Inclusive Technologies

Inclusive Technologies at CSUN 2013

Jim Tobias — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 21:00:21 +0000

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”.

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

New Resource for Accessible Workplace ICT

Jim Tobias — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 14:46:21 +0000

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.

Inclusive Technologies Joins New Project on Cloud-based Accessibility

Jim Tobias — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 14:34:52 +0000

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.

Department of Labor Office on Disability Employment Policy Webcast on Emerging Technologies

Jim Tobias — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 10:17:49 +0000

Jim Tobias of Inclusive Technologies participated in an Office on Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) webcast on August 16, 2012. It was a chance to discuss how emerging technologies like the cloud and mobile apps will address accessibility. Under Secretary Kathy Martinez, Vint Cerf of Google, and Jim kicked around some interesting ideas about the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure and getting information out to more people who could benefit from accessible solutions.

New Spider-Man movie fails to break “disavillainy” connection

Jim Tobias — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 15:34:21 +0000

There’s a new Spider-Man movie out (no, I won’t link to it — if you haven’t already been slimed by the promos, you probably don’t live close enough to a theatre anyway). And like seemingly every work of fiction since the Bible (no comments, please), the bad guy just has to be someone with a disability. In the current case, the real trouble begins when the character attempts to do something about his missing arm. So the message is … leave half-well enough alone? Stay tuned for the accessible technology remakes: wheelchairs become Transformers that swallow their riders whole; Chucky as an AAC device that whispers and kills; JAWS terrorizes web surfers.

Web accessibility video — please comment on the rough cut

Jim Tobias — Tue, 22 May 2012 14:03:58 +0000

We’ve put together a new music video about web accessibility, called “POUR Me a Website”. Take a look and leave a comment here or on YouTube.

New Web Accessibility Video

Jim Tobias — Tue, 08 May 2012 09:06:31 +0000

Here’s a new video that promotes web accessibility by striking at the core of some myths about it. It’s got a beat you can dance or code to, and best of all, it’s from the Government of Australia.

New Animation About Cloud-based Accessibility

Jim Tobias — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 14:41:40 +0000

For those of you familiar with the animation we did for the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII), here’s a new one for part of GPII, Flexible Learning for Open Education (Floe).

What kind of animation or visualization would you most like to see developed, in the area of accessible technology? There are so many points worth making: universal design, the size of the disabled user base, who are we reaching (and not reaching), etc. Maybe I’ll put up a poll….

Health Care Kiosks Popping Up Everywhere?

Jim Tobias — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 10:35:17 +0000

HealthSpot is preparing to offer large, enclosed health care kiosks in public locations so people can access their records, their physicians, and other medical services from anywhere. What a great idea! These virtual clinics could be in pharmacies, airports, college campuses, rural libraries, even in developing countries. We’re hoping that enough attention is being paid to usability and accessibility in the design, as this product sits in a market and policy hotspot — there’s lots of attention right now on making both kiosks and health IT as inclusive as possible.

AFB Publishes Another Worthwhile Study of “Consumer Vs. Technology”

Jim Tobias — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:33:49 +0000

The American Foundation for the Blind’s (AFB) AccessWorld has published the results of a new study on barriers encountered by people who are blind or have low vision when they use everyday household and electronic devices. The results include an all-too-familiar list: no speech output, no physical landmarks, and unreadable printed and electronic text. AFB wonders if touchscreens and small displays are actually making these products less accessible, and it’s hard to argue against that.

AFB surveyed 2 groups of people: a random sample of American households, screened for vision loss; and a sample of people who had previous contact with AFB. Read the article to see the interesting ways in which these 2 groups differed in demographics and in technology use.