ITTATC - Section 4: Comprehensive Statement of the Vision

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Section 4: Comprehensive Statement of the Vision

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Section 4: Comprehensive Statement of the Vision

Sections:

4.1. Objectives of Accessible Design

4.2. Barriers to Accessible Design

4.3. Accessible Devices and Technologies

4.4. Federal Government Regulations

4.5. Accessible Design Process

4.6. Other Influences on Accessible Design

4.7. Training

4.1 Objectives of Accessible Design

Individuals with permanent or temporary disabilities represent a growing proportion of the population in the United States. As the fundamental nature of American society becomes increasingly dominated by information technology, it is important to remove artificial, unnecessary barriers that prevent full participation in society by individuals with disabilities. Access to information technology is essential to productivity in the workforce and to the consumption of the goods and services offered in our economy.

Providing accessible information technology to the widest possible segment of society serves two fundamental societal goals. First, accessible information technology helps achieve and preserve the dignity of individuals with disabilities by including them in mainstream society and giving them access to all goods and services offered to the general public. Second, accessible information technology facilitates the contributions to society from individuals with disabilities, by allowing their full participation in the workforce and in the marketplace. There is a dual benefit reaped from achieving this goal - the drain on public and private resources associated with supporting individuals with disabilities is reduced, and their contributions to overall productivity and consumption are increased. These individuals are often quite capable of working productively and performing many activities for themselves, such as communicating, traveling, and shopping for themselves. The barriers to their full participation in society are often artificial and unnecessary.

There are, of course, individuals with such profound disabilities that special accommodations must be made in order for them to have reasonable and equitable access to information in the Information Age. Even for these individuals that require special accommodations, it is important for society to be more compassionate, to recognize that everyone potentially has a productive role in society, and to realize that every person should have equivalent access to participation in society to the extent that is practical.

The U.S. government and various state and local governments are increasingly willing (and required) to hire people with disabilities. This trend increases the need for accessible information technology in the workplace and increases the purchasing power of the federal government with respect to accessible products.

The technology required to provide accessibility to information systems and services is often straightforward and well within the reach of current systems. The basic technical solution is to provide appropriate display and control modality options, configured to remove unnecessary barriers to access. For example, voice input and output can solve many accessibility problems for individuals who are blind or have low vision or for individuals with manual disabilities that prevent the operation of a keyboard or mouse.

Another important technical goal is to create open source technical guidelines and standards to facilitate further creation and refinement of accessible products. This will allow companies to invest in solutions that will be compatible with other products in the same environment.

Implementing these straightforward technical solutions, and achieving the larger societal goals, will require organizational commitment on the part of industry - including individual businesses as well as industry trade groups. The recognition of the value of accessibility of information technology must pervade the entire organization, from senior management to the sales and marketing force, and must certainly include the technical staff that designs, refines, and tests products. It is important to change the perception that accessible design is a government-mandated feature to be resisted in the name of higher profits. It is important to transform accessibility into a routine consideration throughout the design process. This transformation will happen as businesses become aware of the benefits of accessible information technology.

4.2 Barriers to Accessible Design

The technical barriers to accessible design are readily solvable with existing technologies for most types of disabilities. Products of the future will routinely feature multiple control and display modality options. Voice input and output technologies will continue to mature. Voice recognition will increase in accuracy to the point that it is nearly 100 percent reliable, speaker-independent, and requires little familiarization on the part of users.

Alternate forms of display and control will be available to support the needs and preferences of individual consumers. For many products, users with disabilities can buy the product configured with the options that are accessible for them. Products available in public places, and for general usage in the workplace, will be configured with multiple interface options so that all users can use them. Users will have the flexibility to use any mode (visual, tactile, audible) or multiple modes for both input and output.

The sophistication of specialized assistive technologies will also increase. Many features that now require specialized technologies will be handled routinely by common, built-in features of devices. Specialized technologies will become increasingly associated with disabilities, or combinations of disabilities, that are relatively rare or relatively extreme.

Organizational barriers to accessible design will be overcome as the market creates the demand for accessible products. The need to make sales to the general public and to large customers such as the federal government (which requires accessible products) will cause managers and others to understand that accessibility is an essential requirement for information technology products. Thus the major drivers of organizational change will be business drivers - and these drivers will change the processes in which technology and products are designed.

Profit motivation will be a major business driver. As market analysts better understand the changing market for information technology, they will recognize the growing value of having accessible technologies - and the lost opportunities associated with not having them. There will be individual success stories of companies that profited by incorporating accessible technologies. Others will follow suit when they realize that it is a good business decision to make these accommodations in their designs.

The increased employment of people with disabilities in organizations will also have an impact, particularly for companies that have executives with disabilities (or close acquaintances with disabilities) and that understand the artificiality of barriers to accessibility. Companies will respond to the increasing consumer demand for accessible products and to the need to provide accessible systems to their own employees. Eventually, the threat of negative publicity will compel the final stragglers to embrace accessibility as an essential requirement.

Informational barriers to achieving the goals of accessible design will be overcome as consumers and other purchasers learn about availability of accessible products and as marketing and sales personnel learn that accessibility is a strong selling point. The demand for the products and knowledge of what is achievable (and available), will lead to increased appreciation of its value - and hence of its marketability.

Consumer groups will disseminate information about products, and advocacy groups will disseminate information about the rights of workers with disabilities and the rights of users of public services and facilities. The absence of accessible products will stigmatize businesses or facilities that resist adoption of accessible standards, as information becomes more widely available.

Financial barriers to achieving the goals of accessible design will dissipate as the market for accessible products grows - largely fueled by the aging baby-boomers in the U.S. The most important driving factor in any product design is sales, and the sales potential for accessible products will exceed that of inaccessible products. If all aspects of accessibility are considered, there is a significant financial incentive for providing accessible products and services. The mass benefits of accessibility will be recognized, not only for people with disabilities, but for people with varied abilities or who work in environments with varied constraints.

Legal barriers are few, and they will fade as individuals and advocacy groups learn how to file complaints and pursue remedies and as laws and regulations become more specific and targeted.

4.3 Accessible Devices and Technologies

In general, common information technology devices, such as desktop and laptop computers, telephones, mobile phones, copiers, fax machines, printers, pagers, and hand-held electronic devices, will become accessible. In addition, devices in public places, such as self-service terminals, kiosks, automated teller machines, and public telephone systems, will become accessible. Accessible devices and technologies will also include the following:

Self-service ticket vending machines in transportation facilities
Web sites
Information kiosks in airports, shopping malls, and other public places
Microsoft Windows applications
Handheld internet appliances
Automobiles
Home information system networks
Emerging mobile wireless technology including PDAs

Accessible technologies for individuals with disabilities will also provide an infrastructure for addressing other accessibility concerns, such as language barriers and cultural and educational differences. Incorporating accessible functionality into mainstream products will make those products more accessible to persons with disabilities, and to other consumers without disabilities, who have the same lack of ability.

4.4 Federal Government Regulations

Enforcement of Section 508 and other regulations will provide impetus for companies to develop and market accessible products and services, thereby leading to a change in the design processes for IT products and to the strengthening of the assistive technology industry. This will lead to an increase in the amount of interaction between industry and the accessibility community. Large companies will take the lead in developing accessibility inherent to their products in response to Section 508. It will result in the development of more accessible mainstream technology. The enforcement of Section 508 will attract attention of senior management, which will in turn result in change in the way things are done within companies.

The Federal government, as one of the major buyers of accessible technology, will drive changes in business practices and products. Businesses will strive to meet this customer's needs, and thus will change their products across the board. Industry will begin to learn that once you make a product more usable for people with disabilities, everybody will be able to use it more easily, and everybody will want it. Designers and developers will get more involved in the creative solutions of problems.

4.5 Accessible Design Process

Emerging standards and conventions for accessibility and for compatibility with assistive technologies will become ingrained in the design process as basic requirements. In addition, usability assessments will routinely include users with disabilities as part of the pool of users. Human factors professionals will include accessibility as a basic element in their input into design and evaluation activities. Designers and evaluators will solicit more input from people who have disabilities, instead of trying to imagine what it is like to have a certain disability. They will integrate people with disabilities into the evaluation and design process. They will also share knowledge about solutions with other companies to facilitate achieving accessibility.

Organizations will change their processes to integrate accessibility into their standards and practices. Accessibility will become a built-in feature, not an add-on. Accessibility will be an aspect of every product offered.

4.6 Other Influences on Accessible Design

The changing demographics of the American public will be a major influence on accessible design. Unlike their parents, aging baby-boomers will not be content with products that are incompatible with low vision, hearing loss, arthritic hands, and mild cognitive impairments. Their discontent with inaccessible products will create a growing market for accessible products and for products that are compatible with common assistive technologies. Consumers will begin to demand more in the way of usability simply because of aging. Component manufacturers will become more sensitive to the limitations of aging users and will market products accessible to them. Designers will better understand the functional limitations that are a result of the aging process and will develop accommodations for those limitations. Thus, accessibility will cease to be a problem associated with the "disabled" and become a more general problem. The older population will insist on using accessible information technology, and the market will respond.

In addition to changes associated with aging, the American public is also changing by virtue of the increasing proportion of individuals for whom English is a second language, or a foreign language. Limited facility with English creates a need for simplified interfaces and for built-in interface options (such as use of Spanish, rather than English). As devices such as ATMs, self-service ticket machines, and information kiosks become more friendly to non-native speakers of English, it will be easier for individuals with cognitive impairments to use the devices. It will also be easier to incorporate built-in user interface configuration options so that speech interfaces, and other alternative modalities, can be offered routinely.

Customers with disabilities will no longer be seen as fundamentally different from other customers. The line between disability and non-disability, and older and younger, will gradually disappear. Products and physical environments, and anything that's designed for people to use, will be designed for all people to use. This is a change in attitude, as well as marketing awareness.

Marketing philosophies that emphasize one-to-one marketing will also make it more economically feasible to design and market products aimed at specific disabilities. This will be especially important for disabilities (or combinations of disabilities) that are relatively rare, and/or relatively extreme, compared to common disabilities.

4.7 Training

Managers will have training in the following:

Legal requirements associated with Section 508 and other regulation,
Issues associated with accessibility in the workplace and employment of individuals with disabilities,
The growing market for accessible products,
Processes that are required to create and leverage accessible products,
How to increase potential profits by developing and marketing accessible products.

Product designers and other supporting engineers will have training in the following:

Specific capabilities and limitations of individuals with various disabilities,
Advantages and disadvantages of emerging technologies from an accessibility perspective,
Common assistive technologies, and requirements for compatibility with those technologies,
Specifics of federal regulations and technical standards related to accessibility and compatibility with assistive technologies,
How to evaluate accessibility and compatibility with assistive technology.

Marketing and sales personnel will have training in the following:

Section 508 and other relevant federal regulations and terminology,
Demographics of the customer base,
Legal considerations of selling to people with disabilities,
The market potential for accessible products,
How to understand and communicate the accessibility features of a product, and the solutions a product provides,
How to sell to disability populations in a non-stigmatizing way.

Product technical assistance personnel will have training in the following:

Specific accessibility features of the products they support,
Capabilities and limitations of individuals with various types of disabilities,
Common assistive technologies and the compatibility of the products they support with each,
Common problems of users with disabilities in attempting to use the products, the support, and the solutions for those problems.

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Information Technology Technical Assistance and Training Center
Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access
Georgia Institute of Technology
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