Before discussing a solution, it is important to review some of the issues that the solution must address, and the constraints it must operate within.
1. NEED FOR ACCESSIBILITY GUIDELINES The Telecommunication Act requires that industries make their products and systems accessible to people with disabilities when it is readily achievable. The Access Board has been charged with developing a set of guidelines for making telecommunications accessible.
2. INDUSTRY WANTS AND NEEDS GUIDELINES If industry is going to be required to make accommodations in their designs, they want and need to know what exactly it is that they need to do and will be held accountable for.
3. GUIDELINES SHOULD BE EXPLICIT Guidelines must be explicit in order for industry to know when they have met the criteria and when their design will pass muster. This needs to be determinable before the system is actually built. It must also be determinable without requiring industry to publicly expose their design. (They want a punch list.)
4. GUIDELINES MUST BE FLEXIBLE At the same time that the guidelines must be explicit, they must also be flexible, in order for their application across an extremely wide range of products. They must also allow for innovation, miniaturization, and new interfaces.
5. GUIDELINES MUST DEAL WITH THE FUTURE AND WITH CONVERGENCE The guidelines must be applicable to future telecommunication. With the convergence of communication, information, and entertainment systems, we are likely to see single multipurpose flexible telecommunication devices which take a variety of forms, from systems built into walls to systems carried in the pocket or on the wrist, which provide all of the functions that we now accomplish with telephones, fax machines, computers, microfiche, television, radio, closedcircuit television, pocket calendars and organizers, paging units, maps and compasses, building directories, signs, scanners, translators, cameras, and other communication, information, viewing, creating or recording mechanisms. As a result, it will be very difficult to categorize devices by function, since so many of them will be multifunctional.
6. PHYSICAL FORM The physical form of the devices will also defy description. Communication and information systems in the future will be more like electricity today: that is, we are likely to find it everywhere, and built into everything. Telecommunication devices may appear to be part of a building, part of the furniture, a separate handheld device, part of the "outfit" we wear.
7. DISTRIBUTED It will also be difficult to point to exactly where the telecommunication device is. An individual may have something in their hand which looks like a small piece of thick cardboard which, when folded in half, would fit into a pocket. It is actually nothing but an ultra high resolution display and touchscreen with a planar (flat) speaker, a microdot microphone, and an image capture device (like a tiny camera). This device actually doesn't do anything except gather or display data. It communicates wirelessly with a small device the size of a deck of cards which is in an individual's pocket or purse, which in turn communicates with the rest of the world, again wirelessly. At any point in time, the "device" that the individual is using may include only the piece held in their hand and the piece in their pocket, or it may include both of these pieces plus computers on the network, computers and information devices in other locations which are either privately owned or public services. They may be carrying out a function locally which simply accesses information remotely, or the system they're holding in their hand may simply be acting as a personal local display to a program and function running at a distant point. Some examples of things they might use this system for would include:
8. HARDWARE/SOFTWARE DEVICE OR SERVICE If you buy a cellular phone, and the phone has an answering machine built into it (as some today do), is the answering machine function in your phone a device or a service provided by the device in your hand?
If you buy the next version of the cellular phone, and rather than storing the messages in the phone itself it stored by your cellular provider, so that when you ask your phone if it has any messages it quickly checks the network rather than its own memory to determine whether you have messages, is that a service or part of the hardware? To the user, it may not be possible to tell. Does how it is implemented affect whether it needs to be accessible?
What if, when you bought the phone, it was advertised as having a message capability? Since it operated the same way as the other phone, there is no way for a customer whether those messages were actually stored in the phone or on the network. (In some cases, the messages may actually be stored at different locations at different times. For example, there are two email protocols. One of them [Pop] stores the messages on your own computer. The other one stores them on the network [although Pop can store them on your computer or on the network, depending on how it's configured]. Is the storage of these messages a service, or a function of the hardware? Is this function a piece of software or a piece of hardware? What if the device you're sold is sold as a device for sending and receiving email?)
9. CPE VERSUS TELECOMMUNICATION HARDWARE VERSUS SERVICE PROVIDER EQUIPMENT - In the scenarios above, where is the "device" that the person is using? Which category is it in, when it in fact involves a piece of all three? If the activity that the person carries out involves all three, and cannot be carried out without all three, whose responsibility is it if the system is not accessible, if it could be made so by any of the three? (Presumably, if it could be clearly shown that each had a role, each would be responsible for that role. What if it could be done in multiple places?)
Is the problem so complex that it is unsolvable? Do the questions and problems posed (and these are not all of them) make the task of coming up with accessibility guidelines unrealistic or impractical? Is the phrasing of the law or the distributed jurisdiction of the responsibility for the different components in the telecommunication system such that it won't be possible to have a coordinated solution strategy?
These are all good questions, and the task will be complex. Experience has shown, however, that the vast majority of accessibility issues can be addressed in relatively straightforward fashion. The various functions (information creation, information serving, transmission, display and control) can all be identified and, although they may occur in different locations at different times, the role that each plays in accessibility and the guidelines for each to create accessibility of the whole should be definable. The two major barriers to creating products which are accessible appear to be 1) knowledge (does anyone know how to provide access to a new product, a new function, or new form factors [e.g., products of a different shape or size, such as miniature products]), and 2) awareness on the part of the manufacturers of the strategies which are known.
The proposed strategy would consist of five parts:
Briefly, the roles of each of these components is as follows:
1. GENERAL ACCESSIBILITY GUIDELINES AND GOALS The general guidelines and goals act as a target which the design of products should strive toward. These goals cannot be met for all products at this time, simply because either the technologies don't exist or we haven't yet discovered how to make all technologies accessible to and usable by all people. However, these guidelines and goals act as overall guiding principles for the process.
2. BREAKDOWN OF THE GOALS BY FUNCTION The breakdown of goals by function is done to help identify which aspects of an overall accessible system should be carried out at which level within the system. For example, what does the creator or provider of information need to keep in mind? What are the issues involved with the pipeline or transmission service components? If there are inline services (things done to the information between the source and its destination), what must be kept in mind? What are the issues for the people designing the viewer/controller?
As noted above, these are not necessarily different players. In some instances, all or almost all of these functions may occur in the same place. In some cases, all of them may occur remotely. Thus, these need to be looked at functions rather than players, since in the coming system any player may assume any or all of these functions.
3. SIMPLE TESTS OF SUFFICIENCY (AT SYSTEM AND COMPONENT LEVEL) The simple test conditions are necessary in order to allow manufacturers to test new ideas. The general guidelines and goals will by necessity be vague or global in nature. If a manufacturer has a new way of addressing an accessibility issue that they would like to bring to the market, how can they test their idea in a secure and secret way prior to its being released on the open market? These tests must be sufficiently objective that they can be carried out by independent certified testing laboratories.
4. EXAMPLES OF COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS THAT DEMONSTRATE "READILY ACHIEVABLE," EFFECTIVE/SUFFICIENT AND ACCEPTABLE STRATEGIES
Examples of commercial products that demonstrate that there are "readily achievable," effective/sufficient and acceptable strategies is the key point in this system. Basically, the law states that telecommunication products must be accessible to people with disabilities if it is readily achievable. This poses a significant problem for industry. How do they determine when something is "readily achievable" and they must incorporate it? Also, how do they determine when something which is readily achievable is in fact effective and acceptable to the disability community (such that implementing the technique will not be deemed insufficient and land them a court of law anyway).
This component of the proposed approach consists of a registry of strategies which have been deemed to be readily achievable through one of two means:
Once a product is introduced commercially which incorporates disability access features, it would be looked at by the disability / accessibility committee, and the techniques that were used would be established as good or adequate ways of providing access of a certain type or to certain groups of individuals. It would be determined whether the technique in question was good enough or sufficient to be used instead of any other techniques that might be in the registry. It would also be looked at to see whether this approach was so much better than some other approach in the registry that the other approach should be removed. For example, if a new technique was brought out which was inexpensive or had no costs involved in its implementation and was as generally applicable or more generally applicable than some other technique that was not nearly as inexpensive, then the second technique might be removed.
Once a technique was in the registry as an example of something that was readily achievable and a good and sufficient mechanism, other companies would be expected to incorporate such readily achievable approaches in their comparable products within an appropriate period of time. The two key phrases in this sentence are COMPARABLE and APPROPRIATE. By "comparable," we mean that the product would be a product of the same general price range, size, etc. For example, if a company built a capability into a $1,200 cellular phone, that might not be considered an example of something that would be readily achievable for someone trying to build a $200 cellular phone. Similarly, if someone who built a feature into a cellular phone the size of a couple of decks of cards, it would not necessarily be considered a precedent for someone trying to build a cellular phone into a wrist watch. Since everything occurs along gradients, there will of course always be some room for argument about whether a technique used on a larger device could effectively be implemented on a smaller device, a cheaper device, a device with a different feature set, etc. However, even if we restricted the interpretation to devices which were almost identical, the progress made would be very great (see "Forcing Factor," below).
The other key phrase was an "appropriate period of time." This is something that we can put up for debate. Perhaps it's a year, perhaps it's two years. It might depend on the typical product cycle.
5. ACCESS MANDATES Occasionally, there may need to be some areas where there is something mandated by law which does not follow this model of "you don't have to do it until someone else has done it first." These instances would be things that are in the telecommunication area but which are handled through separate pieces of legislation or separately within the Telecommunication Act. There are some things that may be deemed sufficiently important that they are mandated by law using language other than "readily achievable." Where those laws relate to the telecommunication area, they might be reflected in this "Registry of Readily Achievable Strategies" for convenience, but would be labeled as being mandated by the relevant law. Guidelines from the ADAAG as well as industry standards that related to telecommunication could also be included in this collection, or referenced off this collection. EXAMPLES OF GENERAL ACCESSIBILITY GUIDELINES AND GOALS
The goal is to create a product which:
Each of the goals is an idea which people should design toward. If there are readily achievable ways of designing a product which achieve any or all of these goals, then they should do it. If there aren't any readily achievable ways of doing these things, then they should do the best that they can given what is readily achievable.
The following is a first pass at identifying a couple goals for each of the different major components in a communication information system. Note that these aren't necessarily separate players; in many cases a single entity may be providing multiple or even most of these functions.
1. Provision of information in a form which can be displayed and perceived by individuals without looking at the device or who cannot see.
2. Provision of information in a form which can be displayed to individuals who cannot hear, etc.
1. Transporting information in a form and using protocols which do not drop any of the alternate formats of information being transported.
2. If there are any control structures with the pipeline, that they can be operated by individuals without requiring that they have vision or that they can hear, etc.
1. Designing the device such that information which is ordinarily presented auditorally, but which has a nonauditory parallel form, can be displayed in the nonauditory form (for example, if the device receives an auditory file with embedded text captions, that the device would be capable of retrieving and displaying the text captions on request).
2. The viewer controller, itself, can be operated without requiring that the user look at it or be able to see, etc.
An important component to this approach is the existence of tests of sufficiency; that is, a technique that the company can use to test to see whether or not a product or future product would be accessible. This is something that needs to be able to be carried out by a third party independent testing lab.
Although, people with disabilities need to be involved in product testing overall ,and interesting question arises as to whether the certification test, itself needs to be done by a person with a disability. Or if it actually needs to person independent.
For example, if one said that the device needed to be operable by someone who is blind, the questions arise: Does that mean that it must be carried out by somebody who is blind and who also knows braille, somebody who is legally blind but has some vision, or only someone who is blind with no vision? Should the person be blind from birth or should it be somebody who acquired blindness late in life. Should the individual who is blind be somebody who is technically adept or should it be someone who has difficulty understanding technologies?
Although it sounds strange perhaps the simple tests, therefore, may not be tied to the person having a disability because the tests should not be tied to the person doing the test. The test, itself, needs to be as objective as possible. Don't know the answer here but... A second thing is that passing the tests will not guarantee that everyone will be able to use the product without trouble. In fact, even people without disabilities have difficulty using most products which are manufactured today.
Some "straw man" simple tests to start the discussion would be:
1. The device should be able to be operated by 80% of the people who cannot see the device and are not familiar with its operation. If it is a public device, they should be able to operate it without prior instruction. If it is a personal device, they should be able to operate it after having heard the instructions and the instructions must be provided in auditory (not visual) form.
2. The individual with an IQ of 100 must be able to operate the device without being able to hear it and without being already familiar with the operation of the aid (etc., similar to above).
3. The device should be completely operable using a remote auxiliary input and display device connected to the device using infrared link, meeting IrDA standard 1.1 and using the UAI Communication Protocol, etc. THE NATIONAL ACCESSIBLE DESIGN REGISTRY
Things are entered into the Registry in two fashions:
Strategy might be something like techniques for providing access touchscreens for people who are blind. A specific implementation would be the example(s) of the system where this has been implemented.
In general, you must have the specific implementations in order to prove the practicality (see below). However, it may be that an analysis would be provided in place of the specific implementation (again, see below).
The whole idea of the Registry is that if a techniques exists and has been shown to be practical, then other companies should be employing it in the design of their products. The Registry serves several purposes:
1. A source of ideas as to how to make things accessible;
2. A listing of items which are deemed to be good enough or sufficient access a minimum level of access. (It doesn't mean that companies couldn't think of things that are better, but if they were to carry out things according to these strategies it would be deemed that they would be sufficient to make their product accessible along this dimension);
3. A place to develop and document consensus among the disability communities (both within and across disabilities) as to what is good or sufficient;
4. A demonstration of their practicality (e.g., either there are examples of people who are using these techniques in commercial products or there would need to be an analysis which was agreed to by at least some credible representative of industry that this was practical (getting things in by analysis is a rare occurrence that is only done to break either conspiracies or believed conspiracies.);
5. Items cannot be put into the Registry unless the technique is licensable at a reasonable cost. If it cannot be licensed at a reasonable cost then it does not meet the commercial practicality test for anyone except the company that invented it. So the company that invented it would have to do it since nobody else would have had reasonable access to the patents in order to do it.
A product is introduced commercially, which includes a new accessibility feature. The feature is identified either by the company bringing it forward or someone else nominating it to the Registry. A panel would review the technique to judge the following things:
1. Is this a reasonable accessibility technique (i.e., does it actually provide a reasonable or sufficient level of accessibility for particular populations);
2. Does its use create barriers or provide conflict with individuals with other disabilities (the technique does not have to solve all problems for all disabilities; a product may, in fact, have different features to allow access by individuals with different disabilities. The questions here is whether or not use of this technique would preclude or block the ability to use other techniques necessary for other populations);
3. There needs to be a consensus from the disability communities that this should be a registered technique;
4. Is this a commercially practical technique? Is it available to other manufacturers at a reasonable cost? Is there anything about this particular manufacturer's implementation that would make it practical for this manufacturer but not for any other;
5. Does the introduction to this technique mean that any other strategy in the Registry should be removed (i.e., is this one so much better and equally practical that other techniques should no longer be considered "sufficient");
6. What would be the span of the influence of this technique (e.g., a company has released it on a touchscreen kiosk with a 17" monitor. Should the technique be considered to apply to all touchscreen monitors even if the happen to be 10" in diameter; even if they happen to be 3" in diameter; even if they were on the face of a wrist watch?
Q. Who sits on the Registry Committee?
A. The committee is made up of representatives of the disability communities and industry. The disability communities will need to assign their own committees for reaching consensus on these issues.
Q. If a product is exemplary on one feature and really totally inaccessible on another, do you list is in the Registry?
A. The feature is listed in the Registry, and the product is listed as an example of that particular feature. Certification of products overall would have to take place based on the overall compliance with other items and ideas in the Registry.
Q. Does something have to be in the Registry to be held up in a court of law?
A. No. The rule is "anything that is readily available." The Registry is only meant to be something which facilitates people in locating them, and helps to establish that the document or idea was findable. If an idea is in practice in the field and is not in the Registry, one could still take it to court and say "This is commercially practical," or "readily achievable," and argue the case in court.
The existence of the Registry is good for industry in that it makes it clear what it is that is considered to be a consensus, what is considered to be accessible, and what is considered to be practical. Items which don't make it into the Registry probably would not be pulled up in court, because the question would always be raised, "Well, if this is practical and reasonable, why isn't it in the Registry?" As a result, it provides a more known and stable target for industry to work toward.
On the other side, the disability community would have an easier time trying to move good, practical ideas into common practice. Getting the idea into the Registry would make it easy to find, and provide some face validity on its implementation.
It should NOT be easy to get something into the Registry unless everybody agrees that it's a good, practical idea. Good, practical ideas should be in the Registry. Ideas where there is controversy should be evaluated carefully and/or perfected before they're put in. A good commercial demonstration would do wonders for establishing the practicality, and evaluation by consumers would do wonders for establishing effectiveness.
Q. Are there significant disincentives for somebody wanting a product in the Registry because of this process?
Q. What is the approval process?
Q. What if your company (or a competitor) submits a product?