said that the Blackberry started to be really popular in the deaf community and RIM didn't even know about that. Well today I just found out that the newest Blackberry—The Pearl—has voice activated dialling and it will actually tell you the status of the battery and the network. I didn't know that until today because RIM isn't putting that out in their advertising it's not being widely made known. I think that you're losing out on some of your audience for your products. If you could find that audience and they would tell their friends, and their friends would tell their friends, and all of a sudden the bottom line would become even more lucrative if you can just tap into that market."

Phyillis Gordon responded to this by adding that Australia has begun to implement a standard that requires the inclusion of "an accessibility sheet in every product, so you can look at when you buy a product and all the various accessibility features are itemized, which is a useful way of letting people know what's out there and one that should not be so hard to institute."

David Donovan (Service Canada) observed that regulation and procurement policies can sometimes lead to innovation.

"It was interesting to hear you focus on policy and regulations in your discussion, and to hear David talk about customer driven needs and mention Section 508, and how that seems to have been a successful set of regulations to allow RIM to innovate and create accessible solutions. I think that regulation and guidelines can promote innovation, because without companies being able to meet those regulation guidelines and capitalize on say procurement policy, there will be other companies that will come along and innovate and capitalize on providing accessible solutions if those regulations are in place."

Donovan asked David Dougall if he could provide examples. Dougall offered three examples of how regulation has resulted in innovation at RIM. First, Dougall explained, "In order to meet certain requirements, we didn't previously have the hardware horsepower, or the software support to provide it," which forced RIM to look at whether they could provide the support the regulation required through a tweak to the current product or if a fundamental change was necessary.

Second, he said that regulation has led Research in Motion to align itself with third party companies who are experts in the accessibility field and to "look at input/output peripherals and customized software solutions such as IP relay solutions that can go a long way toward providing the overall package."

Thirdly, Dougall explained that regulations have led to feedback from "individual customers and from some of the regulatory agency Section 508 coordinators which lead to ideas about what we can do in the product for the future."

Cathy Moore (CNIB) suggested that although there may still be a lack of market incentive for companies to develop accessible information technologies, it might be useful to look at ways of subsidizing their development. She said, "the fact that development of certain accessibility products may not in fact be meeting the market incentive at the moment doesn't mean they can't happen within a framework that might allow for, dare I say it, subsidization of that type of development." She used the example of closed captioning and the cable television industry: "Closed captioning was paid for by one, two cents added to cable bills, for example. One or two cents added to a telephone bill, again. What I'm suggesting is that there are ways that to enable industry to implement more comprehensive accessibility solutions without footing the whole bill while, we, the end users of accessible telecommunications, are enabled to develop the capacity to effectively communicate our accessibility needs in a way that industry can understand and incorporate."

Moore concluded the panel discussion by encouraging everyone to keep the ideas covered in this panel in mind for further discussion of the development of action plans. She also asked the audience to heed Phyllis' Gordon's plea to pay attention to the implementation of the Telecommunications Policy Review, particularly in the emerging area of internet neutrality.

RESEARCH FINDINGS: "Findings from research conducted by the Disability and Information Technologies (Dis-IT) Research Alliance"

Retail and Public Services: Gary Birch (Neil Squire Society) and other team members

Gary Birch (Neil Squire Society) began his presentation of the Retail and Public Services research theme's findings by acknowledging the key organizations that participated in the research, which included the Neil Squire Society, the British Columbia Institute of Technology, The University of Manitoba, Laval University, Simon Fraser University, The Royal Bank of Canada, Industry Canada (particularly Assistive Devices Industry Office), IDEAL Group, and NCR Corporation.

Birch explained that the research focused on "persons with fairly severe mobility impairments and those with visual impairments." Focus groups were held to gain the input of participants on public information and communication technologies and to discover what the participants "felt were the challenges, barriers and, of particular interest, their thoughts on potential for wireless solutions to these accessibility problems and challenges." Birch said these focus groups revealed:

"The top three automated services that were identified were banking, retail—which really meant electronic commerce or electronic payment—and transit…The macro issues of getting around were generally brought up by those with visual impairments and micro issues dealing with the actual hardware tended to come up more often with people mobility impairments. There was a general consensus that wireless had a promising potential to enable access."

Birch showed segments of a video the research team produced to help the focus group participants understand the potential uses and inform the participants to stimulate discussion. The images were used to demonstrate how it is possible to turn "this new emerging technology, which often if not always, more of a barrier into an enabler." Birch narrated the video. He said the first clip showed "a quadriplegic in a wheelchair with his personal digital assistant (PDA) that has an interface that he can use to activate the automated door opener."

The second clip showed "a mocked-up picture of a person with a visual impairment using his smart phone handheld wireless device to get information about a menu in a fast food type situation. They'd also get the menu as well as perhaps the ability to order the item and pay for it." Birch explained that these images demonstrate how, if these technologies could be properly harnessed they could provide "a dramatic opportunity to level the playing field for people with disabilities."

The third clip showed "how awkward, in fact impossible it is for a man (with a mobility impairment) to use an automated ticket kiosk." The second part of this clip showed a simulation of a possible interface that worked well for that individual.

The fourth clip showed "a sequence in which a person using a wireless PDA using it like it was intended; the ability to retrieve an email and then place a call and have that call made for him." The clip also showed the man using the same wireless device to interact with an automated bank teller. Birch explained that, with such a device, "He has the ability to enter his PIN number, answer a bunch of questions using the touch-screen, and then, in this case, withdraw e-cash. Now whether e-cash will ever catch on we don't know but that's still a problem with an automated banking machine: you can't actually physically pull the cash out of the machine." This clip also showed the same man in a retail setting where he was able to use the wireless device to purchase something rather than using the debit machine which was not accessible to him. The same man then used the wireless device to buy a ticket at a transit ticket kiosk. Birch explained the clip demonstrated that "now instead of struggling and almost losing his credit card, he is able to purchase that ticket directly using his wireless device and actually ends up with an electronic receipt on his device and is able to carry on." Finally, the man was shown using the wireless device to call an elevator and select the floor once he was inside.

The fifth clip showed "a picture of a person with a high level of physical disability who also used a wireless device with a pointer system that allowed him to move a cursor with a mouth-driven joy stick. Using that he can select the different menu items off that device and control—in this case there's a picture of him controlling his home environment but everything we saw that other fellow do he could also do in his external environment as well."

"The Retail and Public Services research team contacted PICT [public information communication technologies] manufacturers and other industry representatives to gain a better understanding of such things as what priority they place on making their products accessible to disabilities, and what factors affect the adoption of accessibility in PICT's. Generally speaking, we found it difficult to get the participation of these industries. A tremendous amount of time and effort went into just trying to engage them in the surveys. Of the few that did participate, it became fairly clear that the issues around persons with disabilities weren't really a high priority."

He explained that in their interactions with the wireless industry, they focused on creating a positive user experience for all: "we tried to help them understand that accessibility will improve user experience for everyone." Birch said that when talking to industry about creating accessible information and wireless technologies it was important to stress the overlap between accessibility for people with disabilities and improved service and function for the general population.

"There are a tremendous number of examples where innovation from solving what appears to be a difficult problem for a person with a disability ends up in an innovation that's useful for a wide range of people. It's important for service deliverers of wireless and other types of technologies to have better service for persons with disabilities. In talking with them we found that there was some appetite, some interest in them staying ahead of the regulation curve."

According to Birch, a significant accomplishment that occurred during the process of engaging industry in discussions about accessible wireless technologies was that, "we were able to engage [cell phone manufacturer] Nokia and actually ended up with a contract to work on an accessibility accessory that would go with a line of their phones to allow a person with a severe disability to actually control and use their phone." Birch noted that the researchers would continue their efforts to engage industry, particularly cell phone manufacturers, and a particular company that provides cell phone banking and payments, as well as a Vancouver company working on Wi-Fi access to bus schedules.

Birch then discussed a tool developed by the research team called "PAT which stood for the PICT Accessibility Tool." This tool can be used by "individuals or groups to rate the level of accessibility of a given PICT in their community, such as an automated banking machine or a series of automated ticket dispensers, etc." Birch explained the tool was designed to be user friendly for people with disabilities to assess accessibility of Public Information and Communication Technologies (PICT's).

"To allow individuals or groups to rate the level of accessibility of a given PICT in their community, that would be an automated banking machine or a series of automated ticket dispensers, whatever… It's designed to rate both the macro—that would be getting to the device issues—and the micro environment—that's actually using the device itself. The PAT has been tested by persons with disabilities to help ensure that the questions are relevant, understandable, and valid and currently the work is focused on evaluating the reliability of the PAT."

Birch added that future plans for the PAT include seeking resources to convert it to an accessible, electronic format, and exploring an opportunity to have it utilized in community assessments that will occur in British Columbia, and perhaps throughout Canada, in association with Legacies NOW. Legacies NOW is an organization that assists communities in developing inclusive social and economic opportunities leading up to, during and beyond the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

Birch explained another element of the work done by the Retail and Public Services research team which investigated how people with disabilities interact with wireless technology, particularly wireless e-commerce applications. A mock restaurant environment was created for this purpose.

"We had participants from the focus groups as well as some new recruits…use a cell phone based device that we mocked up and simulated for this study and a PDA based device for people with mobility impairments. [With these devices] they were able to obtain menu items, order service, and pay. Generally we found participants were very excited about this type of technology and stated that they would gladly use it if available."

Birch added that the researchers will be "following up with the consumers who participated in our focus groups and simulation studies to help them understand what we've learned from the industry, what the industry trends are, and get some more feedback from them."

eLearning Research Team: Catherine Fichten, Jennison Asuncion, Joan Wolforth, Maureen Hewlett, and Chris Gaulin

Catherine Fichten (Adaptech Research Network, Dawson College) began the presentation of the eLearning research team's findings by acknowledging the partner organizations that participated in the research:

• Adaptech Research Network
• Canadian Association of Disability Service Providers in Post-secondary Education (CADSPPE)
• National Education Association of Disabled Students (NEADS)

Fichten then provided the research team's definitions of eLearning and accessibility.

"We defined 'eLearning' as the range of information and communication technologies that professors use when teaching in the classroom, online or a combination. Examples are things like PowerPoint, online tests, CD-ROMs, WebCT. For us the definition of accessibility is the ability of learners, regardless of their disability, to easily and independently use eLearning. Of course, for some students this means the use of adaptive technologies."

She noted that students with disabilities "are future leaders and post-secondary education is as important for somebody with a disability as it is for Canadians without disabilities. It's the path to independence, leadership, and making a living."

The objectives of the research were to identify eLearning barriers and facilitators experienced by a variety of post-secondary students with disabilities, and to develop good or best practices guidelines for the higher education community and the post-secondary publishing industry. Some of the research questions were:

• How accessible are different types of eLearning to students with various disabilities?
• What accommodations are presently being made for students with disabilities?
• Are there differences between English and French speaking institutions?
• What are the barriers?
• What are good solutions?

In order to find out more about what students with disabilities experience using eLearning in colleges and universities across Canada, the research team conducted 22 key informant interviews with individuals from five groups:

1. students with disabilities
2. disability service providers on campus
3. faculty who have used eLearning and have taught students with disabilities using eLearning
4. eLearning specialists on campus
5. others involved in eLearning, including vendors of post-secondary ePublishing materials

Like some of the other Dis-IT research themes, the eLearning researchers had difficulty getting interviews with industry representatives.

"We called lots of them, but it didn't work out very well. They were too busy. They didn't know about company policy on these matters and so on. Basically our story about engaging business is the same as that of many of the themes.  They basically said that accessibility was not a high priority for them. It didn't make any money."

Fichten and the other members of the eLearning research team now advise university and college faculty to inform publishers that they will only adopt a book if the publisher provides it in accessible formats.

The information from the key informant interviews was used to develop web-based surveys in English and French. The surveys were completed by 245 students with disabilities, 77 campus-based disability service providers, 39 professors, and 45 eLearning specialists. Jennison Asuncion (Adaptech Research Network) provided an overview of the findings from the 245 students.

Two-thirds were female and one-third male. The mean age was 27 with a range of 19 to 59 years. Most (60 percent) were university students. All provinces except Prince Edward Island and the Territories were represented.

When the students were asked to self-identify their disabilities and impairments, the top five were:

1. Learning disabilities
2. ADD and ADHD
3. Psychological and mental health disabilities and impairments
4. Mobility impairments
5. Health or medically related impairments

Asuncion pointed out that 44 percent of the participants had more than one impairment or disability. He also noted that the research team had not yet analysed its data for individual disability groups, but that was part of the future research plan.

When the students were asked to rank the accessibility and the inaccessibility of 18 different types of eLearning technologies, the top five ranked most accessible by the entire sample were email, course-related files in Word or PowerPoint, WebCT or Blackboard, course web pages, and in-class presentations using PowerPoint. The top five least accessible forms of eLearning were videoconferencing, live voice-based chat, online audio recordings of lectures, online content using Flash, and CD-ROMs used in labs.

The survey provided an open-ended opportunity for students to describe the benefits of eLearning to them. Asuncion reported that the most frequent response was "availability of online course notes" (40%). Other common responses were "helps learning and academic success" (21%), "helps understand course material" and "ability to work at one's own pace."

Asuncion explained that the survey also asked the students to identify problems they had encountered using eLearning.

"Inaccessibility of websites and course management systems was the highest ranked, followed by technical problems and poor use of eLearning by Professors—which is an interesting one which we'll want to dig into our data a little deeper. Difficulty connecting to websites and course management systems was also sited as a big problem."

Asuncion also said that when asked if they had found solutions to these problems, "67 percent of the students told us that at least one of the problems they reported was unresolved."

Asuncion concluded by saying that "eLearning has many benefits for students with disabilities. Many forms of eLearning are, thankfully, accessible, but it does vary by disability and impairment type, and we'll be able to figure that piece out." He said that the research team's recommendations will include:

• universal instructional design is key to the success of accessibility eLearning
• better availability of needed technology on and off campus
• better technical support
• training in the use of adaptive technology and eLearning.

Workplace Research Theme: Aldred Neufeldt, Denise Buchner and Monica Ackermann

Aldred Neufeldt (University of Calgary) began the presentation of Dis-IT's workplace research theme's findings by outlining the goals and focus of the research.

"One goal was to examine workplace adaptations to support employment of people with disabilities with particular attention role of ICT's. We were particularly focusing on examples of good practice. There are lots of horror stories that could be told, and we could focus on horror stories, but we've decided that if we're going to learn something lets take a look at the good practices, and so we've given particular attention there. We had a second question which was to determine whether, and if so how, employers might capitalize on such innovations to achieve other objectives. This is one of Steve Jacobs' themes, that something good for disabled people ought to be good for lots of other folk and so we were interested in taking a look at that."

Neufeldt said the research team conducted a literature review on the meaning and impact of the concepts of "the new economy" and "knowledge economy." These terms simply mean that employment is now being heavily affected by the use of new information technologies.  Neufeldt explained that in the workplace, the study focused on what he referred to as both "hard technologies" and "soft technologies."

"Hard technologies were equipment and adaptations used to support employees in the workplace. Included within the definition of hard technologies, were software that makes those technologies accessible. So, our use of the term soft technologies doesn't refer to software, it refers rather to modifications to make work feasible, such as flexible work time, job carving and so on."

Neufeldt explained that these two categories were identified because the process of the research revealed that "hard technology" adaptations rarely occurred in the workplace without "soft technology" adaptations accompanying them. "Almost invariably these were flipsides of the same issue, and of course that's how it should be, if we're really going to have a diverse workforce, you have to think about ways that we use time."

The research team had intended to interview 60 to 70 key informants, then conduct 20 interviews with companies that were good practice examples, and then drill down to individual employees with disabilities there to find out what their situations were. However, the researchers faced more difficulty identifying the kinds of employers than they had anticipated. Neufeldt said, "As per the last conference and the panel that we did with Gary Birch's group, it was incredibly difficult to find the employers in the first place. In fact, we did a whole analysis of that and there's a paper on that…In the end, of course, with persistence, we did find a good number and we did find some excellent examples."

Neufeldt explained that the examples used in the research came mostly from Central and Western Canada, and focused on employers in "the government service sector, financial services, ICT, non-governmental organizations, oil and gas industry, education, financial service sector, and some others."

Aldred Neufeldt, along with Denise Buchner (University of Calgary) and Monica Ackermann (Assistive Vocational Technology Associates, York University), presented a number of case studies and analysed them for common themes in the context of the new economy and the role of technology in the employment of people with disabilities. The first theme described was a debate over revolution versus evolution. "There is a debate about 'is the new economy's impact on employing people with disabilities an evolution or revolution?' You can argue it either way, there are some, certainly some revolutionary parts of it, but there certainly are also evolutionary parts."

The second theme Neufeldt discussed was barriers created by information communication technologies.

"The barriers introduced to employment by ICT's are virtual, they're not structural. The structural ones are still there to be dealt with, but the virtual ones are the new ones. And as you've seen from the two cases, this notion of universal design is starting to appear. The financial services sector is saying, 'We want to have software that is transportable across all platforms,' and it's not there yet, but we're going to be paying attention to that."

The third theme was the phenomenon of mixing and matching technologies.

"The mixing and matching of technologies is probably the innovation. Where at one time any one of these technologies was the innovation, nowadays they're sort of common place and what is important is mixing and matching these to fit the individual situation."

The fourth theme was the movement of adaptive technologies towards becoming more mainstream.

"We're getting to this, moving back and forth, accessible technologies becoming mainstream and mainstream technologies becoming adapted for accessibility. That's happening in quite a few places."

The fifth theme discussed was the trend toward broadening of opportunities for people with disabilities and the tendency for best practice employers to adopt a 'disability blind' perspective. "They take the diversity philosophy, "we'll do whatever it takes to make a person employable and be able to do their job." That said, the flipside of that is the problems we had in getting into employers in the first place."

The final theme Neufeldt identified in best practices was "the importance of buy-in from senior leadership in places of employment, that's critical, and in good practice sites it was also important for co-workers to participate in making the workplace receptive."

Neufeldt concluded the report by mentioning the next steps for their research, including acquiring feedback on their findings from the disability organizations that had participated in the initial phase of the research along with publishing the results. 

eDemocracy Theme: Deborah Stienstra and Christine Kelly

Deborah Stienstra (University of Manitoba) described the purpose of Dis-IT's eDemocracy research as "trying to understand, generally, how we can use information and communications technologies to ensure the democratic participation of all citizens, including citizens with disabilities." The research team defined eDemocracy as "that basket of 'e' terms where democratic participation is facilitated through information and communications technologies (ICT)." It defined eConsultation as the use of ICT "as one way to interact and get consultation or input from populations and citizens within government."

The research team looked at the research topic from two angles:

• How do governments use information and communications technologies for their policy development, and to what extent do they promote democratic participation or inclusive and accessible technologies?
• How do disability organizations in Canada use information and communications technologies to engage their memberships in policy development?

A variety of organizations of people with disabilities were involved, including; the Canadian Association for Community Living, the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians, and the Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres.

There were three main activities in the eDemocracy research:

1. Case studies of two federal government e-consultations
2. Interviews with Internet users with disabilities about e-consultations
3. Development and evaluation of the Disability-Related Policy in Canada website

Case Studies of eConsultations

The two case studies were the former Liberal government's e-consultation on its Innovation Strategy and the e-consultation on the disability portion of the Canada Pension Plan. Stienstra noted that the findings of the case studies were published in the journal Disability Studies Quarterly in 2005.

The researchers conducted key informant interviews with government officials and leaders in the disability movement. They also reviewed documents and the websites from each of the e-consultations. After reviewing all this data, Stienstra said they found that "neither e-consultation would win an accessibility award," but the Canada Pension Plan e-consultation, which was targeted at people with disabilities was more accessible than the Innovation Strategy e-consultation.

Three main conclusions were drawn from this part of the eDemocracy research. First, Stienstra explained, accessibility is not the same thing as usability.

"Even if a web site is technically accessible, it doesn't necessarily mean it's usable by all people.  It's important to always remember that technical access – things like website guidelines – don't address broader, more structural issues that may relate to issues of privacy, issues of comfort, issues of appropriate supports to access it, issues of poverty, etc."

The second conclusion was that technical accessibility is not enough to bring Canadians with disabilities into e-consultations. Stienstra noted that "guidelines like the Common Look and Feel guidelines for the federal government websites don't cover all disabilities; they don't cover all the issues that people with disabilities require to bring them into it." Finally, the research team concluded that including people with disabilities in e-consultations is simply good public policy.

Interviews with Internet Users with Disabilities

During 2005, the eDemocracy research team conducted interviews about e-consultations with 50 Internet users with disabilities. The interviews dealt with questions of their access to and familiarity with computers, their knowledge and feelings about e-consultations, as well as their involvement with government. Christine Kelly (University of Manitoba) explained that these interviews led to the development of a set of guidelines for conducting effective e-consultations for people with disabilities. These guidelines were grouped under three broad areas:

1. technical access
2. inclusion
3. accountability

Kelly described guidelines for technical access as things like web accessibility standards, as well as non-technical supports/flexibility, such as being able to save a contribution and return a number of times to complete it. As examples of guidelines for inclusion, Kelly said people with disabilities should be involved in the planning of e-consultations, and e-consultations should be advertised in multiple media. "It was clear that the e-consultations we looked at in the case studies didn't reach a large group of the population. Hardly anybody we interviewed knew about those e-consultations."

For accountability, Kelly said, "When people make a contribution to an e-Consultation, they want to know that it was received, and that it's going to be incorporated. They don't just want to send in an email or post a message on a message board and have no idea what happens to it. And they want the final report to be posted."

e-Democracy Website: www.disabilitypolicy.ca

The third part of Dis-IT's eDemocracy research was the development and evaluation of www.disabilitypolicy.ca, a web site on disability-related policy in Canada. Stienstra explained that this research was concerned with "how the disability community uses information technologies to engage its own members in policy development."

The web site initially began from an initiative of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities and the Canadian Association for Community Living funded by the Voluntary Sector Initiative. Its purpose was to create capacity within the disability community to talk about some of the key policy initiatives at the federal level, building on policy statements that federal, provincial, and territorial ministers had made concerning three priority areas: employment, disability-related supports, and income.

When that project ended, Stienstra said that Dis-IT's eDemocracy theme "realized that there might be a way to transfer some of that knowledge and capacity building online, so we created this website."

The website was developed with three goals:

• To build the capacity of people with disabilities and organizations of people with disabilities to respond effectively to disability policy in Canada
  
  
• To be jointly owned by many organizations of people with disabilities for the purpose of knowledge sharing, communication and mobilization
  
  
• To facilitate research and knowledge dissemination about how information technologies can be used within the disability community in eDemocracy initiatives.
  
  

Stienstra said, "this initiative illustrated to us how much work is required to engage the disability community in using information technologies effectively for policy development. We're not nearly there yet and it's going to take some significant work and the moments have to be right and it has to mesh with the policy agenda which changes incredibly rapidly, especially when you have a federal government election in the middle of it all." More information about www.disabilitypolicy.ca was presented during the October 26 afternoon session on engaging communities in accessible IT.

In closing, Stienstra took some time to talk about an upcoming special issue of the journal The Information Society that will focus on accessible and inclusive information technology. It is guest edited by Gary Annable, Gerard Goggin, and Deborah Stienstra and will feature the following six articles written by Dis-IT researchers and others who have been involved in Dis-IT's activities and previous events:

• A Three-Way Dance: The Global Public Good and Accessibility in Information Technologies (Deborah Stienstra, James Watzke, and Gary Birch)
  
  
• The Business of Digital Disability (Gerard Goggin and Christopher Newell)
  
  
• Engaging the Business/Industrial Sector in Accessibility Research: Lessons in Bridge Building (Aldred H. Neufeldt, James Watzke, Gary Birch, and Denise Buchner)
  
  
• Accessibility and Product Ecologies (Jim Tobias)
  
  
• Crossing the Digital Divide: Possibilities for Influencing the Private Sector Business Case (Helen Maskery)
  
  
• Working for Barrier Removal in the ICT Area: Creating a More Accessible and Inclusive Canada (April D'Aubin)
  
  

Stienstra said that conference participants will be advised when this special issue is published in spring 2007.

QUESTION AND ANSWER PERIOD:

Jim Tobias (Inclusive Technologies) commented first on the Retail and Public Services research team's presentation:

"I was fascinated by the Retail and Public Services research. It's absolutely amazing; it needs the widest possible dissemination. Those videos need to be shown to tens of thousands of developers and marketers because, for exactly the reason you say, it's not clear to them what our issue is and what it is we're trying to get across to them. Those videos do a great job of it.

Speaking to that point that you raised about the lack of responsiveness from industry, my question is, to the extent that your project is ongoing, what are your plans to improve that liaison and where do you see potential openings?"

Gary Birch elaborated on the research team's future plans and strategies for engaging industry.

"We're focusing on the wireless industry itself, and primarily on the handset makers, the companies that make the devices. It's a very painful and expensive and hard to fund process of building relationships with these companies, so that we can engage them in discussion. We engage them in the discussions, show them the videos and slowly get them out of their kind of rigid framework that they have around disability and inclusion and accessibility and start to show them that these things probably aren't very tough, they just have to be thought about at the concept stage and built into their thinking as they're bringing new products and services out…It's helping them identify why it makes sense for their company to get more involved and it ranges a little bit from a business case through good corporate citizenship through staying ahead of regulation."

Jim Roots asked Gary Birch about the selection of specific disabilities, specifically upper mobility, and visual impairments over others in the retail theme's focus.

"There were no Deaf or hard of hearing people included. I'm wondering why there was not consultation with the deaf or hard of hearing community? I'm noticing that your examples also apply to us. For example, when you're talking about going into a restaurant, there's always the communication barrier, even if you want to get a cup of coffee. Deaf people have that experience. We go into restaurants, fast food for example, kiosks. You have to come up, you have to point, and they ask 'what do you want in your hamburger? Do you want the large super size?' There's all kinds of miscommunication. This PAT device know would be wonderful and deaf people can use that to evaluate accessibility."

Gary Birch responded to Roots' question by assuring him that these were not the only groups included in the development of the PAT tool.

"When it came to the focus groups and the simulation studies, we had to make a decision for resource reasons. So we did focus on those two disability groups, knowing full well that there were many other disability groups, including the deaf and hard of hearing that could likely make really good use of this technology as well. So really, that's just outstanding research that has to be done. When we developed the PAT, the tool to use in the communities we used people with disabilities from a much wider range of groups of disabilities, including those with deaf and hard of hearing disabilities."

Roots asked Birch to explain why the simulations did not include research on how these technologies could be useful for the deaf and hard of hearing community as well.

"When you talk about cell phones in particular and the compatibility to the PAT, why not approach RIM? Deaf and hard of hearing people love the Blackberry device. All three Deaf participants here have the Blackberry on us; we're all currently using that. So if RIM was involved in the assessment you'd also have deaf people benefiting widely by that application."

Birch reassured him that the research team was currently engaged with RIM and that they hoped the future would bring fruitful innovations out the partnership.

"Its very clear in my mind as we go forward and engage industries, I want to engage them at their concept level when they're first coming out with a new concept around a product and to ensure that they have the focus groups and interaction, the actual testing of prototypes with the full range of persons with disabilities, whether they're deaf or blind, to make sure that they're getting that input from across those constituencies, so that when they bring their device or service out, those things are all covered."

Steve Jacobs (IDEAL Group, Inc.) also commented the applicability of wireless technology to control technology in the home. He stated that through the internet, PDA's can remotely control appliances in homes. For example he is able to remotely control a camera in his house. He then asked Birch "How do you see this technology helping solve the problems that you're looking at and is that going to be part of future research?"

Birch agreed that this kind of technology is likely to be the means through which their ideas for using technology to create a more accessible retail environment will be realized.

"Part of the trick of this is to work alongside and keep up with the industry itself and find out what wireless technologies, are going to be used for these services. We're not trying to build special services here. We're just trying to make sure that, as these services come on line, they're enabling tools for people with disabilities as well."

Return to 2006 Hardwiring Inclusion Conference final report home page