The last word: Opening up IT to disabled people

Regular

posted 21 Feb 2005 in Volume 1 Issue 7

The last word: Opening up IT to disabled people

By John Lamb

Most of us don’t give it a second thought as we punch the buttons on our telephone handset, but for Jamie Branford, who works at an Inland Revenue call centre in the UK, dialling someone on a conventional phone is virtually impossible – because he can’t see well enough.

For years he was confined to mundane administrative tasks until last year his employer adapted its systems to cater for Jamie’s poor eyesight. By displaying a keyboard on screen and providing a magnification program, the Inland Revenue enabled Jamie to dial calls and read scripts.

Jamie is not alone – there are some seven million disabled people of working age in Britain, many of whom cannot use a computer without assistance. And as the population ages, more and more of us are going to need help using the tools that are an essential part of most white-collar work.

Pressure on employers and the IT industry to do more to cater for those who have difficulty using conventional systems is growing too. In the UK, the Disability Discrimination Act requires employers to make ‘reasonable adaptations’ to the workplace. This year the government is likely to strengthen the law to require the public sector to make life easier for disabled employees.

This is what happened in the US where Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires federal agencies to provide access for disabled people to all the IT that they buy. This law has ensured that suppliers take accessibility seriously.

In Britain, however, awareness of the IT needs of disabled people is low and many employers are reluctant to improve things. This is especially true of organisations with web sites, which, despite growing knowledge about best practice and the availability of tools to help disabled users, are mostly still not disability friendly.

Automated test programs and personal inspections by experts have been used to survey sites run by well-known organisations. Most sites fail these high profile inspections. Even the UK’s Disability Rights Commission, the official body that represents disabled people, has been accused of falling short of the highest standards.

One barrier to wider accessibility is the fear that assistive technology is expensive. And although some items of kit are more costly than their conventional counterparts, a large number of alterations can be made at little cost. Grants are available under the Access to Work scheme run by the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions to cover the additional costs of employing a disabled person.

Innovation in technology is another problem. Accessible versions of new technology tend to lag behind its introduction for use by able-bodied users. For that reason, Linux is less accessible than Windows and disability campaigners recently had to press hard to ensure suppliers of thin-client systems provided interfaces for assistive software. Only in the coming months will PDAs appear on the market with user interfaces that will allow blind people to use them.

Some of the technology that has been produced for disabled people is astonishing. The Dasher text entry system developed at Cambridge University in the UK allows people to write on screen without using their hands. The system uses infrared tracking to detect which letter a user is looking at from an alphabet down the right hand side of the screen. The longer a user looks at a letter, the bigger it gets and the quicker it moves to the left hand side of the screen. By staring at letters and whole words suggested by the system, a skilled user can write almost as quickly as a typist. The letters and words appear to well up on the screen, before being assembled in the writing area.

But many of the aids disabled people need are very simple: oversized keyboards for those with an uncertain touch, key guards to guide fingers onto keys, big switches the size of yo-yos to control software and so on. There is a thriving ‘assistive technology’ industry that provides these add-ons.

Mainstream companies are also taking more interest in making their systems accessible. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Hewlett-Packard have all made efforts to do more for disabled people. Even Adobe, whose Acrobat software was once threatened with a boycott by the US Congress, hired its fiercest critic to advise on how it could make the program interface with software used by blind people and other disabled users.

IBM has developed a service called Web Adaptation Technology (WAT) that allows disabled users to make standard web pages more accessible without having to delve into their desktop operating systems. WAT is being offered free to not-for-profit organisations able to distribute the service to elderly and disabled people.

Users access standard websites via a host system and a small program downloaded to their desktop computer, which adjusts pages to make them easier to read. They can set up and store personal settings on the system that are activated every time they log on.

Microsoft takes accessibility seriously enough to have commissioned research by the Forrester Group into IT and disability in the US. The survey found that while 60 per cent of Americans were disabled to some degree, only five per cent of severely disabled people used assistive technology and less than 20 per cent used commonly available disability features.

The company predicts that the market for accessible products could grow by as much as 60 per cent in coming years, which may be why Microsoft has promised to build accessibility features into Longhorn, its new operating system.

“Now there is little market penetration – we have reached only 5 per cent of our potential customers,” says Madelyne Bryant McIntire, US director of Microsoft’s Accessible Technology Group. “An ageing workforce means we need to broaden adoption.”

IT systems are getting easier for disabled people to use, but progress is sometimes painfully slow and it will be a long time before someone like Jamie can walk into any employer and expect the company to provide the technology they need to work with its IT.

John Lamb is editor of Ability Magazine (www.abilitymagazine.org.uk)