Use of the presentation material requires approval of the speaker and proper attribution to the speaker and the IEEE Accessing the Future Conference.
Day 1:
Mr. Axel Leblois
Executive Director
G3ict - The Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs
United Nations
The Accessibility Imperative: Global Opportunities for the Information and Communication Industry
With the pervasive use of technology in all aspects of human activity, accessibility presents major opportunities for all stakeholders involved: industry, persons with disabilities, governments and civil society at large. Axel Leblois’ keynote presentation will specifically address the new dynamics transforming the global market place for accessible and assistive technologies. It will review market and funding opportunities for the Information and Technology Industry, its clients’ needs and expectations as well as the critical role of accessibility standards. Beyond current developments, his presentation will offer predictions on how ground breaking technology and applications are likely to change the lives of millions in the very near future.
IEEE_AccessingTheFuture_Conference_2009_Leblois.ppt (PPT, 1.9MB)
Dr. Nicholas Bowen
Vice-President of Technology
IBM
Day 2:
Mr. John D. Kemp
Principal
Powers, Pyles, Sutter & Verville PC
and
Executive Director and General Counsel of the US Business Leadership Network
Why Accessibility Matters
Drawing on his personal and professional experience, John D. Kemp will emphasize the need to incorporate accessibility in the development and design process, instead of as an add-on once a product has been developed. As virtual places and communication proliferate, it’s essential to include everyone, including people with disabilities, not just because of the ADA or 'it's the morally right thing to do', but because people with disabilities can provide expertise during testing and on a continual basis to ensure products reach the largest and widest base of customers. In today’s struggling economy, companies are cutting back; however, the coming workforce shortage, which will necessitate programs for aging in place, is no less real. The speed of change in the areas of content and delivery require us to pressure our political leaders to address the current and future broadband needs in order for the U.S., not just to compete, but keep up and even excel in the global marketplace. John will touch on the critical importance of public-private partnerships, particularly in research and innovation around accessibility.
Track 1:
Gregg Vanderheiden
Director
Trace Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison
A Level Playing Field: Ensuring that all people can access information and services equally, anywhere, anytime on any interface they encounter.
Technology has become increasingly prevalent in our lives with the growth of online commerce, government services, education, and social networking. And it has become integrated into the consumer products that we all use everyday such as televisions, telephones, and home appliances. To stay competitive in the marketplace, companies must meet customer demand for new innovations that are easy to use. But the new innovations are most often not usable by people with disabilities. Add-on assistive technology (AT) can provide access but takes time to develop and is generally expensive. Employing universal design will expand the set of users who can use the products but there will always be a need for AT. As large IT companies create new innovative technologies at an ever increasing pace, the very small AT companies fall farther behind in supporting them. For the future, we must come up with new and better ways to achieve interoperability than we have used in the past.
Some of the strategies being used successfully are the use of accessibility API's, collaboration between IT and AT vendors, better standards for interoperability, and open source solutions. What are the challenges going forward? What strategies can we deploy on a grand scale to ensure that universal design is used where appropriate, ATs are available when needed, and that users can obtain the AT they need to access the latest technology innovations?
Track 2:
Dr. Joe Jasinski
Distinguished Engineer, Program Director
Healthcare and Lifesciences Institute, IBM Research
Patient Centered Collaborative Care: New Models for Healthcare Delivery
Access to safe, effective, affordable healthcare is vital to the well-being of any country. In the US today, approximately 40 Million people are uninsured, and about 100,000 deaths occur from preventable medical errors each year. In trying to reform the US healthcare system a key challenge is to align incentives so that all stake holders win and to introduce information technology to improve safety and effectiveness and reduce costs. This talk will consider how technology can improve the current situation in US Healthcare over the next 5-7 years. Home monitoring of at risk individuals, access to healthcare through mobile technologies, new healthcare delivery models and incorporation of personal genomic data will be focus topics.
Track 3:
Dr. Chieko Asakawa
Distinguished Engineer, Program Director
Healthcare and Lifesciences Institute, IBM Research
Smarter Organizations for People with Disabilities
The world's population is increasingly diverse. Larger numbers of people live with disabilities, including age-related problems. At the same time, many workers have limited literacy even as economic prosperity requires higher literacy. Are global organizations ready for this diverse workforce?
Special technologies created for people with disabilities transform how people work. Many now-standard features of telephones and keyboards were initially created to address special needs. Entire technologies such as optical character recognition and voice recognition were motivated by the needs of the disabled. IBM is a leader in accessibility technologies and in adaptations for broader use.
Now rapidly evolving collaboration tools are drastically accelerating the collaborative process. Real-time collaboration technologies such as computer chats and teleconferencing are becoming increasingly pervasive in international organizations. The special challenges faced by employees with disabilities define the extreme limits of the cognitive bandwidth problems, but everyone encounters some limitations to the full cognitive bandwidth. An e-meeting system may transmit simultaneous information streams of voices, presentation screens, video, private chats, and so on. Blind participants are especially likely to be overwhelmed by the mixed streams of information, but a sighted participant who can’t follow the language used is effectively deaf. This is a huge space for innovation. How can accessibility technologies make the real-time workplace inclusive for employees with disabilities? How can those technologies broadly change the workplace to create Smarter Organizations?
In this presentation the focus will be on three specific projects. The Japanese government’s Multimedia Accessibility Platform (MAP) is an open-source project creating audio descriptions and captions for streaming content. IBM’s E-meeting Accessibility is an internal project for IBM’s e-meeting products. Social Accessibility uses social computing to support Web accessibility improvements. How can organizations incorporate such technologies?
Track 4:
Dr. Aaron Steinfeld
Co-Director
Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Accessible Public Transportation (RERC-APT)
Universal Design, Technology, and Transportation Systems
In a mobile culture, full social participation hinges on accessibility of transportation systems. Accessible transportation allows individuals with disabilities to have independent access to works sites, educational programs, health facilities, and social and recreational activities. Public transportation is critically important for many, especially for those with severe disabilities, due to lack of viable alternatives. Similarly, in many rural and underserved regions, community participation and basic activities of daily living depend on access to personal vehicular transportation. For many years the approach used to resolve accessibility barriers has been to utilize specialized devices, procedures, and systems. However, applying a combination of universal design and technology is a far better approach and can produce value for all end users, not just those with disabilities. This talk will provide examples in both public transit and personal vehicles in support of the belief that this vision of the future is both attainable and a worthy goal.
