Wednesday May 14, 2008 
The collected occasional commentary by Peter Korn, Accessibility Architect at Sun Microsystems, Inc.
|
|
Peter Korn's Weblog The collected occasional commentary by Peter Korn, Accessibility Architect at Sun Microsystems, Inc. |
Wednesday May 14, 2008 Ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities On December 13, 2006 the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as well as an optional protocol (see a brief summary of both here). On May 3, 2008 the Convention and Optional Protocol entered into force as the Convention had received its 20th ratification and the Optional Protocol had received its 10th ratification. This past Tuesday the UN held a celebration of the ratification in New York. An extensive list of countries that have signed or ratified the convention. As of today, there are 129 signatories of the Convention and 71 signatories of the Optional Protocol. Further there are 25 ratifications of the Convention and 15 ratifications of the Optional Protocol. There is a nice world map showing signatory/ratification status. Article 9 of the Convention speaks to Accessibility, and I read several aspects of this as applying directly to technology accessibility work:
To enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life, States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others, to...information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems... States Parties shall also take appropriate measures: ... g) To promote access for persons with disabilities to new information and communications technologies and systems, including the Internet; h) To promote the design, development, production and distribution of accessible information and communications technologies and systems at an early stage, so that these technologies and systems become accessible at minimum cost. Article 27 speaks to work and employment, which is a key place for technology accessibility access. From this article, I likewise find a few key passages for us:
States Parties recognize the right of persons with disabilities to work, on an equal basis with others; this includes the right to the opportunity to gain a living by work freely chosen or accepted in a labour market and work environment that is open, inclusive and accessible to persons with disabilities. States Parties shall safeguard and promote the realization of the right to work, including for those who acquire a disability during the course of employment, by taking appropriate steps, including through legislation, to... d) Enable persons with disabilities to have effective access to general technical and vocational guidance programmes, placement services and vocational and continuing training; ... g) Employ persons with disabilities in the public sector; h) Promote the employment of persons with disabilities in the private sector through appropriate policies and measures, which may include affirmative action programmes, incentives and other measures; i) Ensure that reasonable accommodation is provided to persons with disabilities in the workplace There is a good description of what is next after ratification. A few choice bits from it:
Among other things, ratifying countries are bound to:
It is perhaps not a coincidence that yesterday we received a request for accessibility information about Sun products from a company in a country we had never heard from before on accessibility. This country is in the developing world, and is a signatory to the convention. Maybe ratification is already having an impact... (2008-05-14 09:59:45.0) Permalink Comments [0]
Wednesday May 07, 2008 OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta - with support for Mac, VoiceOver & Mac accessibility The OpenOffice.org community has just announced the availability OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta. This release contains an impressive set of features, including native support for Macintosh, and support for most of the portions of the upcoming ODF v1.2 specification. For me, one of the most noteworthy aspects of this beta release is direct support for the Macintosh accessibility framework and specifically interoperability with the VoiceOver screen reader. With OpenOffice.org 3.0, blind users on the Macintosh will finally have access to an office suite - enabling them to read and write office documents and spreadsheets and... In fact, because OpenOffice.org supports reading and writing .doc and .xls and .ppt files, this will allow blind users of the Macintosh to work with colleagues on Macintosh and Windows who might be using Microsoft Office. Of course it also means that ISO 26300:2006 format ODF documents are now accessible to the blind on Macintosh. Earlier this year Sun demonstrated VoiceOver working with a development build of OpenOffice.org for Macintosh at the CSUN Conference on Technology and People with disabilities. We also had a chance to meet with a number of Macintosh AT vendors at the conference, and saw good results with their AT tools and the OpenOffice.org development build. Download your copy of OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta today! Download the Macintosh version of OOo 3.0 beta here. Please be sure to report any problems found with the beta at the OpenOffice.org QA site. You may also want to check out the set of test cases to use as a reference for accessibility interoperability. (2008-05-07 16:12:19.0) Permalink Comments [0]
Tuesday April 22, 2008 Another Berkeley first: wheelchair-accessible car sharing The City of Berkeley is the home of a lot of "firsts" for accessibility. Perhaps the most notable first is the Center for Independent Living which started the Independent Living movement and which also led to the World Institute on Disability (in neighboring Oakland). U.C. Berkeley (not coincidentally) was the first college to have a Disabled Students' Program Today marks another first for accessibility in Berkeley: the first wheelchair-accessible car share van, which debuts today (which, also not coincidentally, is Earth Day). City CarShare's new Access Program provides a wheelchair accessible minivan for City CarShare members to use. Members pay $7/hour + 40¢/mile during the day, or $3/hour + 40¢/mile from midnight to 8am => the same rate as for any of their minivans. You can be a non-driver member, in which case one of up to 5 registered designated drivers can be the one driving the accessible van. (2008-04-22 11:15:40.0) Permalink
Tuesday April 15, 2008 It is tax day; can you interact with your government electronically to file your tax return? Governments worldwide have been going electronic/digital for a long time - and not just internally, but also in their interactions with their citizens/constituents. A big question is, as they do this, will their interactions be accessible to all citizens with disabilities? This is a central tenant of Section 508 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act, which requires that:
individuals with disabilities who are members of the public seeking information or services from a Federal department or agency to have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to the access to and use of the information and data by such members of the public who are not individuals with disabilities
This question of public accessibility has come up numerous times in discussions around OpenDocument Format (vs. other documents formats): a move to a standard document format internally within a State or Federal agency might also mean using that format for interactions with the public. In such cases, the format should be one that is accessible not only to employees with disabilities, but also citizens of that state or country. I suggested last year that one of the key principles of such an adopted document format is that it be accessible via affordable assistive technologies, because requiring an expensive investment in software in order to interact with a government isn't a fair or appropriate burden to place on citizen - especially if that government isn't providing such expensive assistive technologies to its citizens. As today is tax day in the United States, it is a good time to look at the question affordable, accessible electronic interaction with governments in the area of tax preparation and tax form submission. This is particularly timely this year because of the Economic Growth Package signed into law by President Bush in January, which provides an economic stimulus payment of up to $600 per person via a tax rebate (plus another $300 per child). To get this rebate, you must file a tax return, even if you have too little income to otherwise need to file a return. 70% of people with disabilities in the United States are unemployed - they earn little to no money. And in the United States there are basically four ways to get the assistive technology needed to have access to electronic content: through your employer, through your school, through rehabilitation services, or by purchasing it yourself. If you among the 70% who are unemployed, you aren't getting AT through your employer or school (you aren't considered unemployed as a full-time student). If you are unemployed, you probably don't have the many hundreds or thousands of dollars to hand needed to buy assistive technologies. And finally, rehabilitation services are stretched very thin in this country (and anyway typically only serve folks who are in the process of getting a job), which means most unemployed folks with disabilities have to do without assistive technologies and without access to computers and the Internet. Which brings us back to the issue of filing a tax return and claiming the economic stimulus payment if you unable to read or otherwise fill in a paper tax form. One option is if someone in your area offers assistance (the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind has offered a free service for tax preparation for the blind in order to get the stimulus payment). And now - thanks to open source accessibility solutions on the open source UNIX desktop - there is second option: combine a cheap or free computer with a free desktop software and free screen access solution, and someone with a disability can file their own tax return themselves (at least so long as the Internet tax filing services following the web accessibility guidelines). Starting with something like a $250 PC clone onto which you install Ubuntu or Fedora or OpenSolaris; or using a free, refurbished computer from an outfit like the Alameda County Computer Resource Center (which come with either Ubuntu or OpenSuSE pre-installed), a blind person has the pieces they need to file their taxes and get their rebate (a rebate that is more than enough to cover the cost of the brand new PC clone they might have purchased to connect to the Internet). In fact, this is what Kenny Hit and Mike Gorse were doing this tax season - using the open source Orca screen reader on the open source UNIX desktop with the open source Firefox web browser to file their taxes. Their only barrier was due to accessibility problems with the web sites of the companies they were filing with... (2008-04-15 18:04:52.0) Permalink
Monday April 14, 2008 Underwater photography in the Channel Islands Just before this year's CSUN conference (blog trip report to come), I went diving with my "friend in the news" Mark Epstein for two days with Truth Aquatics in the Channel Islands off of Santa Barbara. I brought my new Canon G9 camera (bought in part because I thought it'd make a great underwater housed camera), and a new underwater lighting rig: the Brightstar Darkbuster diving torch mounted on their camera arm set. You can see the photos at this slideshow of my Truth Aquatics dive trip. The typical underwater digital camera is a housed camera with a flash and perhaps a focusing light (as is shown in this photo of Mark with my old rig + his HID light). The best underwater photos these days are taken with SLR cameras in special custom housings with multiple large flashes. Such a setup can cost more than $10,000! This gets you something like a Canon 5D, a housing for it, and then strobes and arms (ideally 2 strobes!). For this dive trip, I tried to put together an effective setup at 1/10th the cost. I went with the Canon G9 in order to have something small, but with a bright 3" LCD screen and pretty fast focusing. And then the big experiment: going with the new and incredibly bright 24W HID light from Darkbuster in "video light" configuration (plus diffuser) in the place of a flash. Going this route allowed me to save on buying a bright and expensive flash (the cheapest good underwater flash is more expensive than the Darkbuster!), and meant that I didn't need an electrical sync cord (which requires a more expensive housing and significantly increases your chances of getting a leak) or a fiber optic flash trigger cord (which I haven't found to work that well and getting the right amount of light is always more of a challenge). I'm pretty pleased with the results, especially for macro photography (check out all of the nudibranch photos). So long as I took the time to adjust the light, and made sure to zoom in a tad so that all of the photo was within the cone of light from the Darkbuster, I got pretty good results. If I do a lot more of this, I'll probably get a second Darkbuster in order to achieve more even lighting results (and use my makeshift "lens cap" - PVC pipe end fitted over the light with holes drilled in for water cooling - to cover one for more dramatic side-lighting - like in this shot). The biggest challenge will still be dealing with surge underwater, which combined with even 1/10th of a second of shutter delay means a high percentage of slightly-out-of-focus photos. My old housed film camera never had this problem... (2008-04-14 21:00:04.0) Permalink Comments [1]
Tuesday April 08, 2008 [Note to readers: I'm way behind in blogging lots of recent events. This is the second of several posts attempting to catch up...] As I mentioned last February 15th, I have been recognized by Federal Computer Week as an "Agent of Change" in their 2008 award program. This past Monday March 24th my wife and I attended the award ceremony in Virginia - where I received a lovely piece of glass with my name etched into it. The ceremony was part of a small, intimate dinner for 930 people at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Tysons Corner, VA. Scattered about the hotel were copies of Federal Computer Week magazine, complete with a very brief mention of me, along with larger pieces about the award ceremony itself. There were four huge projection screens scattered about the hall, and they would project images of the 100 winners as well as the judges onto the screens. Each time a new face appeared, applause erupted somewhere in the cavernous dining hall. The evening entertainment was provided by Peter Segel of NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell me radio show. His somewhat more liberal bent was an interesting choice for a group largely comprised of government and military IT procurement and the companies that sell to them... While not all of the honorees managed to attend, there were several one-star generals, and one two-star and one three-star general there among the honorees. Sartorially, the generals' military dress far outshone the black tie that most of the rest of us were wearing. The full list of honorees is quite distinguished, and it was a real pleasure and honor to be among them. (2008-04-08 20:30:42.0) Permalink
Monday April 07, 2008 Presentation of the TEITAC report to the U.S. Access Board Last Thursday, April 3rd, the Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee (or TEITAC for short) presented their final report to the United States Access Board. It was the culmination of more than 18 months of very hard work by a very talented group of 41 representatives and their alternates who were representing their respective companies, disability organizations, government agencies, and countries. As one of the, shall we say "more vigorous", members of TEITAC, I find myself with a whole constellation of emotions having reached this important milestone and the formal conclusion of my TEITAC duties. I am incredibly proud of the report we produced. We tackled many very challenging issues, and reached consensus on a large subset of them. The process was intellectually stimulating - and at times wearing - but always very engaging and valuable. I got to work with a number of folks I have long respected, and I got to meet and work with many new-to-me folks who brought a tremendous amount of energy and thought to the process. I look forward to continuing to work both sets of colleagues in the years to come. While the 41 folks reached consensus on the majority of the issues, there were about a dozen "minority reports" that were contributed from members - underscoring the importance of language that did reach consensus, as well as arguing alternately for or against language that is included but which did not reach consensus. These "minority reports" are uniformly thoughtful, and also worth reading. Reports were contributed from: ATIA; from Adobe; from CITA and The Telecommunications Industry Association; from IBM; from the Information Technology industry Council; from Microsoft; from the National Association of State Chief Information Officers and Association of Assistive Technology Act Programs; from Panasonic; from Sun Microsystems; from the Trace R&D Center; and from the Web Accessibility Initiative of the W3C. The next step in the process is for the U.S. Access Board to digest this volume of material, and produce their own draft set of provisions, and to produce a regulatory assessment of what such a draft would entail. These will then be molded into their Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Published in the Federal Register, these proposed rules will be open to public comment for a period of some weeks. After reviewing comments, the U.S. Access Board will issue their Final Rule, which will specify the standards for accessibility under which procurement of Electronic and Information Technology by the U.S. Federal Government shall take place. They shall also specify the guidelines for accessibility that apply to telecommunications products shall be subject to in the United States. Like many folks, I eagerly await the first formal indications of the Access Boards thoughts, which may expect to first appear on the refresh website. (2008-04-07 01:13:19.0) Permalink
Friday March 07, 2008 Our new look The Sun Accessibility effort's website has a new look! (and I was among the winning votes for the main image). Also on our new page is our traditional See Sun at CSUN blurb. In addition to our usual booth (#405 and #406 in the Saddlebrook room of the Marriott hotel), we have several sessions of interest:
We're also joining several presentations hosted by others groups:
Hope to see you at CSUN! (2008-03-07 14:44:21.0) Permalink
Monday March 03, 2008 Friends in the news - with the quote "I would call this negligence" A dear friend of mine, Mark Epstein, made the news today in a story about the "problem-plagued White House computer system." In the AP wire article "Expert Suggests White House Negligent", Mark and other experts talked to Pete Yost about the way responsible IT departments handle e-mail systems, and specifically the migration from one system to another. Seems the White House IT department blew it on multiple counts. And what's cool is, I get to see my friend's name in print! (2008-03-03 23:39:25.0) Permalink
Wednesday February 27, 2008 With an odd mixture of joy, relief, and maybe a little bit of sadness (but mostly relief), I read that "The Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee (TEITAC) will deliver its report to the Board on April 3, 2008" in this web news release on the webiste of the U.S. Access Board. This release notes that:
The Committee’s report will be the basis for the Board’s first update of the Section 508 standards since their original publication in 2000. The Board will review the Committee recommendations and issue an update proposal which will be available for public comment.
Along with my Sun colleague (and TEITAC Editorial Working Group member) Michele Budris, and colleagues from 40 other companies organizations, I have been working on the Update of the Section 508 Standards and the Telecommunications Act Guidelines since the first meeting in October 2006. During 26 days of face to face plenary meetings, 38 hours of teleconference plenary meetings, regular weekly meetings among 8 subcommittees (which were open to public participation) - not to mention meetings of more than a dozen ad-hoc task groups) - we have largely reached consensus on the draft of our recommendations that we will be delivering to the Access Board in early April. That meeting will be held at the Grand Hayatt in downtown Washington DC, followed by what is rumored to be a black tie reception. But before we all get to dress up, we have to finish the final stretch (a last 14 hours of meetings). (2008-02-27 14:58:15.0) Permalink GNOME Foundation accessibility outreach program: $50k for accessibility work Behdad Esfahbod, a member of the Board of the GNOME Foundation, has just announced today the GNOME Foundation Accessibility Outreach Program. This $50,000 program is funded by the GNOME Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, the Google Open Source Program Office, Ubuntu maker Canonical, and Novell, and provides grants for individuals to contribute to a collection of specific open source accessibility goals as part of the GNOME Accessibility Program. For all the details, see the GNOME Accessibility Outreach Program website. Program technical judge, Orca project lead, and all around cool guy Willie Walker has a blog entry about the program you might also want to check out. (2008-02-27 14:01:16.0) Permalink
Sunday February 24, 2008 Shout-out: Benetech looking to hire accessibility experts It should come as no surprise that an outfit like Benetech would be open to hiring folks with disabilities. Not only is their tagline "technology serving humanity", but their president Jim Fruchterman got his start in non-profit work making making reading/scanning systems for the blind (now the successful product line "OpenBook" at Freedom Scientific). It should also come as no surprise that with Benetech's ongoing success, they are expanding and looking to hire folks. So at the request of a couple of friends I have at Benetech, I wanted to give a shout-out to Benetech's Employment Opportunities page, as they are expressly looking to hire folks with disabilities & accessibility experience into their company. I understand they are especially keen to have this background/experience in folks filling their engineering openings. Also, Benetech is open to folks working remotely. So, if you are looking to user your accessibility experience & expertise at a great company in the Silicon Valley, you might want to check out Benetech's openings. (2008-02-24 11:57:38.0) Permalink
Saturday February 23, 2008 I've just come across two YouTube videos talking about Orca use in India. The first video is an eight and a half minute collection of three Indian news reports about a seminar that Mr. Krishnakant Mane held for the blind in India late last year, using Orca and Ubuntu Linux. The second video - titled "True Vision" - is a 10 minute promotional piece by ELCOT (Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Limited) in cooperation with the Government of Tamil Nadu, talking about their adoption and use of Ubuntu Linux and Orca to help the blind in India. From the news video, there are two quotes of Krishnakant's that I particularly like:
The beauty of free software is that it is free to use. This is the reason I keep on saying that free as in freedom, not free of cost. You can always make even a business out of it, and we will have done it, and there is nothing wrong in it. But the software does not belong to me, or to you or to him. It belongs to all of us. It belongs to the entire community. And that is the reason it is called free or open source.
and
We are right now promoting free software use for free software actively amongst everyone, including the handicapped community, so that you get the complete benefit of reusing it on n number of machines you want. Modify it as per your requirements. Study it if you want to be a software engineer or a hobbyist. And most importantly, keep on helping others who need it, and you may charge for it of course.
Much of the "True Vision" promotional video, contains an interview with Krishnakant, answering a series of questions about what the blind can do in Linux with Orca. He notes that taskslike web browsing, e-mail, chatting, programming, authoring spreadsheets, and server administration are all quite possible for the blind. Krishnakant also compares open source access solutions to proprietary solutions in Windows. There is also a segment on the seminar that Krishnakant held for the blind (the subject of the first video), in which Krishnakant answers several questions from blind audience members about Orca's capabilities. My favorite quote from this video comes at the end, from the narrator of the video:
It was we, the normally sighted people, who had been blind throughout, to the wonders of open source technologies on the Linux platform.
In both videos, you can see snippets of Orca with a variety of desktop applications, including with OpenOffice.org, the Firefox web browser, Pidgin chat, and of course the desktop. Note: I will refrain from commenting on the start of the promotional video, other than to observe a comment that Willie Walker made in recent blog post: "Accessibility was always viewed as that once-in-a-while special interest segment you see on the nightly news -- sappy music playing in the background with the narrator using words such as "bravery," "overcoming hardships" and other content-free ilk meant to focus on the disability and tug at people's heartstrings." (2008-02-23 11:29:41.0) Permalink
Thursday February 21, 2008 Orca & Accercizer articles in Linux Journal Hot on the heels of Steve Lee's article Python Powered Accessibility are two more articles on GNOME Accessibility. Both of these are published in this issue of The Linux Journal. Eitan Isaacson has a delightful article on how to "Make Your Application Accessible with Accerciser", and my Sun colleague and Orca screen reader lead Willie Walker has a great article "Orca—Take the Killer Whale for a Ride". More recommended reading! (2008-02-21 19:29:56.0) Permalink
Tuesday February 19, 2008 Steve Lee recently published an article in Python Magazine about accessibility, accessibility in the GNOME environment, and most specifically about using the Python programming language in GNOME accessibility. That article has been reprinted on live.gnome.org. It provides both a nice introduction to accessibility for the general audience, a good introduction to GNOME accessibility, and a collection of good tidbits on utilizing Python to examine accessible applications on the GNOME desktop. Highly recommended! (2008-02-19 15:29:51.0) Permalink |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
