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:

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

Fed 100 Award ceremony

[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