Vicki Almstrum opened the evening by presenting some "take-away" points from Dr. John Slatin, director of the University of Texas at Austin Accessibility Institute. Two key points he raised were:

1. Many people have functional limitations (middle-age hearing loss, hand tremor, etc.) but do not call themselves disabled.
2. Developers must remember such people when designing, whether creating physical items or digital products. The audience is bigger than the "obvious" one.

Dr. Slatin was unable to participate in the panel due to being in Houston after having received a bone marrow transplant. His experiences over the 15 months since his diagnosis with leukemia have driven home that the issues of accessibility concerns real people with real needs who need access to information in life-critical situations. Dr. Slatin takes 15-16 medications every day but is unable to identify these himself. The website with the MD Anderson website offers a schedule and other tools for communicating with the medical team via on-line forms; unfortunatley, many aspects of these forms are not keyboard operable. Finally, the physical layout of the hospital floor has 52 rooms and 4 nursing stations organized into 4 pods of 13 rooms. The floor included no physical or auditory landmarks he could use to navigate independently. [Vicki's slides cover these and other points.]

The remainder of this page provides an overview of the presentation and discussions. Where available, the speakers' web or powerpoint presentations are linked.

Jim Allan, webmaster for TSBVI

Jim spoke about how modern technology can be a step backwards for people with impairments, using the common touchpad as an example. The touchpad gives no feedback for visually impaired people and has no good interface for working around it. If someone makes a mistake on a touchpad, there is no corrective mechanism. A visually impaired person may literally have to hire someone to push buttons for them on such common appliances as microwaves, washers, and dryers.

He gave two other examples where technology could help but has not been embraced by the general population:

1. “Talking” appliances: Able bodied people disliked talking appliances because they had lacked control over the feature. Basically, they wanted a “shut up” key.
2. Universal Remote: While this would be a great aid to many individuals, when this was introduced as a product the market did not support it.

A new example where technology can help is the use of RFID chips in pharmacies for prescription medications. The chip can identify the medication and dosage and communicate the information through audio or video.

Glenda Sims, representing Knowbility and the UT Team Web [Glenda's slides]

Glenda described general accessibility on web sites as potential “brick walls” for people with disabilities, including:

1. Visual: Including blind, color blind, and low vision
2. Auditory
3. Speech
4. Motor/Physical
5. Cognitive

She also defined “quasi-disabilities” such as the following, which can impair a user’s ability to effectively use the internet:

1. Slow internet connection
2. Old internet browser
3. Missing plug-ins
4. Unable to find speakers / hardware

Glenda described legislation concerning accessibility on the web. Legislation that may require or improve web accessibility includes:

1. ADA
2. The Rehabilitation Act, Section 508 Guidelines (http://www.access-board.gov/508.htm)
3. Texas House Bill 2819

She explained that Target.com is currently involved in a court case where they wish to argue that ADA does not apply to websites. Early indications are that the judge is not accepting that argument.

Glenda also described the non-profit organization Knowbility, which has as components of its mission training, awareness, consulting, and competition. The competition is embodied in the Accessibility Internet Rally, an annual one-day competition that pairs up non-profit organizationss with web developers to create accessible web sites.

Randy Horwitz, representing the IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center

Randy explained that IBM makes every product accessible in part because it is the right thing to do. Two additional motivators are (1) the US Government, IBM’s biggest client, requires accessibility and (2) IBM does not wish to be sued for inaccessible products.

Randy explained that, in an earlier programming position, he experienced accessibility issues firsthand. More than 70% of the tools used by his development group were inaccessible to him as a person without vision. He stated: “The other developers were climbing stairs. I was climbing Everest.” Once he was able to use newer tools (such as Eclipse) everything was keyboard accessible and Randy had an equal opportunity to get the job done.

Thea Eaton, representing Snert Studios [Thea's Flash-based presentation on Accessible Flash]

Snert focuses its development on the Pre-Kindergarten market (generally pre-readers). Historically, Flash technology has been considered a big “foe” to accessibility. Flash5 had no accessibility at all and often caused screen readers to get hung up. Thea has been able to demonstrate that creatomg accessible Flash products is a reasonable and achievable goal. As a good example of a fully accessible Flash-based web site she cited J. K. Rowling's site at www.jkrowling.com

Flash MX 2004 was the first accessible version of Flash. The biggest challenge was working with screen readers. Screen readers have a learning curve and they always started at the top of the page. Thea described ways to avoid screen readers entirely through the use of self-voicing flash. This is a great solution for standalone flash and can be run on CDs. Thea demonstrated an innovation called TAB (The Access Button), which allows blind users to traverse Flash content. She showed several examples of accessible Flash (a puzzle and a coloring book) created by Snert.

Question and Answer Session

After the speakers concluded, there was extensive Q & A with all of the speakers. During this portion of the evening, Vicki pointed out the accessibility tutorials on the Accessibility Institute's homepage.