Disabled people and ICT: Public Hearing

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Disabled people and ICT: Public Hearing

Because we believe it is vital that our work takes into account the views of as many stakeholders as possible, including disabled people themselves, we used as many channels as possible to gather those views throughout the project. We organised a public hearing, which took place in December 2005. Below you can read through the main points that were raised at the hearing.

On funding and the market case

  • "Funding for specific assistive technology products should be ring-fenced. If this doesn't happen and local authorities have different solutions competing for budget, some high cost low impact solutions can be at risk."
  • "With the rapidly aging population disability products will have an ever increasing market and become more mainstream."
  • "If industry is to implement any changes they must be economical."
  • "The increasing numbers of elderly people with minor disabilities will increase the accessibility of products for more profoundly disabled people."
  • "There are some products out their which could be used in the disability market but where the manufacturers simply do not know that their products are suitable."
  • "There is a large and growing disability market out there and manufactures should be approached on an economic basis. Disability organisations need to raise the awareness of this market to the manufacturers."
  • "More effort must be made to make people aware of what products are available on the market."
  • "Ring-fenced money is needed for the development of specific disability products."
  • "Some companies are interested in disability products but only if there is a business case behind it. Part of the responsibility for creating a sensible business case could lay with the disability organisations."

The knowledge barrier

  • "Gaining access to knowledge can be hard if you are not severely ill, as you have to go to the healthcare professionals for information; they don't come to you."
  • "The people that actually provide equipment are those most in need of training. They are the people who really need to know what technology is available. To achieve this, more proper evaluation of technologies is needed to supply people with more information about the products available."
  • "Training for people with disabilities should be conducted by disability organisations, not by normal training institutes who will never be able to fully serve people with a wide range of preferences and needs."
  • "Examples of good practice could be put forward for manufacturers to learn from."
  • "Training materials need to be produced in other forms than just print."
  • "Disabled people do not always make full use of technology due to not fully understanding how to use it."
  • "Work needs to be done to train future developers and designers in accessibility."
  • "We should provide a list of websites that meet a high level of accessibility."

Inclusive design

  • "Making adjustments to products at the end of the product life cycle is prohibitively expensive."
  • "It is important to decouple the service requirements of the technology from how the technology is delivered."
  • "It is important to have an end-to-end philosophy, considering the generation of material and the delivery of that material."
  • "Manufacturers should include accessibility from a very early stage as this will dramatically reduce the cost."
  • "Inclusive design must start earlier. Manufacturers and disability experts must talk together from the start."
  • "Designers should go to the disability organisations and manufacturers and the organisations that will be providing the service and talk about disability issues from an early stage."
  • "The technology in your hand can often be made accessible reasonably easily but it is the technology behind it where the cost lies. Once the underlying technology has been made accessible changes on the front end can be made easily."
  • "It is better to have a range of products that each do their job very well, rather than having one product that tries to do everything. "

On the use of legislation and regulation

  • "The Japanese government has introduced requirements for all products. They must meet certain accessibility standards and anyone who wants to sell to the government has to meet these standards. Most companies do not want to produce two versions of the same product so this will lead to more accessible products in the mainstream market. Other companies who do not want to sell to government will still have to compete with the new more accessible products which will force the quality of their products up."
  • "Companies want to make their products stand out. Sometimes, due to copyright issues, they cannot make their product work in the same way as another. For example, some browsers use Favourites, some use Bookmark, some use an icon, they all do they same but you need to relearn how to use each one. This leads to the problem that you can't teach someone how to use a range of products, just how to use a single instance."
  • "Some companies often need to make changes to comply with the DDA, but often these changes are what is the most cost effective option and not what is really needed by people. Government should force them to speak to the people who need the solution and implement what they recommended."
  • "People should have material in a form that is most suitable for them and this should be supported by legislation."
  • "A test case against a company website is needed."

Information overload or information desert?

  • "Some people still live in an information desert and work needs to be done to help these people get connected to society."
  • "Manuals that come with products need to be able to communicate in clear language and this needs to be carried across to the helplines."
  • "The awareness of research projects and the outcomes needs to be raised."
  • "We need to raise awareness of facilities like the ability to get online through libraries and also provide more training at the libraries."

Standardisation

  • "To help with the problem of the differences between manufacturers standardisation can help."
  • "Some standards are mutually exclusive and sometimes it can be more important to make something fit for purpose than for trying to make it fit into a whole range of standards."
  • "An end to end approach is needed for standardisation."