Saturday, March 15, 2008

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.



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.

Labels:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home