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Information Technology Technical Assistance and Training Center: Promoting accessibility through training and assistance.
 
 
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funded by:
National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research
(grant #H133A000405)


Georgia Institute of Technology

|
CATEA


*** ITTATC has reached the end of its 5-year grant, so (as of 5/15/06) this website is no longer being updated. Please be advised that the information on this site may be out of date. ***


Section 1: Introduction

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Section 1: Introduction

A set of structured interviews with experts in the field of accessible design was conducted in support of the Information Technology Technical Assistance and Training Center (ITTATC) at Georgia Tech. These interviews were a part of the overall needs assessment activity of the ITTATC project. The results of those surveys are documented in a separate report (Fain, Cianciolo, Whaley, and Hancock, 2001). The purpose of the present report is to present a blended, optimistic vision of the future of accessible information technology, based on the data collected in that survey. Desirable characteristics of this blended vision are as follows:
  • The vision should be aggressively optimistic, but should remain within realistic bounds.
  • The vision should be based on opinions expressed by the experts who participated in the survey.
  • The vision should be internally consistent (i.e., no contradictory components).
  • The vision should focus on goals that are attainable within the next 5 to 10 years
  • The vision should not require revolutionary technologies, but rather should require robust evolution of existing technologies.
The rationale for a blended vision is that no one expert in a rapidly-evolving field is likely to be expert in all aspects of that field, and individual experts are apt to have areas of pessimism that arise from their experiences working in a field. Thus it is necessary to sample opinions from multiple, diverse, leading experts in the field, and to extract the optimistic, visionary views from each one. These optimistic views are then combined into a coherent vision of the future. The resulting product is a description that may not represent the view of any one expert in the field, but does represent an interpretation of the collective view of experts in the field.

The blended optimistic vision should be interpreted as attainable but not inevitable. Its primary usefulness is to guide the efforts of researchers, developers, trainers, and advocates within the field. In the present context, this blended optimistic vision will help define the goals of the ITTATC training and technical assistance programs over the next few years.


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Information Technology Technical Assistance and Training Center
Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access
Georgia Institute of Technology
490 10th Street NW · Atlanta, GA 30318
Telephone: 1-800-726-9119 (Voice/TTY) · Fax: 404-894-9320 · Email: ittatc@ittatc.org