Inclusive Technologies

We know that all the assistive technology compatibility and built-in accessibility features don’t mean a thing if the user never learns about them.  Retail has often been the Bermuda Triangle of accessibility.  The bottom-line fever of the undertrained, commission-driven sales staff makes customized service unlikely.  Now Computers Made Easy in Fort Worth offers another model of retail.  It caters to people with disabilities and the rest of us who nervously wonder if we can operate the latest gadget or program.  The name alone is relaxing!  Let’s hope this becomes a chain, and reminds its big box brethren that customers come in all shapes and sizes.

Computer store bridges technology gap for seniors and disabled - Fort Worth Business Press

I watched Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino” last night.  For those who haven’t seen the movie, Clint plays an aging bigot in a shifting neighborhood who gets caught up in gang violence after his wife’s death.  Clint’s crusty persona sprays bitter contempt onto the changing world around him as his own health fails.

There’s a scene with his son and daughter-in-law on his birthday that stayed on my mind.  They arrive with presents: a reacher and a big-button phone.  Needless to say, Clint does not express his appreciation; his subsonic growl builds as they cautiously suggest moving to an assisted living facility.  We don’t get to see Clint’s explosion, but we do see the pair hurriedly leaving in exasperation at their own attempt to reach out to him.

My first reaction, of course, was “Thanks, Eastwood, you dipstick, for thoughtlessly stigmatizing accessibility and usability to score shallow cinematic points!  Just what the world needs, another portrayal of comfort and convenience as sissified and demeaning.”  I slept the righteous sleep of the professionally self-justified.

I awoke less so.  People on the receiving end of our beneficence *do* have reactions of reluctance, resistance, and rejection.  Are they all dysfunctional fools, or are they just paying resentful attention to the social markers invisibly embossed on every manufactured object?  If an upscale watch means “I’m stylish and rich”, what does a reacher mean?  And what does giving someone a reacher mean?

When “practitioners” look at a reacher we see an elegant interaction between the sophisticated, painstaking domains of clinical insight and design excellence, and we’re right.  It’s just that someone else looking at it sees a prop for a tragedy, and they’re right, too.

I’m sure we’re all doing as much as we can to trim the stigmatic overtones from highly usable and assistive products, and I wouldn’t want anyone to slack off because those efforts are not always rewarded with elder-glee.  But I think we’d better pay more attention to how the recipient views the exchange.  Sometimes it’s not the chrome-plated heart of the gadget I can’t do without; it’s the chrome-plated face on the dipstick who gives it to me.

Do-it-yourselfers know Instructables as a great online resource of well-documented, practical projects, and a wide, wise dialogue about them.  A recent project took an IKEA crib and modified it for a small-stature parent, using the expert guidance of Judi Rogers of Berkeley’s Through the Looking Glass.  Look at the multiplier effect on accessibility awareness when a mainstream site with giant traffic stats picks up our message.  Join the Instructables Assistive Technology Group and share your savvy!

MAKE: Blog: Crib Modification for Accessibility

Fernando Botelho in MAKE magazine challenges us to build a $200 talking computer for blind kids: makezine.com: Let There Be Speech.

We all agree with the goal, but what’s the best way to achieve it?  Is this really a technological problem, or is it an organizational and distributional one?  Anyone who’s visited one of the assistive technology conferences knows that we’ve got the technological answers to almost all the accessibility problems we face.  Where we fail — and we really are failing — is in getting those solutions into the hands of the people they were intended to benefit.  Price can be a barrier, but so can lack of awareness or confidence, and poor implementation and support networks.

An alternative approach is not to build any new hardware, but to piggyback on existing hardware and technical support networks that are succeeding at the tough task of massive global adoption.  This means “infiltrating” the wireless phone and One Laptop Per Child ecosystems.  It means finding all the existing channels for communicating about accessibility solutions, and amplifying our message there.  We may be able to do more good per dollar with an accessibility how-to poster in every Internet cafe in the developing world than a technology-driven development project.

Take a look at this college student’s experience of accessibility and accommodations:

Technology: A Love-Hate Story | Tania Says

So many of the problems arise from implementation rather than the “raw” accessibility in the products or environment:

• C-Print can only be used on “special” devices
• these devices require AC current, which is only available at the back of a large lecture hall
• transcriptionist scheduling
• speakers with strong accents
• insufficient training for teachers on accessibility and accommodations
• unreliable wireless connections
• incorrect (or unexpected) routing for audio
• classes held in disadvantageous environments such as darkrooms

Accessibility is a lab course!

Accenture reports that 68% of all product returns are due not to a technical fault but to user dissatisfaction.  We’ll only spend about 20 minutes trying to get the thing working properly, then give up and return it.  Or we return it as soon as we see that it’s not what we thought it was.  So bad user interfaces and poor documentation, not raw technological flaws, are the culprits.  This situation should surprise absolutely no one; what’s amazing is how little is done to remedy it.

Most ‘malfunctioning’ gadgets work just fine, report claims | Register Hardware

San Francisco is considering a law that would require TVs in public locations (lobbies, restaurants, airports, etc.) to display captions at all times.  What a great idea, and why not?  The capability is already built in, and this would provide a robust channel for communicating with deaf and hard of hearing people about emergencies, at the very least.  But don’t fine the scofflaws; make them wear a scarlet ASL instead!

SAN FRANCISCO / Bill would require captioning on TVs

A British ICT designer has come up with an interesting blend of technology and elder market awareness.  “jive” has a router that’s configured at the point of sale, and a mouseless interface for information retrieval and communication.  Each of your friends or family members is represented by a little plastic square, and you just place the square on the screen to see what that person is up to, or to send a message.  When you’re not using it, the screen automatically updates you with their doings and whereabouts.  This simple, tangible interface may point the way to more inclusive ICT designs.

jive - social networking for your gran.

An online searchable database contains all the keyboard shortcuts from all the key applications on all the key operating systems.  Having those shortcuts is only half the solution — the rest is knowing about them!
KeyXL keyboard shortcuts

Here’s an excellent article about a terrifying reality: alternative smoke alarms are a massive failure for deaf and hard of hearing people.  For example, only 27% of test subjects were awakened by strobe lights, the most common alternative to audible alarms in public environments.  And a low frequency tone works better than the more common high frequency tone.  The article is based on a report from the National Fire Protection Research Foundation.
Hearing Mojo: Sleeping Through Smoke Detector Alarm Can Get Hard-Of-Hearing Killed