Lame

So I just spent my Saturday evening in front of my computer. Lame ass.

Anyway, I added a link to this blog's RSS feed, added a blogger profile pic, and updated my online resume. It's not that I'm looking for a job--I'm enjoying my new job very much, thank you--but if you want to steal me away by showering me with fat wads of cash, send me an email and we can discuss it.

Family

The family is coming along nicely... You'll notice the literal hierarchy:

Dress Up!

LibrarianDressUp.com

I wish they had a male version of this.

CSUN: An accessible approach to usability testing

Elizabeth Neil
Web Content Manager
AFB

Use research: benchmark for effectiveness.

Remote usability testing helps recruit a good mix.

Define user group.
Is there special equipment required?
Access criterion is more important than disability in their experience is more a function access method than disability.

Sampling techniques:
Snowballing, find one person and then use their contacts.
Random sampling, good but more suited to a lager population.
Quota sampling, fill specific criteria until defined number is met.
Opportunity sampling, finding folks who are at particular place, like a conference. Might be biased.

Recruitment strategies:
Organizations
lists
personal connections
programs

Types of research
Focus groups: more informal; usually most useful as a starting place. What people think they need.

Card sorting: How people sort information. Provide cards and see how people sort them. May need to be done creatively for his to be accessible, ie with Braille or large print.

Prototyping: can be useful early.

Heuristic review: use preexisting standards. Don't reinvent the wheel.

User's experience interviews: what are the user's expectations based on design.

Quantitative testing: time spent on task, keystrokes, etc.

Benefits of remote testing: real world testing, reduces burden on the user.

Links to web design standards cited on presentation slides.

Continue to ask for comments after a product is live.

CSUN: Riding the wave: Electronic gaming for persons with disabilities

Head mouse: for PC Mac, pointing device.

Coplaying: where one person playing a game with the direction of another. Showed a father son playing a FPS.

Leads to productive learning and work.

Unbelievable vid of a kid who can only use move his thumb. Plays fps and war craft.

Neither presenter has expertise with gaming for folks with visual impairment.

CSUN: DAISY Production from a Text Source

Ron Stewart, Peter Proscia, Dennis Leas, Reed Shaffner and George Kerscher

Starting in MS Word adding in headings and alt tags.
Using DAISY Converter to convert the doc to daisy.
Requires TTS: Text To Speech, for audio output.

Eclipse Wizard: another DAISY production tool. Eclipse has other tools as well. Seems like a good tool.
Uses DNA file format: Small file which contains text and structure information. DNA can export to a wide range of devices.

MS Word export to DAISY.
Goals: -reduce barriers to baseline production.
-Clean up what people consume.
-Bring DAISY to mainstream population.
New beta available on source forge on May 21.

gh, LLC
Service: media conversion.
Product: gh Player
quick ad dirty text to DAISY with minimal heading information.

DAISY pipeline
Open source / accessible
Adequate for larger production.

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A few notes here: DAISY Pipeline is a tool that CILS currently uses as part of our DAISY production process. I was particularly impressed with Eclipse, and I think we’ll demo it once we’re back in the office. The other useful tool will be the MS Word export to DAISY tool, which should significantly lower the barrier to basic DAISY production for many people. It seems to me that this will be useful for professors and other instructors who need to make materials available to students.

We also met with George Kerscher while at CSUN… He moderated this session. He's a man who really seems to understand the things, and he’s a strong advocate for DAISY. A little while ago I posted a YouTube vid of him discussing DAISY.

CSUN: Best Practices in Accessibility: An IT Perspective

IT Industry Council, Accessibility committee.
Members on this panel: Nokia, Cannon, RIM, AOL and HP.
Moderated by Ken Salaets.

Nokia: making accessible mobile devices. Also accessible software such as readers.
Open architecture that allows others to develop accessibly apps.

Cannon: now making accessible copying / multifunction device. Universal design approach. Offering audio and speech recognition.
Import of AT as part of brand image.
Focus on preparing to serve the aging population.

RIM: Canadian! Formalized accessibility processes within product development and customer interactions. Universal design approach.
Focus on industry collaboration.
Develop customers for life, ie ageing boomers.

AOL: Awareness, responsibility, collaboration. Working on captioning on the web.
Accessible webmail product. 4.5% AOL webmail views through accessible streams.

HP: Good term: coopitition.
Also looking at age related disabilities... Good business case here.
Good question to ask yourself: Accessible to whom, doing what, in what environment.
HP.com/accessibility

Overview:
Import of developing corporate culture.
Cooperation.
Dedicated staff resources (advocates) with other people on-board.

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NB: Although it wasn’t explicitly stated, the business case underpinning this session was that companies are incorporating assistive technology more and more, but nit because it’s the right thing to do: a legislated mandate to accommodate and an aging population make assistive tech both legally necessary and potentially profitable.

CSUN: Improving access to web interaction at Google

Charles L Chen and T.V. Raman

Content and interaction underpin the web.
Content accessibility is well addressed, interaction not so much.

Presentation notes posted at Google accessibility group.

Web 1.0 static web controls
Web 2.0 dynamic websites, usually not standard controls or HTML.

WAI-ARIA maps between 2.0 widgets and 1.0
Also interprets dynamic / updating content.
Web apps with WAI-ARIA: you need your web app to include WAI-ARIA as well as a WAI-ARIA enabled browser.

Design principles Web Development Tool kit
ARIA automatically included
keyboard support
widgets accessible by default

Gap analysis
script enhanced as tool to allow assistive technology to access dynamic content currently not available.

Google reader now ARIA accessible. It's the test.

New feature for Google search page: key navigation with reader (JAWS) automatically loads next page when scrolling through results.

CSUN Session: Web accessibility: legal ramifications & awareness within higher education.

Cynthia Wadell, ICDRI

1 Americans with disabilities act.
2 UK case.
3 UN treaty on rights for persons with disabilities.

1
Defined: impaired abilities.
Protection from discrimination in employment practices... What if inaccessible website?
Import of accessibility officer and complaint procedure.
NB: Exact legal ramifications specific, here, to US
law... ADA = Americans with Disabilities Act.

2
Latif vs. PMI
UK based case.
Applied to US companies operating in the UK.

3
UN treaty on rights of persons with disabilities.
Impacts ~350 million people world wide.
At least 125 countries have signed.
-Process of alignment of laws internationally.

Resources:
Cynthia's book: Web Accessibility. (2006)
cynthiasays.com free online web accessibility checker.
-Not a substitute for human judgment.
Cynthia's digital divide paper available on line. Linked from ICDRI.org website.

CSUN Session: Accessible PDF authoring

Greg Pisoky and Pete De Vasto
from Adobe

ISO 32000 standard for PDF

Adobe reader: works with screen readers, magnifiers, alternative input devices.
MSAA compliant user interface.
Reader now has ocr, automatic tagging built in, reflow to organize columns & images.

Word processing.
Adobe pdf maker works with MS office.
MS also has a pdf maker as a free download.
OpenOffice writer can export accessible pdf as well.

Content prep:
-Do not apply formats and fonts for editing. Use rather styles and headings.
-Never trust software to do anything.
-Check your work manually.
Automated tool for checking and repair prior to pfd publication. LK4 technology.
Adobe offers tools for postproduction pdf accessibility correction.

Word techniques:
-Apply normal style, global remove tabs, formatting (bold etc).
-Wordwise book =good resource.
-Format picture, web tab can allow you to insert alt text.
-Use headings in word. This is accessibility best practice, and also general design best practice. There are short cuts and tools to make this easier.

Adobe PDF Maker has accessibility options.

NB: print as PDF does not create accessible PDF, rather you must save as a PDF.

-Checking and repair.
New version of acrobat pro has accessibility checking: start with accessibility report.

For handout (not up yet):
Anderw Kirkpatrick’s accessibility blog: blogs.adobe.com/accessibility

CSUN: Keynote notes

Jonn Williams (Introduction).
Talked about the development of assistive technology.
Referenced two sites:
Assistive technology News: www.atechnews.com
My MS My Way: www.mymsmyway.com

Keynote: Jim Fruchterman

Raising the floor for people with disability.

Former Caltech rocket scientist.
Current social entreprenure: www.benetech.org
Makes software to track social injustice.
Also runs BookShare, providing accessible ebooks: www.bookshare.org

Williams' original idea: pattern recognition app for blind people.

Became involved with ocr to speech systems in 1970s. Projects transitioned into Arkenstone - which was organized as nonprofit.
Arkenstone succeeded through the 90s. Arkenstone bought by freedom scientific. Benetech emerged later with larger mandate, including human-rights.
Software for human rights groups, including who dif what to whom database. Ie Milosevic trial.

Other venture; BookShare. Community scans and proofs and uploads to the book share library.

Current vision for assistive technology
1 drop price by a factor of ten. As with other technology that has penetrated like cellular phones.
2 Cell phone seen as new platform for assistive technology.
3 Open source is third component.
Mentioned also creative commons.

Raising the floor granted 32 million to pursue free e-text and assistive technology.

Weather Relativity.

I just arrived in LA for CSUN. It's about 22 degrees and sunny here. I mention this because if it were this warm in Canada everyone would be in shorts and tank-tops. Even when it warmed up to about 10 degrees a few weeks ago, far too many people took the opportunity to display their flabby, white Canadian winter flesh. Here, most people have on long shirts and jackets--in the 20+ degrees weather.

It just goes to show that everything is relative: I'm sure that in eastern Canada they'll be in shorts as soon as it warms to zero... poor SOBs.

DAISY

Here's a primer for CSUN. It's about Daisy books (Digital Accessible Information SYstem), an accessable electronic book format useful to print-disabled folks.

Here's the vid:

CSUN Conference 2008

Next week I'm going to be at the CSUN technology and persons with disability conference in LA. Assuming I can get a wi-fi signal, I'm going to blog the convention from the floor using my Nokia N800. In fact, this is my test post with the N800, and I think it's going swimmingly.