Category Archives: News

Going to be at the International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference in San Diego this week? Please visit our presentations if you’re interested, and stop by to say “hi”.

• Advanced Concepts in Accessible Video
• Clarifying the Accessibility Market
• Making Progress on Global Inclusion (GPII)
• Panel: Preferences for Global Access
• App Factory: Assistive and Accessibility Apps

Not on the program, so bonus points for anyone who asks me about inClue or Mr. Potential Head.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office on Disability Employment Policy has funded a new project — the Accessible Technology Action Center; Inclusive Technologies’s Jim Tobias will be its Technical Director. To quote from the ODEP press release:

“The development and adoption of accessible, universally designed technology is vital to ensuring that individuals with disabilities are hired and successful at work,” said Kathy Martinez, assistant secretary of labor for disability employment policy. “We are extremely excited about the creativity and expertise RESNA will bring to our newest effort to promote accessible technology in the workplace.”

ATAC will collect and disseminate highly detailed information that employers and employees can use right away, and workplace ICT developers can use to make their products more accessible. We’ll be gathering much of this information from the grassroots, so please contact us to learn more and hook up.

As part of its support for the idea of a Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII), the U.S. Department of Education recently funded a project to develop ways for people to explore, refine, and store their needs and preferences for interfaces. Inclusive Technologies will be part of the team; we’ll be focusing on possible users and stakeholders — who they are, how they operate now, and how they might like such a system to work for them.

Phillip Torrone of MAKE Magazine argues cogently that companies that are abandoning products should release information about them that would aid follow-on developers and tinkerers. This makes a lot of sense, and there’s an accessibility angle. Many products that are especially useful to people with disabilities abruptly disappear from the market, when hobbyists and even AT companies would be glad to give them a second chance.