Diamond Webinars – A Global Perspective on Regional Accessibility
Welcome to Diamond webinars: this is the second in our webinar series format. We’re gon na keep these up, but we look forward to when we can gather in real life.
Again today we have a panel of experts from around the world in an engaging discussion about how various countries address accessibility.
I’m jonathan de armas, a partner here at diamond Dimond is a digital agency built by developers with a commitment to well crafted inclusive software built on best practices.
We support media companies and large brand names who rely on us every single day for product strategy.
Experience design and full stack development services, diamond proudly sponsors global accessibility Awareness Day, founded in 2012 and occurring on the third Thursday each May.
The purpose of GAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion for people with different disabilities.
God has turned into a global event, with a Twitter reach of over a hundred and ninety five million people on the god.
Hashtag celebrated by companies, big and small, inside and outside of the tech space Diamond, has launched our own accessibility practice to marry our love of building great software.
With our commitment to the accessibility community, we offer assessments, audits and general consulting, but also development services for remediation efforts.
Of course, it’s in our DNA to build well crafted software from the ground up with accessibility from the start. With all that in mind, it’s my pleasure to introduce our moderator for today’s panel.
It was my personal introduction to the accessibility community.
He’s also been a tech leader and community builder in the LA area for over 15 years in 2012.
He co founded both GAD and Dimond.
Welcome mr Joe Deming AJ welcome.
Thank You Jonathan.
I really appreciate that introduction.
I also like to welcome our esteemed panelists and audience.
It is really a pleasure to have such a great group of people from around the world.
Some of whom woke up at 2 00 a m their time in order to join our panel. So thank you so and with that, let me discuss our agenda, so we’re going to begin with the introductions and welcoming the panelists from there.
We’re going to speak for about 20 minutes and go to an audience.
Q, A and at that point, we’re going to wrap up so with that.
Let me start with introductions, I’d, like to ask each of the panelists tell us your.
Name what you do where you do it and for whom so let’s start with Patrick Dunphy? Hey everybody! My name is Patrick dumpy.
I’m based out of Toronto in Toronto and they worked for a Canada,’s, national public broadcaster, okay Broadcasting Corporation.
My role is accessibility program manager so, myself and my team, we are responsible for enabling our digital products.
And built experiences to be accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of how they decide to use built products and experiences.
I appreciate the invite to speak with these panelists today.
So thank you for having me and looking forward to this. Thank You, Patrick, and I love that background being Canadian myself this when I hear that the name CBC it warms my heart.
So thank you for joining us now Irena.
I’d like to invite you to answer the same question thanks for having me.
My name is Irena: Burak Eureka.
I’m the founder and executive director of enable it’s a nonprofit that I started around 2009 with a whole mission to empower the blind and visually impaired through technology, so spend my last 10 years with the users and we’ve established assistive technology.
Labs and worked with over 8 000 blind and low vision, youth in Africa.
At the same time, I’m very passionate about insurance or some of the content and services that we are providing our accessible.
So I’m running a separate initiative to ensure that some of the products coming out of Africa, especially all the innovations that we are seeing, are fully accessible to people with disabilities.
Thank you, wonderful.
Thank You, Irene, charlie. I will pass it on to you good morning.
My name is Charlie Parker.
I’m a digital accessibility consultant with Vision, Australia, Vision, Australia is the leading provider of services.
People who are blind or have low vision in Australia have a my team.
The digital access team, we have a disability focus, so we focus on equal access for all and help organisations to make sure that their digital content documents etc are accessible.
And we also do a lot of training as well in that area and I’m based in Adelaide Australia.
So for me it is currently 3 06 a m Good morning.
Thank you, Charlie and Makoto.
I’ll pass it along to you.
I’m Makoto Akiko Tokyo, Japan, it’s to study a m good morning. I’m an independent consultant on web accessibility.
Most of my clients, Japanese Groberg companies and I’ve been participating in the working group of three C’s week with content, accessibility, guidelines and Japanese national standards.
Thank You, Makoto, and I see that from the logo over there that we’re celebrating dad at Mount Fuji as well.
So exactly thank you for you, so now I want to ask each of you first, how are you all managing personally, with coded and locally in your region with codes and how? How are things going, but personally and for the accessibility community there? Why do we start with you Makoto? We’ll go back around oh well, I stay home and walk home and I wash my hands frequently and do some exercise.
I calm great Charlie.
For me, I was working from home before all of all of this happened.
So it’s it’s all very much.
I feel kind of guilty people still very much business as usual.
For me, I can stay home in and away from, the crowds and and the weird situations in the shops where certain products are off shelf and things like that.
So for me it’s. It’s pretty much life as usual, for I’m very, very fortunate.
I feel you same same here pretty much as tech techies, where we’re indoors anyways, it can be normal life Irene and so for me, it’s life as usual, but at the same time I’m learning how to love my children, because I’m with them 24 7.
So it’s, definitely a struggle, but it’s definitely a good time to bond.
So I’m sort of trying to change my mindset in terms of how I think and how things should get time done, to try and get the best of it cool Patrick.
I let go with Irene said.
The struggle with a Google classroom is new.
I shouldn’t say struggle yeah, it’s, been it’s been an interesting experience.
My I have to work before I start work with the unfortunate family.
Direct family extended family haven’t had anybody affected, so we’re.
We’re good parent Ontario in Canada. We’ve been managing well with coalbed.
My entire department has been working from home since March 13th, so we just passed a month.
What’s interesting is that we have programs for radio and television being produced from people’s homes, which is very unusual for the national public broadcaster, but extreme situations cause call for extreme measures.
So I’m doing well with it other than grocery shopping.
For my in laws and myself, I stay home, so it’s, it’s, we’re lucky and that’s that’s the only way I can looking at them, yeah yeah.
Unfortunately, they’re definitely a lot a lot of people struggling right now and we we’ve, definitely lost a couple of folks in the accessibility community.
So it is, it is pretty sad.
I peirong news stories and it’s yeah it’s really a shame.
Something interesting that’s happening over here is that sign language.
American Sign Language is is gaining a moment and it depends on the region. So in California, the mayor, the local mayor, the governor every time that they are doing some kind of alert to the community there’s, always an interpreter and a lot of people have noticed that, because they’re really up front and center.
The FCC does require closed captions on all broadcast networks.
So there’s always a closed captioning, but the sign language definitely is seeing a moment federally.
We’re not seeing that, but at least there are closed captions.
What is it like in your local region and we’ll go back around again.
Patrick the social distancing has for ASL interpreters has has definitely been interesting to watch from the press comments.
We have an inset for our broadcast of the ASL and that’s the prime minister, gives a daily address to the nation.
He is the only person at a podium so over the broadcast they have the ASL interpretation in a box as we go through the provinces, you can see the different situations of the interpreters are in the background from behind that the health health lead or or the Premiere, whoever is speaking at the time, but yeah, definitely echo what you say, Joe, that the visibility and the prominence of ASL and interpretation, the service of interpretation is definitely being recognized and a little celebrity culture is happening a little bit for that as well.
That’s great my friend, our Richard gray, is a big advocate for the importance of emergency services that it does go and reach out to people with disabilities as well.
So it’s super important. How about how about you Irene is.
Is Kenya seeing accessibility in terms of the emergency Broadcasting? Yes, and I think what’s interesting is that I know sign language has been there for quite some time on television.
But what’s interesting is that the wider community is beginning to understand, but actually the content that they are massively sharing is actually accessible to people with disabilities.
At the same time, they’re interesting articles where you find people are trying to ask the government to sort of account for four we have about, maybe over 200 people.
We have court cases so far, so the government should be able to tell us how many of those people actually have disabilities so that you know how to help them an interesting situation that has been there is where everyone has to wear face, masks everywhere.
They go, but the challenge comes in what happens to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, because some of them reliant lip reading, then what are we doing? So there are a few challenges coming up, but I think it’s a great opportunity for people to come together and sort of address some of the excess ability or disability challenges that we have.
Thank you, and that was it was a great point that you brought up.
I don’t know if you saw, but there was a story going around.
It was a high school students saw this situation and said the masks are covering the lip reading and this high school student 3d printed a mask that had plastic over the mouth so that you know it’s possible to lip, read and see what people are Saying which I thought was super cool, I don’t know if you’ve seen that all right, charlie, so in Australia, we actually had from the end of last year we had a lot of bushfires around the country.
So there was a lot of emergency response, so there was a lot of highlight, put on making press conferences etc accessible. We did initially see a lot where we would have a an Muslim Australian sign language interpreter to the side and the camera.
The television camera would pan in on the speaker, and so occasionally you’d see an wave off the side of the interpreter, but now they are starting to place.
The interpreter in the middle of the screen book to the side of screen, which has been a really good, a good thing to see, but there is a lot of fear in the disability community.
They are feeling you know quite vulnerable.
At the moment, there’s been a lot of assistance, put our financial assistance and things like that for job seekers.
But people with disability have really been fighting for extra assistance, because goods and services have gone up.
A lot of people have lost the ability to access carers because of social distancing and things like that and people feeling that they’re not safe to continue doing those jobs.
So there is a lot of fear in the community, but the community itself is coming together really well, so there’s a lot of self advocacy happening and they’re getting mysteries out there, which is really it’s, a shame that has to be Done but it’s a good thing that is being done.
Thank you and how about you? Makoto in Japan, the Prime Minister,’s.
Press conference has a sign language interpreter, but on live TV we cannot see the interpreter in some cases, so we might need to set the rules or guidelines for TV stations about that and we should spread words about sign language at first. The sign language is pretty my primary language and essential for people who are deaf and hard of hard of hearing, and I am seeing many business persons started working accom and we have business meetings online.
A friend of mine, who is Brian, told me that the zoom is relatively accessible to screen reader users, so he can attend meeting online, which is great.
My concern is accessibility for people who are deaf and hard of hearing zoom has not supported the Japanese caption.
Yet I hope they will, but we have talked, which is voice, recognition and relation application.
We can use it in combination with zoom, which works very well for captioning Wow, interesting to know we’re seeing over here I don’t know if I’m sure probably just depend a lot of people are attacking zoom for for security issues and And what really happened is that zoom, when they were building this product they had, they had to weigh and balance.
Are we going to focus on security or ease of use, and they optimized for ease of use by far definitely made some mistakes, but they’re? Getting better but but the fact that you can loop in the live, captioning is really a big deal and hopefully they’ll get Japan partagas as well.
I’d also like to mention that we’ve gotten some notes in the chat room from Melissa, who said I’m hard of hearing some and have encountered that challenge of the face, masks and being able to read people’s lips, facial expression.
This is, this is definitely not something that is a theory.
It’s definitely affecting people and then Ted Drake, who was our panelists last month, said that the web for all conference will be using UD talk for multilingual captioning next week, so yeah thought out to them and and as I’m reading all of this, I think I’m pointing in the right spot right about here.
You can see below you, so this is for the audience: the Q, A at the end, we’re gon na, have a Q A and, if you just click on that and start to ask your questions by the time we’re done with the panel. We’ll be able to go in and get to your questions.
So with that I’m going to ask you Makoto any plans for global accessibility Awareness Day.
Well, I’m gon na call host the online webinar event, which is cold god, Japan 2020.
This is a first time for us to hold the one day online seminar.
You can see the logo of the god, Japan.
On my background everywhere, we will have eight Japanese speakers who are passionate with web accessibility.
This is gon na be awesome.
I can’t.
Wait for sorwe be now ask them.
Please do let us know that link. I think we’ll be able to share that with the audience.
I would love to see it myself.
Yes, I will great Thank You, charlie, well, this year actually aligned with my team.
The digital access teams – 20th anniversary – in doing what we do so we did have a big dad birthday party planned which was going to be a live event.
However, now things obviously changed a bit, so we do have some really fun things in the pipeline, which I don’t want to mention just yet, but will be pushing those out when everything’s been bedded down.
We’ve got some really fun things that will be coming out: cool, um, congrats on the 20th anniversary and when you’re ready, do, let me or Jennison know about the event I’ll make sure added to the guard website I mean so we Were actually planning to have a face to face event, just like everybody else, because digital accessibility is a very new concept and it was important for us to bring people together.
But now because of covet, we’ve moved online, so we will be hosting a webinar and we will have some local participation and, most importantly, they’re going to have Joe and Jennison as part of the panel to help us at least discuss the importance Of digital accessibility, so we are very excited.
I’m excited as well, because I haven’t done enough events with Jennison on dad day only only a couple of times here and there, so it’s gon na, definitely be a pleasure.
Thank you for that.
Invite and Patrick yeah Colby definitely threw a wrench into things. Our building the Toronto broadcast Center is the main city for CBC that’s, where the national broadcasts come from, and we have generally have a space where we have a table and we set up computers.
It’s a public space, so anybody from the public can come in and explore the building.
So we set up a series of laptops, gov dot.
Uk’last year had their setups and basically personas.
You can never simulate a disability and, and that’s, not at all what I’m advocating for it.’s, the concept of barriers and we use the different profiles on different laptops and we encourage and walk by just to come and play with them.
And use it, but this year it’s not possible.
We will be doing it in internal empathy workshops.
That is, that is similar to that.
So there’s a bunch of exercises that I will be guiding participants through.
Basically, the goal: it’s the bus by using content that they know that content they built and make it so they can’t access it and basically the goal is after an hour. I go to the slide and I said: are you being like this and it’s a picture of a duck smashing monitor, and this is like my goal.
I want you to feel like this.
I want you to have empathy I want.
I want you to have that feeling and that’s that’s what they will be doing for kasher, that’s really awesome.
I mean the whole point of God is to bring awareness to developers and folks that build digital content, and until you really see this up front, you just can’t understand it.
So the empathy is so vital.
I love this approach.
All of you also are invited to let me or Jennison know about your events.
If you would like us to mention it publicly, we’ll be happy to provide a link at the end of this, but as well on the god website.
So up next, I’m going to ask about the UN Convention on the Rights of persons with disabilities, which the United States is not signed. Can someone define what it is or explain what it is and then let us know in your region if it has been signed and the impact of it if you’re up for that Patrick great, if not, I’ll see if another panelist wants to Describe it, it’s, it’s.
The intention is to it’s a it’s, a human rights treaty to protect the rights and the dignity of persons with disabilities.
It’s it’s, promoting the respect and the dignity of persons disabilities and ensure that they have the fundamental freedoms available to them.
I should know this.
Canada is a member, I will say yeah.
I’m full disclosure.
I’m not well versed on the convention about Rights person.’s abilities.
Oh no worries as long.
I just curious like how that’s impacted some of the regions, because here we have the a da and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has been ruling that it is the law that you need to make websites and digital products accessible, but it’s still A matter of the courts because in the 90s in the early 90s, when it was passed, it was not yet Vic.
What is to have the so? We’re lacking this a little bit and that would be nice to have the UN treaty signed. Hopefully, what happens sooner or later Irene? How about you in Kenya? Is it? Is it a signatory and how has it impacted yes? So Kenya is a signatory to the UN CRPD and actually Kenya was part of the team that developed the CRPD, so they’re very, very, very engaged in the whole process.
The government is very committed and actually the Ministry of Labor Nairobi leads the effort and we do have people with disabilities participating as part of their effort and their Kenyan National Human Rights Commission is the one that does the monitoring to make sure.
At least we are able to accomplish what we’ve committed to doing so, at the same time, there’s a work group which involves the government and civil society groups and they handle different issues, including there’s, an efforts to ensure that we have Inclusive education, which is very, very critical, so I have to say for Kenya: the country we’ve seen great progress in their UN CRPD as well, as I think the best part is just the involve mental of different groups of people with accessible society with AIDS.
People with disabilities, but it’s, government so yeah, so I think, can use doing a great job.
We still have some way to go but made this follow up for the long haul.
I guess this really is is a signatory.
We were one of the original signatories in 2008, I believe it was ratified and, and then the optional protocol in 2009, how that translates and transfers it’s difficult to say again: we have our own disability discrimination, acts and things in place, but they’re.
Not necessarily widely known so not a lot.
It really takes somebody to to push a complaint and and and have to make a complaint on the basis of of any of these particular policies.
To get actually happen. We do have a National Disability Insurance Scheme now, so it does aim to help people gain more independence and more independence over the services that they access and things like that.
So that has really pushed disability into the spotlight, which has been a good thing.
It’s a very new scheme.
So, of course, there are a few teething issues and things, but – and we also have a senator at the moment, who is a wheelchair user and he’s a really good advocate for people with disability as well, and he’s very personable and gets in And speaks to the people and really takes their messages in to Parliament, which is really good to see as well.
Thank you, Makoto yeah, Japan, signs the convention in 2014 six years ago, and the act for eliminating discrimination against persons with disabilities was enacted in 2016.
Forceful ad, a in the United States in a a in Ontario Canada, I have to say that it is very loose.
We see.
Don’t have any legal pressure to make things more accessible and as a role, we haven’t seen any big changes through last four years, especially in terms of digital information.
Accessibility.
It’s very unfortunate Thanks. I’m going to add from from the Q A we have.
Jeremy seda said that the? U s Actually did sign it on July 30, 2009, but we failed to ratify it.
So we’re absolutely there.
So just thought.
I’d add that now.
Oh another question, you’re welcome back to that.
How about the the cultural situation with respect to disabilities or to accessibility in the region Mikoto? What is it like? If you have a disability? Well, Japan is way behind other countries.
In terms of understanding on how and why accessibly is important and essential, it might be due to lack of real applications and social pressures.
I think we need more strict role in Japan.
On the other hand, Japan is most laboratory aging on these planets, I believe, exhibit design also benefits all the people, so we wish like different strategy to promote accessibility in my country. Thank You, charlie.
We have had the National Disability Insurance Scheme, so it has pushed disability into the spotlight.
I think a lot of people -‘s.
Experience has been different.
There are a lot of people that they all wanting to do the right thing, but not sure how, and especially at the moment in in the work that we do with auditing websites and and helping people get their digital platforms accessible.
We are extremely busy at the moment which tells me that that it is important it was when I first started in this industry.
It was a bit of a checkbox exercise, it’s, you know we, there’s something called WCAG and we want to be double aged for me.
What we need to do to be double a without any real understanding of what that was now people are becoming more aware.
People with disability are advocating for themselves a lot more.
We have had a couple of large actions against against different companies over their accessibility, so that has brought it into the spotlight as well. We still have a ways to go, but people are getting more of a voice and that’s a lot of what I do is I speak to your organization’s about the needs of people with accessibility issues and how you know, people with a disability.
They have the same, wants and needs as everybody else.
Just because somebody has a disability.
Doesn’t mean that they don’t want to do all the same things that everybody else wants to do online so and then, once those things are accessible, it actually makes it easier everyone and – and that message is coming through.
So, yes, we’re still a long way to go, but I think we’re on the right track about Canada, so I’ve been in the accessibility space for about maybe thirteen years now, and one thing I can say is that it’s Been an extremely lonely journey and that’s, because accessibility is a very, very foreign concept and what you find is most people.
When you talk about, when you say the word accessibility, they are you talking about access to food or education, or what is it so that’s? Why sometimes you see? I tried to put an emphasis when I’m dealing with digital accessibility, and I’m very clear as to what I’m talking about part of it, this being a very foreign concept.
Disability was not very popular in Africa in general.
Until about one and a half years ago, we saw a huge momentum, and part of it is because there was a global disability summit in London that was hosted by the UK government.
So that created a huge momentum because of also the investments they were making anything disability in Africa, so that opened doors, but what we’ve seen over time is.
It is a bit of some confusion when it comes to digital accessibility. What people think exceeds versus the reality of what it is are two different things.
So this is definitely a need for a lot of training and education.
We got piece.
The other piece is that the government has moved a lot of services online.
We don’t have any laws on digital facilities.
Our new ICT policy does mention accessibility and we are going to do a review to see.
Is this sufficient? Because then we have to think about the legal framework setting that standard and monetary, but in the meantime, we don’t have a very strong legal framework in that area.
But the best parts about corvid is that it’s create a Kovach 19.
Is that it’s created an opportunity and on the entry points for us to have these conversations because, like in Kenya? Currently, the government is asking people don’t use cash use mobile money applications.
If you need any government services go online, but most of these mobile money applications are not accessible so that’s a huge problem. Government services online.
They may be online.
That’s true, but they are not accessible to people with disabilities.
So I find this to be a real, really great opportunity for us to push this agenda and part of it.
Enable was actually beating hosts the first inclusive Africa conference last month and, of course, and the focus was on digital accessibility, because we understood the need of people just get them to understand what’s just basic.
What does digital accessibility mean and unfortunately we ended up canceling the event, but it still turns out to good, because everyone now has gone online and our goal is to take advantage of this opportunity to promote Digital Inclusion.
Thank you.
I may actually speak to you offline that to get a little more information on this, because I always love to have examples.
When I do talks about why accessibility is really a civil right, and so there’s an example of when someone gets sued.
But when the IRS said it gives a fine, but they don’t provide an accessible form when they say that you owe money you should. You should definitely pay taxes if you have a disability, but if you’re not given the notice in an accessible way, then why should you pay if you can use money that’s, that’s, that’s a pretty prime example of that? So, thank you and how about Canada, Canada is.
We are in the process of introducing the accessible Canada Act.
This was passed in federal legislation last before the summer before the separate session closed.
So in the consultation phase, it is not yet actionable, but what’s? What’s happening is you can have different ministries, take possibility for different areas, so the transportation will take.
Look over the accessibility of transport.
Communications will be looked after by the the CRTC who governs broadcasting for which, which is the industry, but it would where I work it’s.
Essentially it’s what it will be.
Is it’s the outcomes that, as I see them, it’s? It’s will require consultation with personal disabilities.
It’s the ability to to respond as solicit feedback from from audiences or from people and transparency about your accessibility plans, and your progress will have what’s been done.
I mean those are the three three things that I think are. There are necessary to be successful.
I live in Toronto, Mikoto mentioned AODA previously on the cuspid league for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.
Now that is the first accessibility legislation that extends to the private sector as well, so that was rolled up based on company size.
Companies were had to meet accessibility requirements and AODA required.
The web content accessibility guidelines that Charlie mentioned referenced earlier.
What’s nice about a Oda is the core principles at references.
It takes it out of the very rigid what can speak of perceivable, operable, understandable, robust and it talks about the independence talks about dignity, it integration and equality, it really personalizes accessibility and what it is yeah.
Well, I’m lucky to be in Toronto.
We have a very vibrant accessibility community here and I think that is a symptom of we have a lot of educational higher ed in the city.
Nao da. A lot of large companies are here, so I excessively Toronto has a very large following.
I know.
Mikoto has been here the past two years when I was actually hosted last year, which was a lot of fun yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, changing more people are noticing it.
More people are familiar with the term.
Accessibility is not about availability.
If people are getting understanding, the accessibility is about ability to use and interact.
Thank You, Deb Thanks.
So with a final question, I’m just going to prompt our audience once again hit the QA button.
If you have a question, this is our last question and we only have two others so that’s why I went a little bit long.
The final question is: it is kind of prompted from a trip I took to Spain, which was pretty fascinating. There’s an organization there called I call it on se, but apparently in Spain it’s pronounced on fade and what it is, the during the war and the Spanish cleaning, a lot of a lot of people were maimed and the Spanish king really didn’t want to deal with it and he just decided to provide an exclusive Lottery Commission to this group, which was for people who are blind, and the result of it is that employment among people who are blind in Spain is 80 percent.
It was a very powerful organization and the problem, and most of the rest of the world is that there is very low employment numbers for people with disabilities.
So I thought it was an interesting model that maybe we could learn from in other regions.
So I’m wondering: is there something that we in the United States can take away from your region, or is there something that you can take away from one of the other panelists or other regions? How can we share our knowledge and what is worked and not worked so Patrick? I’ll start with you.
I think things like what we’re doing today.
Joe, are important.
The the willingness of the people involved with accessibility and we’re very passionate about what we do and just continue to spread the message and educate and teach we’re necessary.
I can’t think of a situation.
I similar to the same scenario that you outlined, but I think it’s it’s.
I think the onus is on us to to really to teach and educate and spread the word about accessibility, the importance, the impact, the benefit that people obtain from from the measures that we take and what we do so really it’s. It’s.
More of this, it’s kind of a simple answer about really its.
I I used to be involved with successfully Toronto as a lead, and it was really gratifying just to to to get feedback from people as as a former organizer of it.
It’s.
Just like it really impacts you personally and what you’re doing, and it does make a difference.
So thanks, Thank You Irene.
So for me, one thing that I completely admire about the United States and, of course Europe is – is that private sector companies have taken on this message about accessibility.
We are leading the effort whether it comes to innovations to engaging their staff.
They’re, making sure it’s part and parcel of the companies that they lead.
Now the difference is in Africa. We don’t have much going on about digital accessibility, and I think that African companies can learn from private sector companies here to realize that, even if we have the government that should also be pushing digital access against private sector companies have a huge role to Play and these great opportunities for innovations at the same time, I think one Challenger would have for all this private sector international companies doing business in Africa is to make sure that there are global strategies on accessibility actually trickle down to Africa, and in this case, what Happens is you find all these companies here talking about digital accessibility, pushing great innovations, but when you go to their local offices in Africa, no one even understands what’s digital accessibility.
So half the time you’re told oh, that’s a corporate initiative.
Even you need to go back to corporate office, but the reality is: we have more than 18 young Africans living with disabilities, so we need products that I inclusive and the yarn Africans are very innovative.
So we have amazing innovations that are coming out of Africa, but they are not inclusive.
So really.
This is a challenge to private sector companies to really join hands and make sure that their accessibility message is trickling down to their staff on the ground, because I’m sure the stuff on the ground Goulet embrace the message and push it on.
Thank you before.
I move on to you, Charlie.
I’m just going to read a comment from from Ted Drake who who was talking about the on say that I mentioned earlier, and he said it sounds similar to the Randolph Shepard vendor’s Act in the United States, which gives priority to blind and Low vision, entrepreneurs to run cafe’s, concession stands and vending machines on state and federal property, rest areas, courts etc, which is interesting.
I need to learn more about that. Thank You, Ted, so Charlie in Australia.
We’re seeing a slight movement and – and I have to admit I am – and one of the big advocates for it away from pure WCAG accessibility.
It’s very important.
We are seeing a shift a little bit more towards inclusive design and things like that and really looking at the end user and how you know you can, if you design for the extreme, it makes it easy everybody.
So we are seeing a slight movement away from that, and – and the other really important thing is, is the old slogan nothing about us without us? You know engaging with the disability communities.
I see a lot of a lot of things being done to make things accessible for the people who are blind or have low vision or make things accessible for the people who are deaf, but not a lot of talking with those particular groups to find out what They want, and I think getting an understanding of each disability is really important, because if you’re building something for a particular group, you have to have an understanding of what you’re.
Building for and understanding that you know quite quite a lot of people.’s experience lived, experience is different, so I used to work directly with people who were blind and had low vision, and I could have two clients who had exactly the same condition, but their actual lived experience when they’re online was completely different.
So diagnostically exactly the same condition how they had to set up the computer completely different, so it’s it’s getting understanding and really speaking to the communities, I think is really important as well.
Thank you Makoto.
I would say: let’s see not only people with disabilities, but also all the users different abilities. Accessibility is all about people with disabilities in the first place, but I believe accessibility is more than that.
We are different regardless of disabilities and accessible disapper affects everyone.
For instance, accessibility benefits, older people, they have more difficulties and faced more challenges when they are using the web.
As I mentioned earlier today, Japan is most relevantly aging on this planet.
For instance, sufficient color contrasts benefits all the people, including me and conscience, and a consistent navigation.
Descriptive instruction and error message and resizable text help all the people, so following accessibility guidelines will make your web content more user friendly, and you can create better clarity of user experience for everyone who is using your website.’s.
Web services web applications whatever, and we will be able to get more people involved in the accessible design.
Thank You Makoto.
So that was the last question.
Now I’m going to go to the Q A and in the interest of time wow it’s. We’ve really gone on quite long, but we have a lot of folks.
Almost nobody is left, so I’m going to just direct the question to one or maybe two and people before we wrap up.
Maybe I’ll go to Irene for that.
One, what are your thoughts on a technical divide? I’ve been following NGOs in India that are moving their occupational and independence training online, but many of their students lack adequate mobile phones to join and it’s also difficult to purchase phones during the shutdown.
So so this is a really really critical question and simply because one thing we are seeing about covert 19 is that it’s.
Actually, people with disabilities are experiencing a secondary source of isolation, which is digital isolation, and this is simply because, if you go to Africa or anywhere you’ll find most people are going about their business.
The same way using online application doing their own thing.
But people with disabilities are not able to have access to like mobile magnification, they have a connectivity challenges and one one area can give an example is online learning, which is what the participant has asked about in Kenya.
Currently, there are different issues that come with online learning.
Also, all schools are closed. Students are home and learning from home.
I’ll give an example of a professor that I work with one she has students with disabilities and when everyone else is logging online, the students are not logging in one of the challenges is students with disabilities in high education actually given laptops one day in School and guess what happens when the semester is over, they have to give back their laptops.
So this time, when the students left for home no one to collapse at home, some of them have what we call feature films which are very different from smartphones.
So how can you access your educational content on the future phones, yet most of that content is not even accessible.
At the same time, you also find out that the professor I’m, talking to she doesn’t know how to use the new online platforms that they’ve been told by the government.
This is what unity is for higher education, so there’s also an issue of connectivity.
Most people in Africa pay for every minute.
Every 10 minute you spend on the Internet.
It’s not like here half the time you have unlimited.
So you also find most things are not pre wired for that, but also long term connectivity becomes very, very expensive. So there are lot of issues going on connectivity, access to hardware, most people, don’t have laptops, they have phones and those are feature phones, educational content is not accessible.
The professors and the students themselves, don’t even know how to use these platforms.
So when you look at that whole combination, and then you see what the participant is saying about everything moving online, then you find there’s a different set of challenges that’s happening, especially in fact in developing countries.
Great answer, thank you.
All right Melissa asks how our country is addressing universal design to increase accessibility.
Would you like to take that one mikoto well in Japan, especially or public sectors like to use the term Universal Design, Rossum accessible, design or accessibility, and we also use the term barrier for so in in the strict meaning? There are some differences between each other’s, Universal Design, accessibility and very maybe you know, inclusive design, but I think the aim is the same.
The goal is the same: to get more comfortable environment or to services.
So I not sure if this is answer for the question, but if you take the approach of it was a design, then you will get more accessible results.
Thank You, Mikoto and then the last question from Mitchell evan is for Patrick.
When we demand accessibility. I often hear this concern.
Can you show an example where it’s been done well before it’s, not necessarily pessimistic it’s wanting to follow others best practices.
Well, that’s a success story.
You would point you in your region, yeah.
I get that question a lot when we’re building things.
Okay, we’re gon na.
Do it how to do it right? Who’s done it right, yeah? Sometimes that requires me to go looking consulting looking research and looking at other sites.
It’s, it’s an evolution, really it’s.
I think Canada Ontario has been doing very well regards to improving accessibility in terms of visibility, knowledge, people working in digital accessibility.
I often went when I’m looking for something I generally start with financial institutions, because they have real needs too. When it comes to personal finances, there’s nothing more personal than that, so that’s generally a starting point.
For me, beyond that, this is the other good samples that were looking.
I would actually look at various accessibility agencies and and the work that they’ve been consulting on.
If I don’t have an a an answer that I’m comfortable with with giving it direction great, thank you so much Patrick and thank you to all of our panelists.
I cannot thank you enough.
I know it was a burden, especially for a couple of you at this hour, so it is, it is really much appreciated.
I enjoyed this tremendously and I hope that I will see you all in person and very soon.
The next global accessibility Awareness Day is going to be on May 21st 2020, which is one month from now on Thursday, the third Thursday of May, as it is every year.
We are also going to be releasing our second annual state of accessibility report.
Note how that comes to soar, so that will also be talking about the GAD pledge party programming. This is something that we could actually use some help on so from the audience.
If anybody would like to be a sponsor, please let me know we don’t have we only have 11 more spots open and essentially we’re going to be sponsoring and working with one open source project a month to try and help them to become More accessible, we’ll, provide you more details as the event comes along, but something that we could really use is anybody that knows core developers and some of the big open source projects that are impacting accessibility downstream.
We could definitely use some some personal intros there and get more open source projects to take the gap pledge.
So thank you for that.
Our next webinar will also be on the same day on GAD day and May 21st.
We’re going to provide the findings of the state of accessibility report and I’m very pleased that Jennison, my co founder of god, has agreed to be part of that webinar and we also have a special guest from the web aim report Jared Smith And we may add another one or two, so I look forward to seeing you there and thank you all and if you would like to contact anyone that was on the panel today here you have all their contact information.
We will be providing a transcript and reporting of this just bear with us a little bit to make sure that all the captions are correct and we look forward to seeing you next month.
Thank you very much.
.
FREE traffic, Autoresponder, Page Builder, Popup Creator, Link Tracker, and to Make Money Now!
