Category: Policy – ICT

Beware digital consultants who offer a range of services “plus Accessibility services”. If they list it as a separate service then it is likely they don’t truly know what it is. Why? Because accessibility should be built-in regardless. It’s not an added extra. But it is specialised.

As Sheri Byrne-Haber says,
“Just because you are good at one does not make you good at the other”. If you say you are good at both it implies you don’t understand the business drivers for either.

In her article Byrne-Haber lists some other mistakes commonly made by consultants:
1. They assume that you can wave a magic wand over people and turn them into accessibility testers.
2. They rarely employ people with disability, but outsource to disability services and pay them a pittance for their knowledge.
3. They tell people they can do every type of accessibility testing in their contact messages.

Byrne-Haber also points out that digital accessibility specialists will be in demand as disability discrimination legislation gets tighter. Big tech companies are already on board with an increasingly diverse workforce. But you do need to know what questions to ask. The list of questions to ask is in her article, Vetting Accessibility Vendors.  

Gerard Goggin has written a thoughtful piece on the issue of automated vehicles and how they might, or might not, be a boon for people with disability. The value of automated vehicles for people with disability is often mentioned in articles related to this technology, but will that value be realised? The article raises some important points about the depiction of disability and how it is communicated and how that plays out into the world of technological development. Goggin covers “blind driving”, developments by Google and Waymo and more. Mentioning the inclusion of older people and people with disability as good news stories is insufficient to put these users at the centre of designs. Written in academic style but important thinking going on here. The title of the article is, Disability, Connected Cars, and Communication.

Introduction: In this article, I take up a highly visible theme in discourses, experimentation, and manufacture of connected cars and autonomous vehicles: disability. I analyze the leading ways in which this new kind of technology is imagined for particular users with disability, as in the highly publicized case of Google’s pilot driverless vehicle promoted as a boon for blind people and those with vision impairments. Then, I try to stand this kind of framing of connected-cars-as-good-for-disability on its head, and discuss the implications for questions of emerging social technology, equality, diversity, and design. Reflecting on this analysis, I look at what disability tells us about connected cars, and, indeed, how we might rethink communication and technology.

Note: Gerard Goggin co-authored a book, “Disability in Australia: exposing a social apartheid”. Written in 2005, it is still relevant today. It can be bought online or accessed through the National Library of Australia.  

The international Digital Accessibility Rights Evaluation Index (DARE) rates Australia as 71 points out of 100. Apparently this makes us 12th in global rankings with an implementation ranking of 10th. The index takes Australia’s laws and regulations, policies and programs, and capacity to implement inclusive technology into the scale. It seems Australia has full capacity to implement, but has only just passed the halfway mark in actual implementation.

More detail is available on the G3ict website. You can also see the score of other countries. Oman has the top overall global ranking of 81 points.

G3ict has also produced a report with more detail. “The report gathers insights from the survey by Level Access in cooperation with G3ict on the current state of accessibility in organizations as undertaken by 550 professionals from organizations of all sectors. The high number of responses shows the considerable interest for trends in accessibility implementation. Readers are encouraged to go through the detailed results of the survey and compare them to their own experience to help advance their own endeavors and the accessibility profession at large.”

As technology races ahead we need to be thinking quickly about policy development, and ethical questions related to artificial intelligence and the level to which it can affect our lives for good and perhaps not so good. Monash University has produced an 11 minute video in which several speakers have their say on the topic of automation and artificial intelligence. Good points are made from both an ethical perspective and a practical perspective. One point not mentioned is whether all such technology will be inclusive for all users.