Phill Jenkins
“I think GPII.net has some potential, I just wonder what the AT vendors are saying and how the policy makers and grant funders are getting involved?”
Neil Milliken
“Hi Phill, There is at least one AT vendor involved (TextHelp). Hopefully more will get involved as well as people like the guys behind NVDA and other open-source ATs. There is grant funding from the European Union for the Cloud For All elements so it has some momentum – it still needs more and that momentum must be sustained if we are to achieve something great”
Jim Tobias
“Good question, Phill. I think there are already cloud-based AT vendors, and more will join them. Aside from the continuing need for alternative input (like large key keyboards) and output (like Braille printing), the cloud emphasizes the advantages of software solutions over hardware ones. But why should cloud-curious AT vendors adopt GPII as a strategy? The advantages of GPII as a cloud strategy for AT vendors are: easier global marketing, serving diverging platforms (desktop, mobile, kiosks, POS terminals, etc…) without having to develop separate products, and assistance with the enterprise customer (employer, school district, etc., who may want a package of solutions rather than buying a screen reader from vendor X, a communication aid from Vendor Y, and captioning services from vendor Z).”
L. E. Storck
“Keep talking about this here when you have time :-); where are the women involved?”
Phill Jenkins
“Jim and Neil, I think the business model is what really needs to be tested and proven as sustainable. GPII needs vendors X, Y, and Z to really buy in while assuring the end users that their needs will be met. The old business model of a vendor developing, selling AND SERVICING the end user is what made the AT industry. All the advantages of GPii will only succeed when the end users needs are really met. Marketing messages saying it will “just work” are not enough to meet the previous “services” expectations that came along with Neil’s so called “niche” expensive AT solutions. For example, as expensive and one-off as they may have been, custom JAWS scripts did keep a person working and productive – while complaining to a platform owner may take months and an upgrade release to wait for a fix.”
Jim Tobias
“Phill, I absolutely agree — GPII has to stay out of the way of the AT vendors and their customers, because that’s the relationship that makes everything work. I think of it like mall management: provide the building, spaces, escalators, parking, maps, etc., and let the merchants, large and small, do their thing. There’s one area where GPII itself could be of value, and that’s free-and-open-source-software. We’ve all seen dozens of worthy AT projects come and go because they weren’t successfully commercialized or otherwise made sustainable. Users often wound up in a dead end. GPII could do something about that.”
Neil Milliken
“I’m really pleased to have started off some discussion.
I’ll try and address the points made by everyone.
L.E. I cannot really answer why there are not more women involved, in this discussion, AT and indeed IT in general. I know a number of fantastic female professionals in the AT and accessibility field but they are significantly outnumbered. I am open to anyone who wants to make a positive contribution.
Jim & Phill,
I don’t believe that it is the intention of GPII to get in the way of AT vendors and their customers, rather the opposite. The whole rationale for GPII is to provide a mechanism for making AT available to more people on more devices. Gregg Vanderheiden talks about it as being like a transport network which the ATs and the customers use to get where they need to be. The network is not biased towards one type of car, bike or bus etc.
Phill,
With regards to JAWS scripting I understand your argument and the pragmatic results that it brings. The cost of purchasing the license for JAWS is just the tip of the ice-berg. However, I have spent more on JAWS scripting than I have on my house. Scripting a solution to a problem locks you into a cycle of continuous updates to the scripts that do not benefit everyone. It also means that the real culprit – ie the manufacturer of the offending software or the website owner is oblivious to the problems with their product and or service.
Sometime scripts are necessary but I think that Freedom Scientific and their Partners, should be submitting every script created for the potential further development of the product.
I am sure that currently there are many duplications of the scripting work because of the way that scripting does not get back into the product and is effectively outsourced.
Jim – with regards to AT vendors having a direct relationship with their customers I don’t believe that this is necessarily so outside of the vendor’s home nation. Outside of the US lot of AT is supplied by third parties who have no control of the product. Attend a Nuance Dragon Partner Meeting in the UK and you will feel the frustration.
Jim – I really do hope that the GPII will open up the opportunities for more low and no cost options for people. I know from experience that you can create a great product that wins awards but still dies a death because of price and market constraints.”
Martyn Cooper
“I agree with your point and have been making similar headline claims in my own work for decades. However handle with care. The population of people with disabilities is as diverse as any other large sample of the total human population. There is *never* just one thing you can do that makes your product/service accessible to all different people with disabilities. You need to adopt a culture that seeks to address diversity and moves away from one size fits all. If you do this with the motivation of meeting the needs of disabled people you are likely to meet the wide range of users needs and requirements in the general population too!”
Nancy Hays
“Good point, Martyn. I was thinking the same things while reading the article. All of us have different contexts in which services designed for people with disabilities of all different kinds would benefit us not because of our personal diversity, exactly, but because of our diverse situations at any moment. A simple example would be speech-to-text services that could convert a spoken message to a text message to avoid “texting while walking” (driving clearly being too dangerous to consider). The potential ways to leverage accessibility technologies for the wider public might persuade companies to invest in the effort.”
Neil Milliken
“Hi Martyn and Nancy,Thanks for the comments.Martyn I agree that amongst that huge group there are wide variances of need. Absolutely agree when you say that there will never be a one size fits all approach that works. But that is why the GPII is so interesting, it gives the individual flexibility to choose what is right for them and works for them and tries to match it with mainstream technology.This actually fits very well with the trend in business for “mass customisation” where there are base components that a user can choose to make something pretty unique to them. You see this in the auto industry where people can choose from a range of different colours, accessories trims etc.. For any one model of car there may be anything like 500 variations.Nancy – I have been saying for a decade now that my favourite assistive technologies for helping me with my dyslexia are Microsoft Outlook which helps me organise myself and Dragon Naturally Speaking – both were designed and marketed as productivity tools.It is only 10 years later that speech recognition is becoming mainstream and being included on your mobile phone as standard!”
This article was originally published at atrophiedmind
