[gui-talk] Fwd: E-Access Bulletin, December 2010: Canadian government loses milestone web access case.

[Steve Pattison]

From:	Dan Jellinek	
		
		
		


++E-ACCESS BULLETIN
Access To Technology For All, Regardless Of Ability
- ISSUE 132, December 2010.

A Headstar Publication.
http://www.headstar.com/eab/ .

Please forward this free bulletin to others (subscription details 
at the end). We conform to the accessible Text Email 
Newsletter (TEN) Standard:
http://www.headstar.com/ten/ .


++Issue 132 Contents.

01: Canadian Government Loses Milestone Web Access Case
- Donna Jodhan victorious after her ‘rights infringed’.

02: Digital Government ‘Must Not Increase Exclusion’
- Policy advisor speaks out.

03: Free DAISY Book Recorder Software Upgraded.
- New version of open source audio tool.

News in Brief: 04: Standard Lesson – webinar on British web 
access standard; 05: Refreshable Apple – Braille keyboard for 
iPhone; 06: Third Survey – screen-reader trends questionnaire.

Section Two: Interview Special Feature - Diane Mulligan OBE.
+07: Podcast Pioneer: Diane Mulligan OBE has battled with 
adversity to emerge as one of the world’s leading champions of 
the rights of people with disabilities, particularly those in the 
developing world. In an exclusive interview with E-Access 
Bulletin, she explains how new technologies can transform the 
lives of the world’s poorest people – and those who work to 
help them.

[Contents ends].


++Section One: News.

+01: Canadian Government Loses Milestone Web Access Case.

A blind accessibility consultant has won her case against the 
Canadian government for the lack of accessibility on its 
websites, the country’s Federal Court has announced. 

As reported in last month’s E-Access Bulletin ( 
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=508 ), Donna Jodhan sued 
the Canadian government after she was unable to apply for a 
government job online or complete an online census form 
without assistance from sighted government employees, 
arguing that this breached her rights.

Last week, Justice Michael Kelen returned a verdict in favour 
of Jodhan, ruling that the government had infringed the 
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by failing to make 
its websites fully accessible, and was discriminating against 
disabled citizens. The government has now been given 15 
months to make its websites accessible for blind and visually 
impaired citizens. 

“I am humbled and elated that a decision has been made, and 
with great haste,” Jodhan told E-Access Bulletin. “The 
Canadian Government should not view this as a defeat but 
rather as one where we all get to ensure that the future of blind 
and sight-impaired kids will be a better one, where accessibility 
will be a reality. This case was never mine to win but that of 
our blind and sight-impaired community not to lose.” 

The court’s ruling stated that Jodhan’s inability to access 
government information online “is representative of a system 
wide failure by many of the 146 government departments and 
agencies to make their websites accessible.”

More on the case can be found on Jodhan’s personal blog: 
http://www.donnajodhan.blogspot.com/
and the blog of her accessibility company, Sterling Creations: 
http://sterlingcreations.ca/blog/ 

And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=511


+02: Digital Government ‘Must Not Increase Exclusion’.

Digitisation of government services must not take place at the 
expense of increased exclusion of people with disabilities, a 
leading national policy adviser has told E-Access Bulletin. 

Felicity Shaw is senior policy advisor for Race Online 2012, a 
campaign headed by the UK’s Digital Champion Martha Lane 
Fox to bring online the nine million people in the country who 
have never used the internet ( http://raceonline2012.org ).

“We’re making recommendations that government services 
should be digital by default, but part of that is making sure that 
nobody is excluded by that process. Making services digital is 
about making them better, more convenient and easier, not 
about leaving people behind who are excluded,” Shaw said.

Some of the more difficult and important work for Race 
Online 2012 will be helping people with a range of access 
issues to use the internet for the first time. “What’s harder to 
tackle is people who may have multiple barriers to getting 
online, particularly disabled people who might have 
accessibility issues which make it harder or more expensive for 
them to access equipment.

“What we don’t want is to have a campaign and promote just 
some of the elements that go with that, which ultimately 
increases exclusion for people who can’t get online” said 
Shaw.

Part of Race Online 2012’s work includes a ‘People’s 
Taskforce’ ( http://bit.ly/glTN2w ), featuring people from a 
variety of backgrounds who have been helped to go online, 
and are now helping others to use the internet. Members of the 
taskforce are helping to provide the campaign with ideas and 
information about accessibility, including Heather Lyons – 
who is visually impaired and campaigning for more affordable 
assistive technology – and Alan Thomas – who was diagnosed 
with ataxia, and now uses the internet to share information 
about his support website, livingwithataxia.org .

Shaw was among speaker’s at last week’s Future Democracy 
’10, Headstar’s annual conference on the use of the internet 
and other new technologies to boost all parts of the democratic 
process ( <http://www.headstar-events.com/fdem10>http://www.headstar-events..com/fdem10 ).

And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=518


+03: Free DAISY Book Recorder Software Upgraded.

The latest version of an open source audio recording tool 
designed to allow anyone to produce DAISY format electronic 
books has been released by the global DAISY Consortium of 
blindness organisations, publishers, technology companies and 
others. 

DAISY (digital accessible information system) books created 
with the Obi 1.2 software ( http://bit.ly/fqzspr ) can contain 
chapters, sub-sections and pages, allowing users with print 
disabilities to easily navigate through the content. The Obi tool 
is also fully accessible to screen-readers.

Version 1.2 of the Obi tool features a number of improvements 
and upgrades for users, including an adaptation to work with 
Microsoft Windows 7. Users can now also manage large 
DAISY production projects more easily; and MP3 and WAV 
format audio files can now be imported into projects. 

All DAISY content is produced to a standard ( 
http://bit.ly/hcPbOF ) developed by the DAISY Consortium, 
whose aim is to see all published information made readily 
available to people with print disabilities through digital talking 
books.

And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=513


++News in Brief: 

+04: Standard Lesson: A free ‘webinar’ (internet seminar) 
explaining the recently launched British Standard on web 
accessibility BS 8878 (see E-Access Bulletin issue: 130: 
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=498 ) will be hosted by 
assistive technology charity AbilityNet on 8 December. The 
webinar will provide an overview of the standard and how to 
implement it, including a question and answer session:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/763164576 
Short link: http://bit.ly/gCD5Gd 

+05: Refreshable Apple: A video demonstrating how to use the 
Refreshabraille 18, a Braille display and keyboard, built by the 
non-profit American Printing House for the Blind, with an 
Apple iPhone or iPod, has been posted on YouTube. A link to 
the video and a transcription can be found on the 
‘StoneKnight’ blog run by transcription specialist Mirabai 
Knight:
http://blog.stenoknight.com/2010/11/natcapvidmo-day-28-
refreshabraille-18.html 
Short link: http://bit.ly/dIU26U 

+06: Third Survey: The third periodic survey tracking trends 
and changes in assistive technology is underway from US non-
profit WebAIM. The Screen Reader User Survey is intended to 
help all organisations that create assistive technology products, 
accessible web content and web standards. It takes around ten 
minutes to complete and will close on January 10, with results 
published around March 2011:
http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey3/ 
Short link: http://bit.ly/ikApbJ

[Section One ends].


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++Section Two: Interview Special Feature
- Diane Mulligan OBE.

+07: Podcast Pioneer
by Dan Jellinek.

This has been a busy year for Diane Mulligan.

At the start of 2010 Mulligan was awarded an OBE for services 
to disabled people and equal opportunities. Last week, she was 
back at Buckingham Palace for a reception held by the Queen 
for the Diplomatic Corps. In-between, she has been 
spearheading a campaign to improve the rights of disabled 
people in developing countries, in her role as Global Disability 
Advisor for international charity Sightsavers.

One of the UK’s leading campaigners for disabled people’s 
rights worldwide, and a candidate for the 2012 election to the 
UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 
(another of this year’s accolades), Mulligan has faced many 
struggles on her path to high achievement.

Leaving school with few qualifications due to undiagnosed 
dyslexia and ADHD, she has worked in the NGO sector all her 
working life, starting with environmental issues and then 
championing human rights, women’s rights and disability 
rights.

The internet and other technologies play a major role in her life 
and work now, but growing up she lacked the technological 
support on offer to today’s schoolchildren like her own 10-
year-old son, Zephaniah. 

“My son has ADHD and dyslexia, and he is using software that 
helps him, especially with homonyms – he can write ‘no’ and 
know whether it should be spelled ‘know’ or ‘no’ – and 
pictorial software,” she says. “He still can’t hold a pen and 
write, aged 10, but he went straight to using digital technology 
and is now able to produce work of a standard that is really 
high for his age. It’s so good for his self-esteem.

“I left school with hardly any qualifications, but if I had had a 
laptop and software I would have been able to do the same.”

These learning challenges are not the only problems Mulligan 
has had to overcome: after many years of working abroad, she 
was involved in a serious road accident in Indonesia which led 
to one of her legs being amputated. Returning to the UK, to 
Seaford on the Sussex coast, she received good medical care 
but a lack of proper psychological support spurred her to set up 
the Sussex Amputee Support Group offering advice, emotional 
support and information for people experiencing limb loss. 

The group has its own website ( 
http://www.sussexamputeesupport.co.uk ), a tool which has 
proven essential to its work building a support community, 
Mulligan says.

“Getting that up on the internet was really key,” she says. 
“Some people said the information was not accessible to a lot 
of people – most amputees are over 80 – but I disagree: my 
dad is over 80 and he is using online conferencing. But it is 
also all available in large print and other formats.”

Technology has also helped her with her sporting passion, rifle 
shooting: she was on course to compete in the 2012 
Paralympics until work and family commitments rendered the 
training schedule impossible.

“It’s all done on computers with laser beams from the end of 
the gun onto a screen – they track your movement until you 
fire so you can see how accurate you are, whether you are 
swaying all over the place. But I’ve had to drop out from the 
fast-track now. It takes up at least two evenings a week, and 
every other weekend.

Computers and the internet have also proven enormously 
valuable with her main current work role. She joined 
Sightsavers in 2007, and is leading the organisation’s strategy 
for raising awareness of the link between disability and poverty 
in developing countries, where 80% of disabled people live, 
almost all below the poverty line. In 2000 most world leaders 
signed up to achieving eight ‘anti-poverty’ Millennium 
Development Goals by 2015, but disabled people and 
disability rights are noticeably absent from these goals, and 
much of Mulligan’s work with Sightsavers is to campaign for 
their inclusion and recognition.

With front-line teams in more than 30 countries, the charity has 
created a global online network and uses a web-based 
conferencing facility called Elluminate ( 
http://www.elluminate.com ).

“It has considerably cut down international travel, and 
colleagues with low vision access the same information I can,” 
Mulligan says.

“I do three-day training sessions for all my staff and in August 
we piloted doing a session online.
We had 50 people in Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka, and guest 
speakers, over three days in Sightsavers offices. Everyone 
could access the PowerPoint, raise their online hand. They 
could find out what people could do in different countries and 
share best practice.

“Now I run one every month, 60 minutes on social inclusion, 
as a round-up and opportunity for any of our 300 employees 
worldwide to ask any questions they have and contribute 
examples. It’s almost like a radio show, I can answer questions, 
and I have other people contributing. Once I’d done it once, I 
thought that’s the way forward to me – I don’t have to travel, it 
saves me jetlag and means I don’t have to stay away from my 
family.”

Mulligan records the webinars and puts them onto a podcasting 
site called Podbean ( http://www.podbean.com ), each 
bookmarked so people can browse between items without 
having to listen to the whole hour. Currently they are only 
available to Sightsavers staff, but “there are no trade secrets”, 
so Mulligan is looking at ways of making them more widely 
available. The service uses low bandwidth, so it is accessible 
even in places like rural India, she says.

Another technology that is revolutionising her work is 
‘phlogging’, a service from a company called ipadio that is 
“like blogging, but using a mobile phone” ( http://bit.ly/8Q4YF 
). Users can call in from anywhere in the world and record a 
voice message from their mobile, using local rate numbers, to 
broadcast the voice clip onto their website, blog or social 
network.

Tools like this and ones that can help speak web content out 
loud can be useful for communication not only with blind 
people but for targeting remote communities who are either 
illiterate or for whom the written word is not the medium of 
choice, Mulligan says.

“We also try and encourage people to create video diaries, to 
give our supporters an insight into what we do and how we do 
it. And we convert our reports to MP3.”

Some of these technologies are hard for people in poorer 
countries to access, but there is usually a way, she says. “Even 
if you go to some of the poorest parts of the world you find 
people with mobile phones. In India, social networking is 
massive, and the blind people I know there are using it as much 
as their sighted colleagues. And in countries like Indonesia, 
you see internet cafes on the corner of every street.”

Sightsavers have also worked with accessible technology 
specialists Dolphin to create the Sightsaver Dolphin pen ( 
http://bit.ly/gWM16t ), a low cost memory stick carrying 
magnification and screen-reader software aimed at students in 
developing countries.

“So there are many new technologies out there, it’s just about 
harnessing them. The only stumbling block I’ve got is getting 
someone to get headphones and a mike, and log on. It’s that 
barrier of the unknown, people think it’s going to be hard. The 
barriers disabled people face in the developing world are 
almost the same as disabled people face here – liberation takes 
place in that space between our two ears, before anywhere 
else.”

And you can comment on this story now, on EAB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=515

[Section Two ends].


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++End Notes.

+How to Receive the Bulletin.

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Please send comments on coverage or leads to Dan Jellinek at:
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Copyright 2010 Headstar Ltd http://www.headstar.com .
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+Personnel:
Editor: Dan Jellinek.
Reporter: Tristan Parker.
Editorial advisor: Kevin Carey.

ISSN 1476-6337.

[Issue 132 ends.]