Accessing the Future
A Summary from Dr. Michael Lightner, Conference Chair
IEEE and IBM partnered on a new conference: Accessing the Future: A Global Collaborative Exploration for Accessibility in the Next Decade. This conference was held at Northeastern University in Boston, MA on July 20, 21. There were 150 participants including leaders from government, industry, consumer and advocacy organizations and academia. The focus of the conference was to identify key emerging technologies that would present barriers to people with disabilities and ask how to get ahead of the technology development so that they were accessible when available and not retrofit after introduction, as is mostly the case now.
After a series of keynote and plenary presentations the attendees broke into four tracks: Standards and Universal Design, Patient-Centered Collaborative Care, Accessible Online Workplaces and Communities, and Transportation and Travel. An expert panel in each track lead the discussion and the goal of each panel was to come up with ten key recommendations. The conference as a whole received a report from each panel and then voted to prioritize the recommendations. The top ten recommendations are given below.
Please continue to visit this website to view the Presentations and additional announcements.
Top Ten Recommendations in rank order:
- In standards and universal design it is imperative that accessibility and the needs of people with disabilities are incorporated into the education of those who will generate future ICT.
- For online workplaces and communities it is critical to improve accessibility of MAINSTREAM collaboration technology making those tools more accessible, inclusive, and robust.
- In standards and universal design we must build accessibility into the ICT infrastructure so that it is a natural part of ICT, which anyone operating under constraints can invoke as they need it - including those with little or no resources.
- Patient-centered collaborative healthcare should leverage all available technologies to provide effective, efficient, error-free, timely, honest, and satisfying information transfer within and across institutions and between stakeholders.
- For the continued success and wide spread adoption of online workplaces and communities it is necessary to enhance communications, awareness, training and education across the general society.
- Patient-centric longitudinal medical records and care data should be standardized in a manner that facilitates secure but rapid sharing across all aspects of clinical care, public health policy, and practice.
- In healthcare human factors (usability, accessibility, etc) must be designed into all systems to ensure that they are usable, effective, efficient, and satisfying to use by the persons intended to use them, and they should effectively capitalize on digital communication and social networking resources in a manner that safeguards individual and public interests.
- For accessible travel and transportation it is imperative that information and physical systems be interoperable.
- Accessible travel and transportation requires coordinated, standardized and accessible communication systems.
- Standards and universal design require tools and infrastructure that make it easier for companies to include access into their products and systems be built.
Speakers and Panelists
T1: Universal Design and Accessibility Standards
Track Summary (PDF, 42KB)
- Andi Snow Weaver [Track Chair] - Worldwide Accessibility Standards Program Manager, IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center
- Dr. Gregg Vanderheiden [Featured Speaker] - Director, Trace Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Judy Brewer - Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), MIT
- Larry Goldberg - Director, Media Access Group at WGBH, Boston
- Rich Schwerdtfeger - Distinguished Engineer, Accessibility Architect and Strategist, IBM Software Group
- Deborah Buck - Executive Director, Association of Assistive Technology Act Programs (ATAP)
T2: Patient-Centered Collaborative Care
Track Summary (PDF, 60KB)
- John Kemp [Track Chair] - Executive Director and General Counsel, USBLN
- Dr. Joe Jasinski [Featured Speaker] - Distinguished Engineer, Program Director, Healthcare and Lifesciences Institute, IBM Research
- Phyllis Albritton - Executive Director, Colorado Regional Health Information Organization
- Dr. Joel Nitzkin - MD, IEEE-USA Medical Technology Policy Committee
- Jim Pyles - Principal and Co-Founder, Powers, Pyles, Sutter and Verville, PC
- Dr. Elliott Sloane - President and Founder, Center for Healthcare Information Research and Policy
T3: Accessible Online Workplaces and Communities
Track Summary (PDF, 84KB)
T4: Transportation and Travel
Track Summary (PDF, 53KB)
- Dr. Katharine Hunter-Zaworsky [Track Chair] - Director, National Center for Accessible Transportation, Oregon State University
- Dr. Aaron Steinfeld [Featured Speaker] - Co-Director, Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Accessible Public Transportation (RERC-APT)
- Phill Jenkins - Business Development Executive, IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center
- Dr. Stephen Sprigle - Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access, Georgia Tech
- Paul Schroeder - VP of Programs and Policy, American Foundation for the Blind
- Daver Malik - Research and Development Coordinator, Information Services, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
Conference co-Chairs
Dr. Michael Lightner
2006 IEEE President, Professor and Chair, Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, University of Colorado at Boulder
Ms. Frances W. West
Director, IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center
Technical Program Chair
Dr. Donna Hudson
IEEE 2007-2008 EMBS President, Professor, University of California, San Francisco
For information, contact:
Ms. Bichlien Hoang
IEEE Technical Activities
