Underlying Access Principles and Strategies for Access - Today and Tomorrow

1. Underlying Access Principles and Strategies for Access - Today and Tomorrow Gregg Vanderheiden Ph.D. Trace R & D Center University of Wisconsin – Madison NIST IT Access Conf. May 2001

2. Trace R & D Center • Trace is a Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center – funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) • Primary focus is access to Information Technologies and Telecommunications (joint with Gallaudet U.) • Balanced Program • Research • Solution Development • Tools Development • Technical Assistance / Tech Transfer • Training

3. Trace Center Focus RE 508 • Trace is a research center and resource to the process by all sides • Funded by Government • The primary direct customer of our products/output is Industry • Primary Beneficiaries are people with disabilities (access) and industry (ideas). • Section 508 sets the government requirements • These were purposely left vague to allow both for innovation and for application across technologies • Leaves it up to companies to figure out how to achieve these on their different technologies • Trace’s efforts are in this are are focused in 6 areas - all in support of companies’ efforts to create more accessible products for people with disabilities.

4. Doing research to find new, more effective ways to provide access that is easier to incorporate seamlessly and inexpensively in standard products. Working with a variety of companies to: Identify opportunities for making their products more accessible Help them solve problems that arise with certain products or features Collecting and condensing different ideas 1000+  200 - 300 6 Principal Areas of Effort

6. Doing research to find new, more effective ways to provide access that is easier to incorporate seamlessly and inexpensively in standard products. Working with a variety of companies to: Identify opportunities for making their products more accessible Help them solve problems that arise with certain products or features Collecting and condensing different ideas 1000+  200-300 6 Principal Areas of Effort • Helping to identify prioritization strategies.

7. Example Preliminary Usable Without Vision Priority 1 – Provide a means for the user to: • To perceive all (non-decorative) information (without vision). • Including all control labels and all control status. • (without requiring the user to know Braille). • To discern controls from their surrounding (without vision). • Only necessary for those controls needed to access all functions of product. • To tell when (these) controls have been activated. • Nocontrols which would be accidentally activated when locating or operating the “non-visual access mode” controls. (e.g. touch activated) If public or shared / occasional • Easily discover the instructions on how to operate the aid without vision (if the product is not always in a mode that can be used without vision). If they are unable to operate it directly (and their AT would allow them to) OR they need to and are unable to operate it efficiently enough (e.g. personal workstation) • to connect the assistive technologies they need to use the product .

8. Example Preliminary Additional Strategies for Access without Vision Strategies with varying levels of importance • Ability to interrupt and advance speech cues. • Error prevention, consequence minimization, and recovery • Strategies for increasing predictability • Strategies to facilitate searching for and locating controls • Strategies to help remember location of controls • Strategies to facilitate personal labeling of product

9. Doing research to find new, more effective ways to provide access that is easier to incorporate seamlessly and inexpensively in standard products. Working with a variety of companies to: Identify opportunities for making their products more accessible Help them solve problems that arise with certain products or features Collecting and condensing different ideas 1000+  200-300 Helping to identify prioritization strategies. Phones Copiers Security systems V2 etc. 6 Principal Areas of Effort • Developing basic solution sets for different technologies • Touch screen Kiosks • Voting • ATM • Computers

10. PBX - Blurred Vision of PBX Phone

11. Example of EZ Button Help on a PBX Phone Preliminary Compilation

12. Stationary vs Moving Scales

13. Stationary vs Moving Scales

14. Reference Design for a Cross-Disability Accessible Cell Phone

15. Reference Design • Created to address • Requests for examples on how to meet guidelines • Concerns that solutions for different disabilities would conflict with each other • To demonstrate how mass market features could be used to address disability access issues (and vice versa). • To show that not all techniques had to be used to make a product accessible. • To demonstrate how much of the access requirements could be met purely with changes to software.

16. Achieving access via Mass Market Features • Basically starts with a Standard Phone • With vibrating ringer, menu buttons, headset jack, nib on 5 • That is hearing aid compatible • That implements the Lucent or Ericsson (built in) TTY sol’n. [S] • Then adds the following General Purpose features • A baby sitter feature (auto dial and answer) [Software] • A Silent operation mode (text chat) [Software] • A QuickHelp feature [Software] • A No Timeout Option [Software] • “Eyes Free” Mode (One item on menu) [Software]

17. You now have a phone…. • Accessible across major disability areas • Blindness • Low Vision • Hard of Hearing • Deafness • Physical Disability • Cognitive • Inability to read • Cost • All 5 features are software

18. Other Touches (optional) • Shape of keys to reinforce function • Nibs on other keys • Ridge above and below the 3x4 block • Optional “Email in the Hotel Room” Keyboard • Speakerphone function • Voice Dialing • Voice Typing for SMS But you don’t have to do these to make phone accessible.

19. Who is not able to use it today… • People who are Deaf-Blind • People who are Paralyzed • How in the future… • V2 - A new remote interface standard being developedby the industry group NCITS coupled with emerging wireless networking (Jini, UPP etc.)

21. Far in the future? • It is possible to implement all features today with only software modifications • Ericsson has a prototype phone with some of these features today • Standard phone programmed to add features.

22. KIOSK DEMO

23. Doing research to find new, more effective ways to provide access that is easier to incorporate seamlessly and inexpensively in standard products. Working with a variety of companies to: Identify opportunities for making their products more accessible Help them solve problems that arise with certain products or features Collecting and condensing different ideas 1000+  200-300 Helping to identify prioritization strategies. Developing basic solution sets for different technologies 6 Principal Areas of Effort • Providing training opportunities to industry and to industry consultants

25. For more information http://trace.wisc.edu/ http://trace.wisc.edu/ufcdesign Thank You