.
T ECHNOLOGY & D ISABILITY :
a global glimpse of the future
Final Report of the International Disability Exchanges And Studies
(IDEAS) Project for the New Millennium, 1999-2004
Produced by the World Institute on Disability
Funded by the U.S. National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research,
project # H133A990006
T ECHNOLOGY & D ISABILITY :
a global glimpse of the future
Final Report on Technology for the
International Disability Exchanges And Studies (IDEAS)
Project for the New Millennium 1999-2004
Funded by the
U.S. National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research,
Project #H133A990006
Edited by Barbara Duncan of Rehabilitation International
Layout by Linda Schmidt
Published March 2005 by the
World Institute on Disability
510 16th Street, Suite 100
Oakland, California 94612
For additional copies, contact
Jennifer Geagan (jennifer@wid.org),
IDEAS Project Manager
Cover art reprinted from
“The provision of assistive aids”
by the National Insurance Administration
Assistive Technology Division
Sannergt. 2, 0426 Oslo Norway
.
TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
T ECHNOLOGY & D ISABILITY :
a global glimpse of the future
I NTRODUCTION
Foreword and Acknowledgements
1
Executive Summary
3
Inventions and Techniques Developed for People with Disabilities:
Unanticipated Consequences and Great Expectations
By Barbara Duncan
5
U NIVERSAL D ESIGN
Report of Results of 2004 International Conference on Universal Design
By Deborah Kaplan
9
Latin American Group Adopts Rio Charter for Universal Design
29
Building Careers in Design: an online course
By Elaine Ostroff
33
Best Practices in Universal Design: a comparative study
By Betty Dion Enterprises Ltd.
35
I NTERNATIONAL R EPOR TS ON A DVOCACY , R ESEARCH AND T RENDS
Successful Disability Advocacy at World Summit on the Information Society, Geneva, 2003
By Japanese Society for Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons
63
Report of International Workshop on Accessibility Requirements for
Public Procurement in the ICT Domain, Brussels, 2004
By Andries Koster, Netherlands
67
Where There Are No Wheelchairs: An Overview of Non-Governmental
Approaches to Wheelchairs in Developing Countries
By Steve Kurzman, Ph.D.
99
B LINDNESS AND P RINT D ISABILITY
Microsoft Report of International Conference on “Libraries for the Blind and
Print-Disabled: Moving Toward a Digital Future”
109
What is Daisy?
By George Kerscher
113
Audio Description: Access for All
By Joel Snyder
117
2
INTRODUCTION
.
Foreword and
Acknowledgements
This volume of selected papers provides an international state-of-the-art overview and
constitutes the final report on technology and disability for the International Disability
Exchanges and Studies (IDEAS) Project for the New Millennium.
The five-year project (1999–2004), administered by the World Institute on Disability (WID),
and funded by the U.S. National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research,
concentrated on trends, developments and research in technology and accessibility as one
of its main topics.
During the five-year project, technology specialists hired by WID provided regular reports to
the project periodical, www.disabilityworld.org, from Europe, Japan, and North and South
America, as well as attending international state of the art conferences. Technology reporters
included Deborah Kaplan, former Executive Director of the World Institute on Disability; Mark
Krizack of Whirlwind Wheelchair International; Jane Berliss of the Center for Accessible
Technology in Berkeley; and Judy Wilkinson of the USA; Hiroshi Kawamura and other
representatives of the Japanese Society for Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons; and Andries
Koster and other representatives of Kantel Konsult in the Netherlands. Jennifer Geagan of
WID, IDEAS project manager, provided technology news and resources throughout the
project.
For the final report, WID commissioned several specialists to prepare overviews of key
technology topics with a view towards the future. Some of the reports have already appeared
in DisabilityWorld, while others are printed here for the first time. The topics selected for an
international perspective are: universal design, advocacy and the information society,
accessible information technology in the European Union, wheelchair provision trends in
developing countries and information technology developments benefiting blind and print
disabled users.
3
TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
Executive Summary
One of the results of the five-year IDEAS Project for the New Millennium is an international
overview of technology and disability trends, with a view towards the future. Produced by the
World Institute on Disability, the 120-page volume consists of commissioned articles and
conference reports summarizing the following developments:






A historic look at the unforeseen impact on society of technological advances intended to
benefit people with disabilities;
Several progress reports on best practices in universal design projects, including the
results of an international comparative study carried out by a Canadian firm, and an indepth overview of the December 2004 Universal Design Conference in Rio de Janeiro;
A detailed case study of successful disability advocacy led by Japan and Thailand at the
World Summit on the Information Society, held in Geneva in 2003;
A comprehensive article detailing progress in the European Union to establish
procurement policies requiring purchase of accessible products and services;
A groundbreaking overview of how nongovernmental organizations based in the
industrialized countries are approaching wheelchair provision in developing countries;
and
Three articles reporting on international efforts to improve information technology for
blind and print disabled users, featuring a report of a 2004 international conference on
“Libraries for the Blind and Print-Disabled: Moving toward a Digital Future,” a summary of
the Daisy project promoting digital books to a new level, and a state of the art look at
audio description of film, television and theater.
In summary
Perhaps the globalization of disability issues and concerns can be most clearly witnessed in
the technology field. Several of these reports, particularly those from the recent Universal
Design conference and the World Summit on the Information Society, illustrate practical and
cutting edge partnerships being formed in countries located in both the North and South.
These partnerships, being forged among governments, advocacy and research groups—in,
for example, Brazil, Japan, Norway, the European Union and the U.S.—are both more
concrete and more transparent than other collaborations to improve life for people with
disabilities. Most of these initiatives involve time-dated goals for improvements in clearly
delineated public services such as transport and communications. The much-touted, but
ultimately vague “Society for All” of the 1970s and ’80s, has now been succeeded by a global
blueprint called Universal Design. Universal Design, first developed in the U.S., is meant to
be flexible, allowing for substantial local variation in application of solutions as long as the
maximum number of users benefit. Other best practices described in the report, such as
those benefiting blind and print-disabled persons, also demonstrate the value of ongoing
international collaboration and exchange of research.
4
INTRODUCTION
Inventions and techniques developed
for people with disabilities:
unanticipated consequences and
great expectations
By Barbara Duncan
Numerous advances are described in this international volume of papers on best practices
and new developments in Technology and Disability, some already implemented, some in
the earliest planning stages and others on the horizon.
Great expectations
We cannot predict with certainty what long range impact these developments will have on
the lives of disabled persons or on society in general. But, if we consider the magnitude of
societal impact of previous devices and techniques intended to benefit people with
disabilities, it is not unreasonable to harbor great expectations.
In general, there is substantial resistance by governments and bureaucracies to the costs of
developing and implementing new technologies and adaptations of public facilities and
services designed for people with disabilities. Yet, in nearly every case, these costs are
repaid many times over by their unforeseen benefits to society as a whole. Some
contemporary and historic examples follow.
New research on the brain’s first five years
In the 21st century, in response to research demonstrating that the human brain undergoes
its most rapid and critical development during the first five years of life, an array of new child
development approaches are being applied. Many of these approaches, centered on early
intervention and appropriate stimulation, were developed during the last 30 years as ways to
help children with disabilities catch up to their peers.
Ramping up
Throughout the world from Hanoi to Houston, we have become accustomed to using curb
cuts or ramps to move around more easily when using scooters, walkers, bicycles or
skateboards, when pushing strollers or carts, or dragging suitcases or equipment on wheels.
It is hard to remember that only a few decades ago, the idea of providing curb cuts and
ramps in public spaces was perceived by governments as an extremely expensive
5
TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
accommodation for a small segment of the population – those who use wheelchairs for
mobility. Ease of movement will only become more important in our aging societies.
Infant sign language
The use of American sign language with all infants is gaining quickly in popularity with
parents in the U.S., following several books, videos and television programs illustrating that
children as young as 9 months could learn to communicate simple needs or wants. This
technique is enabling parents to begin communicating with their children up to a year before
the usual development of recognizable speech, and some research indicates other gains for
the children as well.
Captions for all
In many countries, it is now commonplace to see captioned television news programs in
public, especially in noisy places such as airports, train stations, lobbies and bars. In the
U.S., this service began in 1976 when the Federal Communications Commission authorized
the use of line 21 on television sets for closed captioning for deaf viewers. Nearly 30 years
later, captioned programs are a preferred technique for teaching second language, based on
research showing gains from reading and hearing language simultaneously.
In all the above examples, society is witnessing long range and unforeseen gains from the
wider application of technologies, approaches and inventions meant to improve life for
specific groups of people with disabilities.
Trend established in 1800s
This is not a new phenomenon, in fact some historians trace this pattern back to the 1800s.
Steve Jacobs, an assistive technology expert, in an article for the International Rehabilitation
Review in 1997 1 discussed many examples and a few follow:
1808
● First typewriter developed in Italy by Pellegrino Turro to enable a blind
friend to write legibly.
1876
● Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone to assist deaf people to
communicate.
1940s
–1950s
● “Talking book machines,” including 33 1/3 RPM records and
tape recorders, were developed so blind people could listen to books.
● Although the first intended market for the transistor, developed by John
Bardeen and a team of scientists, was smaller, lighter, cheaper hearing aids,
the Chairman of Sony, Akio Morita, saw its even larger applications,
introducing transistor radios worldwide in the mid-1950s.
1
Steve Jacobs, “Technology Developed in Response to Disability Improves Life for All: a history,” International
Rehabilitation Review, Vol. 48, issue 1, 1997, published by Rehabilitation International (www.riglobal.org)
6
INTRODUCTION
1970s
● Vincent Cerf, who is hearing impaired, develops protocols for the
ARPANET, the first large scale computer network, including text messaging
or email to enable better communication with his wife who is deaf.
● Kurzweil reading machine, forerunner of the scanner, produced to read
printed text to blind persons.
1990s
● Dragon Systems introduces speech recognition software, aimed at helping
disabled persons who cannot type well to produce written text by talking.
Market-driven improvements to this software are being generated largely for
use by office workers who want to dictate text in a “hands free” mode.
● Similarly, the market for audio books in various formats has greatly
expanded beyond the blind population to the millions of commuters, travelers
and others who are now listening to bestsellers across the miles.
Looking to the future
We can conclude from these few examples and the articles in this volume that: 1) investment
in assistive technology and universal design pays off for society at large, as well as
improving the quality of life and increasing productivity of people with disabilities, 2) the
earlier that accessibility and greater universality of use are built into the planning process,
the lower the cost, 3) in countries where the population is aging, the investment in universal
design and assistive technology will become critical to the ability of large segments of the
population to remain in their homes and communities, 4) there is encouraging evidence of
new partnerships between governments and non-governmental organizations all over the
world, dedicated to making these advances available nationwide, through new legislation or
planning codes and no longer confined to islands of excellence, and 5) recent international
exchanges of research and expertise have shown that in many countries the critical mass or
"tipping point" has been reached: the juncture where the evidence of the value of the
innovation—in this case, universal design—has been demonstrated and the field can now
mature beyond prototypes and pilot projects.
7
TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
8
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
Universal Design for Disabled People
Draws International Support
Report on International Conference on Universal Design,
"Designing for the 21st Century,"
December 2004, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 
By Deborah Kaplan, specialist in Universal Design,
Deborah Kaplan Consulting (dk@deborahkaplan.com)
The brochure for this innovative, international conference states, "This is an extraordinary
moment. We are more diverse now in ability and age than ever before. It is time for design to
catch up. There is an urgent need to exchange ideas about the design of places, things,
information, policies and programs that demonstrate the power of design to shape a 21st
century world that works for all of us."
Living up to diverse expectations and agendas
With such an ambitious description, this conference managed to live up to many different
expectations and agendas. In-depth pre-conference sessions provided an opportunity for
complex subjects to be explored and explained completely. A variety of workshops and
plenary sessions covered a wide breadth of topics with presenters from across the globe.
Pre-conference "charettes" were organized for participants to spend a portion of a day in an
intensive session, many in the local Rio community, during the pre-conference period,
followed by two working sessions during the Core Conference along with a final presentation.
The conference brought together exciting Plenary speakers and presenters, many of whom
were high-ranking officials from Brazil. One longer lasting impact of the conference will likely
be an increase in accessibility accomplishments for Brazilians with disabilities.
Universal design, also referred variously during the conference as inclusive design, designfor-all or lifespan design, originated as a concept for the built environment. The phrase was
coined by the late architect Ron Mace, a U.S. wheelchair-using pioneer of the disability
accessibility movement, who was remembered at the conference through an awards
presentation in his name. The idea is that through a deliberate design process that focuses
on the needs of all users, especially including persons with all kinds of disabilities, most of
the things that people build or create can be improved for all users, and also greatly expand
the range of users.

This article originally appeared at
http://www.disabilityworld.org/12-02_05/access/universaldesign.shtml
9
TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
Reversing basic design procedures
This concept is in contrast to the usual practice of first designing and constructing something,
such as a building, and then considering how to make it more accessible. The Designing for
the 21st Century III Conference was fueled by an international momentum to adopt universal
design principles and practices in the planning mode. The Conference aimed to provide
opportunities for the growing number of practitioners and promoters of universal design to
engage with each other as multi-disciplinary colleagues. Designers, educators, leaders from
disability, aging and sustainability organizations, business, media and government all
attended the Conference, and had many opportunities to learn from each other, as well as
make new connections for future endeavors.
This international conference built upon the successes of Designing for the 21st Century I in
1998 and Designing for the 21st Century II in 2000 (both held in the United States) as well as
the International Conference for Universal Design of Fall 2002 held in Yokohama, Japan.
Adaptive Environments, a 25 year old USA-based NGO, continued in its role as primary Host
for the Conference. Centro de Vida Independente do Rio de Janeiro (CVI-Rio), the first
independent living center in Latin America, was the other Host Partner.
A significant aim of the Designing for the 21st Century III conference was to act as a catalyst
for building understanding and collaboration between the developed and developing nations.
Brazil was chosen for the Conference site because it exemplifies economic disparity, boasts
a variety of universal design experiments, is a "South" nation, and its capital city, Rio is an
attractive location for international conferences.
Why Brazil?
Brazil is the largest nation in Latin America with 182,032,604 people. Around 50% of the
population accounts for just 10% of the national income—the internal economic disparities
parallel those of the world at large. The demographics are complex—from the fact that 47%
of Brazilians are of African descent to the fact that Brazil has the largest community of
Japanese outside of Japan. Within this huge geographical land mass more than 80% of
Brazilians live in urban areas.
The Conference planners also felt there is exciting potential for Brazil to model the national
integration of universal design. Innovative Brazilian leaders are shaping public policy and
finding ways to excite ordinary citizens about design-for-all. A new initiative on accessible
technology has been created out of President Lula's office. The city of Curitiba has created
an international model of integration of sustainable and universal design in transportation
and urban design.
The following session descriptions are illustrative of the Conference content, with a focus on
technology and media, transportation, designers and leaders with disabilities, Japan and
Latin America.
10
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
Pre-Conference Workshops
Transport Highlights
"Inclusive Design of Accessible Transport" Public transportation that is designed for all
passengers, including people with disabilities, is sorely needed in all corners of the world.
This workshop provided an overview of key elements of a truly universally designed transport
system, with presenters pointing out that there is more to true accessibility than just getting
on and off the vehicle. For example, public streets must be designed with curb cuts in order
for disabled passengers to be able to get to the transit station and then to their destination,
and traffic must be controlled near crosswalks at transit stations in order for passengers to
be able to safely cross the street. Challenges for rural areas and for countries with restricted
public transit budgets were also addressed.
For transportation advocates from countries such as the U.S., where many hard-won
victories have led to accessibility that can even sometimes be taken for granted, it is
extremely gratifying to see similar victories in other parts of the world. The pace of advances
in universally designed transportation is increasing, and advocates in distant parts of the
world can now find many resources from their peers, making it easier to advocate for
change, to participate in the planning process and to find solutions and standards that can be
adapted for local use. In some countries such as Japan and Brazil, major legislative
initiatives have been adopted at the national level, calling for implementation of accessible
transit systems for the entire country. This opens the door for advocates to become involved
from the very beginning of the planning process, a key component of true universal design.
A new trend in public transit across the globe is Bus Rapid Transit, which holds great
promise to bring universally designed transportation to many countries very soon. Bus Rapid
Transit, or BRT, combines some of the most attractive aspects of subway, light rail and bus
systems into a new mode of public transportation. BRT uses on-the-road buses on fixed
routes, stopping at raised platform stations that are level with the entrance of the bus, which
is at the side of the vehicle and extra wide to allow passengers to enter and exit quickly. The
passengers pay the fare when entering the station, like for the subway or light rail, making
system-wide fare integration possible. Using BRT, a city can achieve time efficiencies of light
rail or subways at much less cost and time, improving the existing bus system. Dozens of
major cities in all continents are in various stages of implementing BRT. Universal design
features of BRT include low cost for passengers; intentional color schemes for stations and
buses to convey basic use information for non-literate people, people who speak a different
language and people with cognitive disabilities; clear signage; space for wheelchair passage;
ramps instead of steps (often but not guaranteed); strong illumination; cleanliness and
enhanced safety. The City of Coriciba, Brazil, was an early adopter of BRT, with ramped
tube stations that include many accessibility features.
The organizer of this workshop and first presenter was Tom Rickert, Executive Director of
Access Exchange International, USA. He provided an overview of the basics of access to
transportation, making it clear that that are many elements to achieving the goal. Getting to a
transit stop involves access to streets and pathways, access to parking spaces, and access
to bus stops, shelters and waiting areas. Getting on board includes access to buses, trains
and subways, vans and mini-buses for door-to-door service, and ramped taxi's. Advocacy
has played a key role in the advances that have been made so far; legislation is usually
11
TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
required first in order to affect purchases of new equipment and construction of new facilities,
as well as retrofits of existing stations and vehicles.
Brazil
Two speakers from Brazil created real excitement at accomplishments so far and the
commitment at very high levels to achieve a national policy of accessibility to transportation.
Renato Boareto, Director of Urban Mobility of Brazil's National Secretary of Transport and
Urban Mobility described the policy framework in Brazil. Brazil's Accessibility Program has
created a tool for cities and the state to assess the current state of accessibility of
transportation in 407 municipalities. In Brazil, 14.5% of the population has a disability
affecting access to transportation. The country's goal is to identify and eliminate barriers
affecting people with mobility disabilities, sensorial disabilities, and mental or cultural
limitations (including illiterate and non-Portuguese speaking people) within the next ten
years. At the initial planning stages, many challenges exist, including the fact that 97% of
Brazil's public transportation is provided by private companies, which means that bus transit
is completely funded by passenger fares. Many stakeholders are involved in the planning
process, including organizations of people with disabilities.
Nazareno Stanislau, Executive Director of Brazil's National Public Transport Association,
electrified the audience with a compelling speech embracing the concept of universal design
and recognizing the important role of persons with disabilities in transforming the quality
Brazil's mass transportation. Brazil's new legislation that requires an accessible system in
ten years was developed with the involvement of all the major stakeholders, so he felt there
was a good chance that implementation will actually occur. He pointed out that people with
disabilities were previously regarded as a problem, but the new realization is that meeting
the needs of disabled people will improve the quality of mass transit for everyone, adding
that "the attitudes and values of transport officials and the public in general will be radically
changed about people with disabilities."
A coalition called the National Forum for Urban Reform has a proposal that would combine
public transportation, universal design and environmental protection policy. Their specific
recommendations are (1) resources for public transportation should come from a tax on
gasoline, (2) reductions in fares for poor people, (3) acquisition of a new family of vehicles for
buses, light rail and subways with universal design, and (4) support for workgroups of
citizens to develop programs for citizens to get around without cars. Brazil's transportation
reformers envision a safer mobility environment for all through enhanced public transport.
30,000–40,000 people in Brazil are killed in vehicle related accidents every year. Under the
theme "Peace in Traffic," Stanislau called for universal design as an essential component of
designing cities for human beings, and not for cars. Standards defining accessibility will be
issued in Brazil in a few months. In the next ten years, 110,000 mass transit vehicles will be
replaced with new ones that have lifts or low floors with ramps.
Japan
Yoshi Kawauchi, author and universal design pioneer from Japan, was next to speak. In
Japan, the Transportation Accessibility Improvement Law 2000 will bring about sweeping
changes, also within a decade. This law requires facilities and rolling stock to become
accessible, and it establishes a framework for concentrated improvement of passenger
facilities, roads and stations in accord with a municipal transport plan. Each station and
12
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
nearby major facilities that are frequently used by aged or disabled people become the basis
for a designated route that must be accessible. Each local government is required to
establish a priority area plan with involvement from local transit agencies, police agencies
(for signage), agencies that are responsible for roads, and organizations of persons with
disabilities.
The target of Japan's law is 10,000 stations, airports and bus/ferry terminals. The 3,700
public transit systems in Japan that serve more than 5,000 passengers a day are covered.
All must participate in developing the local improvement priority areas. The deadline for
implementation is 2010; so far, 10% have reached the goal. Now, about 45% of facilities with
over 5,000 passengers a day have elevators, so there is a great deal of work yet to be done.
In addition to installing elevators, facilities must also add guiding strips for blind and visually
impaired passengers, and wheelchair accessible restrooms. 30% of all trains have to be
accessible by 2010; all buses will be accessible by 2015, including 20–30% with low floors;
50% of all ferries; and 40% of all passenger airplanes.
Accessibility features that are already designed or underway include ticket vending machines
that can be used by blind people, sound guides in stations for blind people, portable ramps
for breaching the gap between trains and the platform, gates on the platform to protect blind
people from falling when the train is not there, written and oral indicators of bus location and
time, visual displays for trains that indicate where the train is on its route and also show the
locations of stairs and elevators in each station as it is reached, and visual displays on each
train indicating where accessible seats are located.
Japan's new commitment to universal design in mass transit will be quite a challenge to
implement. Millions of Japanese rely on an extremely complex and efficient system that has
up until now been mostly inaccessible. Many will be watching to see if these goals can be
reached without sacrificing the dependability and punctuality of the current system. For
Japanese with disabilities, as well as for a significant aging population, these changes will be
life altering, opening up many new opportunities to create independent pathways within their
communities and beyond.
World Bank
Gerhard Menckhoff, from the World Bank's Transport Sector, gave an in-depth talk about
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). For numerous cities across the world, BRT is an attractive
alternative to light rail or subway, delivering many of the advantages without the cost of
laying tracks or digging underground. For the emerging field of universal design, BRT also
offers many features that can expand the range of potential passengers and make mass
transit much safer and more attractive. Because resources can be focused on designing the
transit station, BRT is being executed in ways that make it more useable for people with
vision impairments, cognitive disabilities, mobility impairments, hearing impairments, limited
or no written language skills, unfamiliarity with the primary language, and the general public
as well.
BRT has been put into operation in Curitiba, Brazil; Bogota, Colombia; Leon de Guanajito,
Mexico; Quito, Equador; Djakarta, Indonesia; Kunming, China; Taipei; Ottowa, Canada;
Brisbane, Australia; and Pittsburgh, Boston, Los Angeles, and Miami, U.S. Planning for BRT
is underway in Hanoi, Viet Nam; Delhi and Hyderabad, India; Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania;
13
TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
Akra, Turkey; Sydney, Australia; Toronto, Canada, several Chinese cities, and Cleveland,
Hartford and New York City, U.S.
Accessibility of BRT for people with mobility disabilities is not guaranteed. Several systems
have built ramps or level entries at stations, but that is a local design decision. Transition
plates between the bus and platform can also be found in the stations, but they are not
inherent to the design. For systems with no raised platforms, lifts are required on the buses.
Advocates present at the workshop discussed the need for ongoing work, even when
systems are designed to be accessible, to ensure maintenance of accessibility features and
training of bus operators. One comment was that the disability advocacy network globally
should be fully informed about the significance of BRT and provided with detailed examples
of successful accessibility features in existing systems in order to be effective in advocating
for accessibility and universal design of upcoming BRT systems.
Access to Mass Media
A Day of Media and Technology Access This day-long pre-conference session focused on
the many existing and emerging forms of media access such as captioning, audio description
and accessible web design. Universal Design to technology in Japan was also explored in
detail.
Larry Goldberg, Director of Media Access at WGBH Educational Foundation in Boston,
Massachusetts moderated the session and gave the first presentation. He covered access to
television, the movies, multimedia and the important role of advocacy in public policy related
to these issues. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission regulates
the television industry. Rules have been developed requiring closed captioning and audio
description of television programs, and the FCC has also issued new requirements regarding
captioning and digital TV. Similar requirements have been issued by the Canadian Radio
and Television Commission, by the Office of Communications in the United Kingdom where
sign language interpreting is also required, and in Australia.
The conversion from analog to digital broadcasting in the U.S. began in 1998 and is
expected to be complete by 2007. Digital broadcasting creates new challenges for closed
captioning and video description because new tools and standards must be developed for
their inclusion in digital programs. Standards are in development at several different standard
setting bodies, and making sure that they will be followed is a significant challenge. The
Media Access Group at WGBH has a Digital TV Access Project ( www.dtvaccess.org ) that
provides support to Public Broadcasting System member stations and the television industry
at large. Digital television was required to make captions available in 2002. There are no
current requirements regarding video description, although there is some voluntary
description available. The DTV Access Project's goals are to maintain existing services of
closed captioning and to develop advanced services that will make captioning of new
programming easier and more expansive in capability. Digital television will give the viewer
more choices regarding captioning display, such as fonts, font size, character color and
background color. New authoring systems for captioning are being developed. A random
survey of television stations that have converted to digital technology revealed that 1/3 had
all required methods of captioning in place, 1/3 had only one of two required modes, and 1/3
had none.
14
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
Some U.S. initiatives
Movies have been available for 100 years and are now finally accessible, to some extent,
through open and closed captioning systems and audio descriptions. Open captions are
provided through different techniques in the movie industry. Closed captions are made
available through a Rear Window Captioning System that displays reversed captions on a
light-emitting diode (LED) text display which is mounted in the rear of a theater. Deaf and
hard-of-hearing patrons use transparent acrylic panels attached to their seats to reflect the
captions so that they appear superimposed on the movie screen. The reflective panels are
portable and adjustable, enabling the caption user to sit anywhere in the theater. More
information about Rear Window captioning is available at http://ncam.wgbh.org/mopix/ .
Audio descriptions are also available in some theaters. Description conveys the key visual
aspects of a film or television program by describing scenery, facial expressions, costumes
during natural pauses in dialogue. Headsets that receive FM transmission of descriptions are
used to deliver audio description.
While some films are captioned and described, the movie studios are under no obligation to
include captions and descriptions in their films. The number of captioned and described films
is growing, though, nonetheless. The other major challenge in getting accessible movies to
blind and deaf audience members is finding theaters that have installed the technology for
showing films that are accessible. A listing of U.S. theaters with such features can be found
at the mopix website: http://ncam.wgbh.org/mopix/locations.html . New digital movie
projectors operate like LED projectors but with many advanced features. They offer more
options for displaying captions, as well. Since they are quite new technology, they are very
expensive and most movie theaters have not purchased them.
All of the technical advances in making TV and movies accessible have been implemented
because of effective advocacy by the deaf community and the blind community, with support
from other disability organizations. Ongoing involvement at the policy level is necessary in
order to monitor and retain the existing legal requirements for TV access, including legal
challenges in court, and direct advocacy with movie studios and theater chains is essential
for advancing the availability of movie accessibility.
Bob Regan, Product Manager for Accessibility at Macromedia in the U. S., went into detail
describing the web designer's perspective regarding access to the web. This presentation
was extremely useful because many disability and universal design advocates have a great
deal of experience with the user perspective, but often know very little about what motivates
web designers or what pressures they must respond to. He also explained the new
challenges to accessibility that are emerging as web technology moves from HTML to Rich
Media and also as new screen readers become available.
Japan initiatives
In Japan, 25% of the population will be over 65 by 2015. 50% of the adult population will be
over 50 years old by 2005. This group represents over half of tax payers, voters and
consumers with money, time and a desire to learn. Many have multiple mild disabilities
affecting their ability to use technology. On the other hand, most of the designers in IT
companies are in their 20's or 30's and lack experience with many social realities. UDIT
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
bridges the gap between developers and users, and much more effort towards this goal has
been realized.
The concept of Universal Design addresses this problem. Through designing technology with
users in mind, products can be more useable for people with different ages, genders, abilities
and physical attributes. The International Association for Universal Design is a consortium of
over 130 companies in Japan that have begun to implement Universal Design in many
different ways. (More about IAUD's half-day session at the conference later in this report.)
Universal Design can well become a keyword for the 21st century, as important to society as
ecology.
Chika Sekine, President of Universal Design Institute for Information Technology (UDIT),
Japan, described her business which connects hundreds of users with disabilities and other
nontraditional users of technology with companies in Japan for in-depth user review of
products from a broad accessibility perspective. Over 200 teleworkers are connected to
UDIT, ranging in age from 17 to 87, many with different disabilities or with connections to
disability. They evaluate Information Technology devices and propose improvements from
the point of view of diverse users.
She summarized the results of research recently conducted in Japan about the amount of
effort that major companies are dedicating to universal design, and also measuring the
general public's receptivity to the idea of universal design. This research is reported in a
special issue of "Nikkei Design" dedicated to Universal Design from June, 2004. Over 400
employees in 122 companies hold jobs dedicated to implementation of Universal Design.
About 60% of managers in Japanese companies include Universal Design as one of their
business objectives, and the number of Universal Design officers increased from 25% in
2003 to 40% in 2004. 79% of companies conduct user surveys, and 80% interview a wide
range of users from the beginning of the product development process.
The highest ranking companies in Universal Design activity are Toto, Toyota, Matsushita and
Hitachi. Japan is eclipsing other countries in adopting universal design as a major corporate
initiative, and the general public is also more aware and supportive of the concept. In a
survey of the general public, 24.8% of respondents were familiar with the concept but didn't
understand its meaning well, and 31% were familiar with both the concept and understood its
meaning. Over 90% felt that Universal Design is an important goal for companies, and over
15% felt that it should be mandatory. 88% felt that a company's brand image would be
improved by adoption of Universal Design, and a majority of all, even those in their twenties,
would select a product with Universal Design features over a less expensive item.
Public policy in Japan is also following this trend. In December 2003, the government
adopted a basic plan for disabilities that promotes Japanese accessibility standards and
procurement of products that comply with the standards. In May and June of 2004, formal
standards regarding accessibility of Information and communications equipment, software
and services, and also web content were adopted. A set of standards on office and
telecommunications equipment will be adopted in the near future.
Research on Universal Design has been conducted through a collaboration of Hitachi, Keio
University, the University of Tokyo, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and UDIT. This team
of organizations has investigated possible new applications of information technology with a
particular emphasis on promotion of a ubiquitous information society.
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UNIVERSAL DESIGN
UDIT publishes information and reports on these developments and challenges at
http://www.udit.jp/ud/report/8mg/ .
Web Access
As the "Accessibility Champion" at Macromedia, Bob Regan interacts with web designers
about web access on a regular basis. He has found that web designers are by nature visually
oriented, since they are graphic designers, and therefore they have a very difficult time
understanding that websites can be made accessible to people who have vision impairments
and are not used to communicating information verbally rather than through graphics.
Learning about web access takes web designers out of their technical area of expertise, and
therefore makes them uncomfortable. They also are often unaware of the difficulties of taking
in information with one's ears rather than one's eyes.
Regan requires web designers who work under his supervision to use a screen reader for 30
minutes a day for at least three weeks in order to gain a working sensitivity to obtaining
information orally. Noting that it takes a newly blind person nine months of rehabilitation to
learn how to perceive through hearing, he reinforces his message that using the web with a
screen reader can't be learned overnight. It can take approximately an extra 10% time to
design a website so that it's really accessible once a designer has learned the skill of using a
screen reader; otherwise, web design costs might even be doubled if the designer has no
working familiarity with how a blind person interacts with websites using a screen reader. For
example, with a screen reader, using a mouse is irrelevant, since you have to be able to see
the cursor to use a mouse. Blind people navigate through a website using the keyboard.
Most web designers can't imagine using a computer without the mouse.
Today's web access standards are most relevant for web sites designed using HTML, a web
design programming language. Newer web design tools, such as FLASH, will be easier to
make accessible according to standards for web access that are under development now.
So, in other words, web access standards have fallen behind the newest web design tools,
and web designers will have an easier time with web access once the new standards are
released.
Case studies
Regan presented a case study of web design and web access. The San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art came to him after their web site had been built for help to make it accessible.
He first asked them to strip out all the graphics and audio from their site, so that they had
only text to work with to map out the structure of their site. This way of looking at their web
site revealed that it was poorly designed for all users because it took a long time to get to the
actual content on the site. The re-design for accessibility resulted in a website that would
work better for everyone. The Museum's web site also used audio that automatically played
when a user came to some web pages; the accessibility analysis revealed that this audio
interfered with the output of the screen reader used by a blind user. One hopeful aspect of
new web tools such as FLASH is that it can detect the presence of a screen reader and can
be programmed to turn off the audio and only play it when an audio button is pushed by the
user.
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
The future of web access will be made much more complicated by multiple platforms for
computer web use (Windows, Apple, LINUX) and multiple screen readers that will be used.
Blind users are expected to migrate over to screen readers that will be built into new Apple
computers and into LINUX as well. In addition, Mozilla (a popular web browser) will soon be
accessible, and so there will be multiple web browsers in use among blind users as well.
European Approach
A Universal Design Mentality and Culture in Development: Process and Dynamics in Europe
Four presenters from the field of architecture provided a view of Universal Design as it plays
out in Europe. From the policy level to the local building design level, Europe can be
regarded as a single entity, the European Union, and it can also be understood as several
different countries, each with its own culture and history regarding both design and policies
regarding persons with disabilities. Since the economic conditions and culture are
comparable to the U.S., Europe can be contrasted with American policies and practices. The
Americans with Disabilities Act has been inspirational to Europe, however there are real
differences that affect how Universal Design is applied. Europeans are more used to a
service model of disability, as opposed to the ADA's legal rights approach with a complaints
basis of enforcement. Americans have developed a system that embraces the social model
of disability, which strives to treat disability as a normal status and seeks to achieve macro
solutions. European disability policy, although it is really still disparate policies in various
countries, is still more based on the medical model, which seeks solutions at the micro level,
or with the individual with a disability.
The first speaker, Hubert Froyen, Professor of Architecture, PHI, Belgium, made several
general observations about Europe in general. He portrayed Post War Europe as in a
process of change away from its deeply hierarchical sociopolitical institutions to a more
egalitarian structure. Under the new European Union (E.U.), concepts of non-discrimination
are taking hold, along with a rising general standard of living, although there are still gaps
between rich and poor, especially in Eastern Europe. The Nordic countries have a long
history of respect for human rights and equality of opportunity for all. The middle countries of
Western Europe tend to put fewer resources into social services and take a more
paternalistic attitude. The southern countries make even fewer social investments, although
there are some new projects and initiatives to the contrary. Countries in Central Europe have
a great deal of catching up to do, and there are some innovative approaches emerging in the
post-communist era. His own experience has led him to believe that it is very important for
physical access to come first, serving to open the door for new technical and economic
approaches to disability to develop. "Disability leads to a particular perception of the world,"
he stated. "Collaboration between disabled and non-disabled people yields counter-global
homogenous trends. Especially for the younger generation, which is very open minded when
it comes to concepts of Universal Design and new ways of looking at disability, there is great
enthusiasm for developing new projects together between disabled and non-disabled
people."
Sweden
Hans Von Axelson, from the National Accessibility Centre, Office of the Disability
Ombudsman in Sweden, started with a strong statement. "The Swedish in general believe
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UNIVERSAL DESIGN
they are the best in disability policy. But their national arrogance keeps them from seeing the
segregation of persons with disabilities that still exists." There are well designed accessibility
tools but poor accessibility of common products. Despite the fact that Sweden has an
ambitious welfare system, people with disabilities still experience many barriers to society.
Disability policy still focuses on individual needs.
In May 2000, Sweden enacted national legislation based on the concept of full participation
of persons with disabilities in all sectors of society. All areas of government are required to
integrate a disability perspective into their activities. The National Accessibility Centre
coordinates all sector authorities, developes guidelines and sets priorities for implementation
of Universal Design as the legislation is followed. By 2015, there will be many Swedes over
80, and a Universal Design approach will best meet their needs. The National Accessibility
Centre will work towards incorporating an anti-discrimination capacity into the social policy
regarding disability.
Italy
Luigi Biocca, a Researcher and Architect with the Construction Technologies Institute at the
National Research Council in Italy provided a specific example of how Universal Design
principles are being applied in low-income public housing, where units are small and present
interesting challenges to the goal of accessibility. Pointing out that strict adherence to
building codes can sometimes restrict creative solutions from being developed, he expressed
support for the new performance based approach that has been recently adopted in parts of
Europe. As an example, he showed a blueprint of a very small apartment unit that solves the
problem of access to a very small bathroom space by placing the bathroom in a hallway that
has doors that can be closed at both ends. The bathroom has a sliding door that can be
opened when the hallway doors are closed, in effect expanding the available space for a
wheelchair user. Further information about this example, the "User Friendly House" can be
found at www.progettarepertutti.org .
United Kingdom
Marcus Ormerod, a Researcher with SURFACE Inclusive Design Research Centre at the
University of Salford, U.K., led with an attention-getting statement, "Even if you are on the
right track, if you stand still, you will get hit by the train." Since passage of the Disability
Discrimination Act in 1995, there has been a great deal of activity leading to Universal
Design in Great Britain. Standards and building codes have been established, and legislation
calling for "lifetime homes" that can be adapted to the person as disabilities are acquired has
been passed. All of this in spite of the fact that Britain is not used to the concept of human
rights in public policy.
Ormerod stated that master planning is where Universal Design should first be applied and
gave examples of layouts of towns with and without good Universal Design planning. Those
with good design had taken into account the location of major areas of a town, how people
can move about easily, and where frequently used areas are situated in relation to each
other. He advocated for the appointment of an Inclusive Design Champion as a part of a
Master Plan team, with access consultants brought in and with strong user participation.
The session ended with a visionary statement: "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity—Universal
Design, or Design for All, as a utopian construct, deeply rooted in human rights, echoes this
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
motto of the French Revolution, and by virtue of its "unattainability" entails a constant need
for regeneration in mentality and in culture, in dynamics and in processes, in ethics and in
values."
Workshop: Disability Leaders Working from the Inside Out
An international array of disability activists now working inside government to achieve
Universal Design goals provided lessons from their own experiences, demonstrating that
significant accomplishments can be realized working from the "inside". Each presenter
began their career in accessibility working as activists, learning how to influence public policy
and how to develop programs from outside government. As each person became more
successful as an activist and community leader, the opportunity arose to take a position with
significant responsibility for disability policy within government. Often, this new possibility
came about because of a shift in the political leadership in the country or the local authority,
accompanied by a commitment from the newly elected leader to make meaningful change
for persons with disabilities. The disability activist and leader may have been involved in the
political campaign that brought the new government to power, and during the campaign,
succeeded in bringing disability issues into the campaign. The new government then became
interested in fulfilling these campaign promises, and the disability activist was invited to join
the new government to take on this challenge.
Mexico
Taide Buenfil now works in the Office for the Promotion of the Inclusion of Persons with
Disabilities in the Office of the President of Mexico, Vicente Fox. She is an architect and as
an expert in accessibility, she works with every Ministry within the government of Mexico to
make sure that each program within every Ministry is reaching and including people with
disabilities, as appropriate. Her office recognizes that disability is a factor in all facets of
government, working through laws, regulations, and standards at all levels of government.
The Office for the Promotion of the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities has visible support
from the President, which makes it easier for her to implement its mission. There are also
people with disabilities in the President's Cabinet.
Contrasting her current work with her previous role as an activist within an NGO, Ms. Buenfil
acknowledged that the pace of reform within government can be frustrating. Processes have
to be followed, and as an "insider", she must be more restrained than an activist working
outside of the system, who can be more critical of government agencies. Budget shortfalls
also can slow the pace of change. Disability activists working outside of government and
those working within government must work together, which is how she functions. Because
she has worked from the NGO position, Ms. Buenfil can avoid the appearance of
paternalism, and this strengthens her ability to work in partnership with NGO activists.
Brazil
Edison Passafaro, now Executive Director of the Municipal Council of Persons with
Disabilities in Sao Paulo, Brazil, became a disability activist after he became disabled as a
young adult and experienced the stigma of disability and widespread lack of accessibility in
Brazil. He founded the second Independent Living Center in Brazil, in Sao Paulo and also
started a business selling hand controls for automobiles and other kinds of assistive
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UNIVERSAL DESIGN
technology. After Edison and other activists succeeded in getting a local ordinance on
accessibility passed, the City of Sao Paulo established the Municipal Council of Persons with
Disabilities. He became its first Executive Director.
Because the Council has enough of a budget to hire employees, it has been very effective.
The Council and its staff developed a plan, "Sao Paulo without Barriers", which adopted
principles of Universal Design and has broad authority to create access. The first stage is to
eliminate barriers to the built environment and to apply Universal Design to the construction
of new buildings. The plan coined a new phrase, "Accessible Urban Mobility", which applies
to all citizens in many realms: public housing, streets and sidewalks, transportation, public
buildings and communication. It includes economic goals for persons with disabilities, with
steps leading to economic self-sufficiency, paying taxes and consuming goods. The work of
Sao Paulo has become a model for the country, and other cities in Brazil are following this
example.
International Association for Universal Design:
best practices in Japan
A special half-day session was coordinated by the International Association for Universal
Design (IAUD), an organization that was founded after the 2002 International Conference for
Universal Design in Japan. The IAUD has 130 corporate members in Japan from a wide
variety of industries. Because Japan has a rapidly aging population, the concept of Universal
Design has taken hold with more strength than in any other country. Already, approximately
40% of the population in Japan could benefit from increased accessibility, taking into account
baby-boomers aged 50 or older who experience functional limitations and also people with
disabilities who are younger.
IAUD recognizes that the rapid development of technical innovation has created
unnecessary barriers, and that many more people can benefit from Universal Design, not just
seniors and persons with disabilities, including children, pregnant women, foreigners with
different native languages and lifestyles. According to IAUD's prospectus, "We must create
products for a society where there is no need to feel inconveniences because of the
differences in age, sex, race or one's abilities".
IAUD advances the concept and practice of Universal Design in Japan, and also promotes it
worldwide. Through popularization of the idea and through implementing it and placing more
accessible products into the marketplace, IAUD hopes to revitalize Japan's stagnant
economy and to improve living conditions for people across the world. IAUD operates with a
permanent staff on several levels: through planning seminars and lectures, establishing
Universal Design vision and targets for the organization, establishing standards and
guidelines, developing individual projects through collaboration between companies and
providing assistance to members, through holding Universal Design events such as
conferences and exhibitions, and through publications and managing a website. Dialogue
with consumers is at the core of all IAUD activities.
Introducing the session, Kazuo Toda, Executive Vice President of Matsushita Electrical Co.
and Chairman of the Council of IAUD, read a statement of welcome and support from Prince
Tomohito, Patron of IAUD. In IAUD's brochure, Prince Tomohito says, "No one is 100%
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
disabled. And no one is 100% healthy. Everyone has disabilities in some part of his or her
body (or mind), and has healthy parts at the same time. Universal design lets everyone lead
more affluent and comfortable lives."
Naotsune Hosono from Oki Electric gave an overview of Oki's approach to Universal Design.
Oki Electric produces equipment used in connection with information and
telecommunications systems such as ATM's and ticketing machines. Their company vision is
of an "E-Society" that allows people to function without limitations of time and space.
Universal Design is an essential method for improving service to their customers. They follow
the JIS standard 8341 Part 1, relating to accessibility for persons with disabilities and older
persons to information processing and web content. They seek out user involvement and
feedback in all stages of the design process. As an example, they manufacture an ATM with
tactile symbols and a touch screen that is designed with blind people and people with
mobility limitations in mind.
Yoshide Yano from Fuji Heavy Industries (Subaru automobiles) described steps taken by
Fuji to apply principles of Universal Design to the workplace. In 1997, the Japanese
government raised the employment quota for persons with disabilities from 1.6% to 1.8% and
toughened the enforcement of this requirement that people with disabilities must be part of
every company's workforce. Companies were given two ways to comply, either by setting-up
a separate subsidiary where workers with disabilities are employed or integrating them into
the existing workforce. Most companies in Japan favor the separate subsidiary approach,
which is consistent with the segregation that is still found throughout Japan. Fuji, however,
decided to bring persons with disabilities into the workforce, reasoning that this approach is
more realistic because of changing demographics throughout Japan that are expanding the
diversity of the workforce in general: the aging of the population and more women in the
workplace. Since Fuji's manufacturing facilities use heavy duty, high speed assembly lines,
many of their workers experienced barriers at work, even short or tall workers. By modifying
the workplace so that people with disabilities can work there, Fuji made it easier for many
different employees as well.
Fuji created barrier free work areas and barrier-free pathways throughout their facilities,
including the covered parking area and the locker room (where there are a variety of heights
to the lockers now, since not all disabled people need the same height). They developed a
universally-designed parts carrier that all employees can use, a universally-designed
pressing machine, a universally-designed quality check lamp, and a new system for opening
the cargo bays. As a result, Fuji has found that the workplace is safer and more efficient for
all workers, and product quality has improved.
Workers with disabilities are continuously surveyed to identify additional barriers. After the
physical and communication barriers were addressed, attitudinal barriers came next. Some
of the workers with disabilities, especially deaf workers, complained that they felt
marginalized socially. A support system was developed to bridge the gap between disabled
and non-disabled workers, and sign language classes were offered. The sign language class
for supervisors is mandatory and is taught by deaf workers. The optional class, which is
offered to all other employees, is always full even though the workers must pay for it
themselves. These measures have improved the morale of the entire plant. The human
resources personnel who have initiated these steps have also learned to respect the ability
of workers with disabilities to take on new challenges, even if this sometimes means that
their primary job is to get out of the way. Future goals include equal opportunity to worker
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UNIVERSAL DESIGN
training for employees with disabilities, especially deaf people, and increasing the sensitivity
at the workplace to deaf culture and communication.
Kei Tomioka from Toshiba's Human Centered Design Group provided an example of how
Universal Design is applied at Toshiba with respect to the development of accessible cell
phones. Several steps are followed:


Understand and specify the context of use
Specify the user and organizational requirements


Produce design solutions
Evaluate the designs against the user requirements


Prototype is developed
User interviews and focus groups
For cell phones, users with disabilities identified several areas of need: key pad design,
phone size, and audio feedback during use. Performance testing and useability testing were
also conducted with users with disabilities to assess different solutions that were developed.
During a product interactive focus group on keypad design, key height and key shape were
reviewed. For the audio feedback needs, twenty different features were identified as
potentially useful. Users were asked to rate the necessity for each item in order to prioritize
these features and determine which ones to include. Not all could be included within the
limited memory capability of the phones. The actual product that resulted from this process,
VM 4050, is now on the U.S. market.
Hitoshi Kanamori and Kenji Misugi from Toyota Vehicle Engineering Division gave a wideranging presentation on Toyota's accomplishments in Universal Design. Toyota's goals are
to minimize their automobiles' impact on the environment and to maximize their safety and
comfort and fun using Universal Design. They have designed an ergonomic index which
takes into consideration different body sizes and capabilities. It includes 180 items to
evaluate, and rating scores are given for each one. For example, ease of ingress and egress
are evaluated for different configurations of legs, waist and head/shoulders. Visibility of
gauges, meters and indicators are scored for all age groups. Weighting factors for each item
include tolerance for error, physical effort, easy to understand and user perception of
comfort.
The Toyota situational suitability index is another method for evaluating different car designs
from a user perspective. 500 items are included in a database of usage situations. 30 items
are selected for each vehicle, and the different situations are ranked for the functions of
specific tasks within that situation. For example, one situation is putting a child into a seat in
the rear of the car, or another is putting a wheelchair in the area behind the front seat. User
feedback is obtained through interviews, questionnaires, and in-vehicle dynamic research.
The Raum, a model sold in Japan, was developed with specific user groups in mind: older
people, children, care providers and people with limited mobility. User reviews were
conducted with people from these groups repeatedly, with specific attention to wheelchair
users and passengers with guide dogs. The height of the door handles was specifically
tested for wheelchair users and children. Inside the vehicle, there are several handles for a
wheelchair user to grab to assist in transferring to either the front or rear seats. The seats
also swivel 90 degrees to the side of the car for ease of use by people with limited mobility.
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
The Porte, another Japanese model, was tested for ease of shopping with a baby and for
wheelchair use. It's advertised as a "Smart Life Supporter". Features include sliding doors, a
low flat floor, and a lift-up folding seat that can provide space for a wheelchair. In the future,
Toyota will offer smaller cars that work well for wheelchair use, including features such as
lifts and ramps.
Yasuaki Takamoto from Fujitsu reviewed a wide variety of accomplishments in applying
Universal Design to ATM's, cell phones, web access, and customer service. The "Raku
Raku" cell phone was designed for older people and people with vision impairments, as well
as the general market. It has simple, easy-to-use features including one-touch dialing for preset numbers, a blinking button to indicate ringing and large buttons. The Fujitsu computer
opens and closes easily, has a large touch pad, a comfortable keyboard, large fonts and
opens popular software programs with one button.
Fujitsu's ATM's are designed for easy use by people with mobility disabilities, including a
round indentation along the side for a wheelchair wheel, allowing a wheelchair user to get
close. It includes a phone handset for blind users, and offers screen guidance for novice
ATM users or people with limited attention. Fujitsu has adopted internal accessibility
guidelines for its website based on guidelines from the World Wide Web Consortium and the
Japanese JIS standard. Fujitsu also offers web designers an online tool that is an access
checker, "Web Inspector", a tool called "Color Selector" that checks on color usage in web
sites for accessibility for people who are color blind or have cataracts. "Color Doctor"
displays a simulation of how objects in a website or other graphics based document appear
to someone who is color blind. These tools are available online at
http://design.fujitsu.com/en/universal/assistance .
Toyoyuki Vematsu of Panasonic Design Company (Matsushita) described how the founder
of Matsushita announced a company policy on Universal Design as early as 1942.
Matsushita developed principles of Universal Design in the mid 1990's, and in 2002 at the
International Conference on Universal Design in Japan, the company's President issued a
major directive on Universal Design. Matsushita has introduced several products based on
these principles:





a personal fax with large buttons, pre-recorded user instructions and extra loud
volume;
a remote control for heating and air conditioning systems with a large LCD screen
with oversize characters, a voice recognition interface, and concave buttons for
persons with limited dexterity;
an LED neck light that can be used hands-free, a one-handed switch, and very
lightweight;
a built-in shower seat that includes a remote control and is designed for a wheelchair
user; and
a microwave oven with large characters in a white backlight LCD and large easy-touse buttons and high-contrast text display.
In October, 2004, Matsushita opened two Universal Design Labs in Tokyo, one that is open
to the public. The company has a Universal Design Committee that is responsible for
creating user friendly products.
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Audience members were quite impressed with the large number of companies in Japan that
are involved in IAUD, and also excited by the many examples of products that are available.
Many companies in Japan are responding to the challenge of an aging population with a
rigorous engineering and design approach that will benefit countless numbers of consumers.
Many felt that it is critical for companies in other countries, as well as policy makers, to
understand how much has been accomplished in Japan.
Designers with Disabilities: access design professionals,
opportunities for artists with disabilities
This session was moderated by Kristin Schneider of Adaptive Environments, the host
organization of the conference. She described a project of Adaptive Environments, inspired
by the life of Ron Mace, the father of Universal Design, an architect with a disability. The
project, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, has resulted in an international
network of designers with disabilities. Activities have included research with designers with
disabilities worldwide, the development of the international network, setting up an ementoring system, participation in Career Days given by the Boston Society of Architects
(making these events more accessible in the process), and conducting a survey of design
schools in the United States. The NEC Foundation of America supported the development of
a book, "Building a World Fit for People", a portrait of 21 designers with disabilities, which is
available online at www.accesstodesign.org .
The initial concept has now been expanded through work with the Association of Collegiate
Schools of Architecture and the American Institute on Architecture's Diversity Committee,
which has expanded its definition of diversity to include disability. One of the project's current
goals is for the accreditation of schools of architecture to include criteria related to disability
and universal design. It is also currently training vocational rehabilitation counselors about
careers in design. Training materials can be found at www.careersindesign.org . Kristin
Schneider then introduced several designers with disabilities who belong to the network.
Jorge Falcato, an architect from Spain, described his many projects and accomplishments in
advocating for accessibility standards and requirements and in work on specific buildings
and facilities. He warned that designers with disabilities can sometimes find themselves
being used by politicians to give the impression that they are more committed to accessibility
than is the reality. He also reminded the audience that just because the architect uses a
wheelchair, it is easy to forget that not all persons with disabilities use a wheelchair, and
accessible design must be broader than that.
Taide Buenfil, an architect from Mexico who now works in the Office of the President
engaged in broad advocacy work, became disabled as a student of architecture. Her school
had nothing to offer related to disability, and she became involved in grass roots advocacy.
With many accomplishments, including eventually teaching a course on disability and
accessibility at the same University, she advised the audience to have ambitious goals and
work in collaboration with other people with disabilities.
Regina Cohen, an architect and urbanist with the Pro Access Group in Rio de Janeiro,
became disabled after leaving school and practicing for several years as an architect,
oblivious to disability. Once she experienced the barriers and difficulties created by other
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
architects, she dedicated her work to accessibility, working through the Independent Living
Center in Rio. The Pro Access Group is a research center at the Federal University of Rio.
There, she engages in research, teaching and extensive projects. She has seen huge
changes over the course of her career, and finds political activism an exciting endeavor.
Sylvana Cambighi is an architect from Sao Paulo, Brazil who was born with her disability.
Her background was different from the other panelists, and much of her success is because
her family involved her in all activities and supported her in many ways. After she graduated
from a regular high school, her father enrolled her in a technical school for industrial
designers. She went on from there to architecture school, even though her classmates
carried her up three flights of stairs every day. She started her own practice out of
architecture school and found herself working on accessibility projects and then went to work
for the city. She has worked on developing accessibility guidelines with the Municipal Council
on Disability, and is now also teaching at the University.
Yoshi Kawauchi is a licensed architect in Japan who decided to become an advocate after
ten years of design work. He finds that designers in Japan often don't respect or consider the
needs of end users. He believes that professional designers and users need to work together
more, and much of his work is involved in building a bridge between the two groups. He
leads educational workshops for local activists and local government officials where the
participants are actively engaged in practicing universal design. Universal Design should be
an endless process of continuous improvements, a spiral up process that centers on users.
The workshops and conference sessions described above are a small sample of the many
different topics covered and exemplary presenters from all over the world. There is no doubt
that Universal Design is a concept that will have a significant influence in the 21st century.
The progress that has been made in many countries in a relatively short period of time is
truly exciting. The business world is familiar with important trends that have come from
Japan. Therefore, it is very important to see Universal Design becoming a publicly
recognized idea there, with many large companies actively introducing new products with
Universal Design features. Universal Design could become as widely adopted by businesses
as the Total Quality Movement of the 1980s.
The website for the conference is at http://www.designfor21st.org/ . The conference
organizers have promised that they will post the electronic versions of many of the
conference presentations in the near future.
Conclusions: Where is Universal Design Going?
As an American, it is exciting for me to see so many major advances in Universal Design and
accessibility occurring in so many other countries and regions. Japanese public policy,
corporate practices and public opinion are all responding to the Universal Design movement,
and much more can be expected. I would not be surprised if Universal Design became a
major business innovation coming from Japan and influencing how business is done in the
West. This would be a fantastic contribution that the Japanese could be very proud of.
The European Union and Latin America are also regions that should be watched for
innovative approaches to Universal Design and accessibility. In Europe, the movement to go
beyond standards for accessibility and to adopt a functional assessment approach is very
26
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
interesting. It could yield very creative new practices and solutions to eliminating barriers,
especially in an environment that is full of historic structures. The fear, however, is that
meaningful measures to the new approaches might not always be used. The reason for very
detailed standards and building codes is that the average designer and builder is too far
removed from the daily realities of living with a disability, and accessibility solutions that
appear promising at first blush might not really deliver the increased function and
accessibility that people with many different disabilities should expect. The end result could
be designs and new construction that have a Universal Design or "accessibility" label but
actually impose unforeseen barriers.
Brazil currently has a disability-friendly national government, and has developed some very
successful disabled activists, designers and government employees. Despite a staggering
poverty rate, meaningful changes are taking place, and much more is in the planning stages.
It is encouraging to hear elected leaders talk about Universal Design and accessibility as a
strategy for improving the lives of all Brazilians. With very innovative approaches such as the
accessible public transportation system in Curitiba to serve as an example, Brazil could play
a pivotal role in leading "the South" forward.
It is also stirring to have met so many successful and capable disability activists, architects
and designers, and leaders who are actively engaged in making Universal Design a reality all
over the world. Anyone from the United States or Europe who believes that the developed
world or the West are ahead of the rest of the world in this front should think again. Thanks
to the talents and dedication of numerous disability activists, in many different roles, this field
will be an arena where we all will have much to learn from each other for a long time.
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
28
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
Latin Americans Adopt
Rio Charter for Universal Design 
Having met in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on December 12, 2004, in the International Conference
on Universal Design, "Designing for the 21st Century," as women and men from various
countries in Latin America, including professionals, representatives of NGOs and various
sectors of civil society, universities, employees of government institutions, and international
and multilateral agencies, we hereby agree to the following declaration:
1. The purpose of Universal Design is to serve needs and make possible social
participation and access to goods and services by the widest possible range of
users, contributing to both the inclusion of persons who have been prevented from
interacting in society and to their development. Examples of such groups include:
poor persons, persons marginalized for reasons of culture, race, or ethnicity, persons
with different types of disabilities, very obese persons and pregnant women, very tall
or very short persons, including children, and all those who for different reasons have
been excluded from social participation.
2. We conceive of Universal Design as generating accessible environments, services,
programs, and technologies that are equitably, safely, and autonomously usable by
all individuals—to the widest extent possible—without having to be specifically
adapted or readapted, based on the seven underlying principles, as follows:
 Equitable Use (for persons with diverse abilities);
 Flexibility in Use (by persons with a wide range of preferences and abilities);
 Simple and Intuitive (easy to understand);
 Perceptible Information (communicates necessary information effectively)
 Tolerance for Error (minimizes hazards of unintended actions);
 Low Physical Effort; and
 Size and Space for Approach and Use.
3. We acknowledge the value of the emerging concept of Inclusive Development ,
which attempts to expand the vision of development, recognizes diversity as a
fundamental aspect in the process of socioeconomic and human development,
claims a contribution by each human being to the development process, and rather
than implementing isolated policies and actions, promotes an integrated strategy
benefiting persons and society as a whole. Inclusive Development is an effective tool
for overcoming the world's prevailing social exclusion and thus for achieving progress
in eradicating poverty.

This article originally appeared at
http://www.disabilityworld.org/12-02_05/access/riocharter.shtml
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
4. We conceive of Sustainable Human Development as a productive way of
understanding social policies, considering the links between economic growth,
equitable distribution of its benefits, and living in harmony with the environment.
5. We see that poverty and social exclusion affect millions of people worldwide, prevent
human development and a decent life with quality—and that in Latin America and the
Caribbean this situation affects over half of the population. We are also convinced
that exclusion and poverty, together with inequality, diseases, insecurity,
environmental pollution and degradation, and inadequate design are public hazards
affecting many people and threatening everyone.
6. Within the prevailing context of development based on exclusion, we pose the
following challenges:
 How to apply the principles of Universal Design when there are people
whose main concern is not "tomorrow," but the uncertainty as to their next
meal ... or who lack housing and the most basic health care?
 How to make Universal Design principles consistent with the fact that for the
majority of the world the concepts of "basic standards," "building codes" and
"regulations" are non-existent?
 In this situation, what real meaning is there in such services as "the
bathroom", "the kitchen, " "the lobby," "the ramp," "the lighting," or "the
acoustics"?
 And especially, how to add quality of life by applying Universal Design?
7. We emphasize that the current application of inadequate design to programs,
services, and infrastructure generates inaccessibility and perpetuates conditions of
exclusion for the future. We find it unacceptable that public resources continue to be
used to construct any kind of barrier.
8. We agree that Universal Design should become an indispensable component in
policies and actions to promote development, in order for it to be truly inclusive and
to effectively contribute to the reduction of poverty in the world.
9. We also agree that in order to make progress towards Universal Design for
Sustainable and Inclusive Development , all new actions will require the following:
 be planned with a balance between legal, human-rights, economic,
technological, and local cultural issues;
 meet the community's real needs;
 include participation by stakeholders;
 incorporate Universal Design criteria in order to prevent investments from
generating extra costs for adaptations needed in the future;
 apply locally available materials and technologies at the lowest possible cost;
 plan for maintenance with local means; and
 provide adequate training to allow increasingly extensive application of
Universal Design.
10.
We are convinced that in order for Universal Design to become an instrument
at the service of Inclusive Development, it is necessary that all stakeholders in these
issues (states and governments, private sector, civil society, civil society
30
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
organizations, universities, professionals, and international and regional agencies)
play active roles, in keeping with the following lines of action:
 Governments should make efforts to achieve legal instruments for Universal
Design to be applied permanently and as a cross-cutting component of
national development plans and public policies.
 The private sector should be attracted to apply Universal Design to products
and services, and the theme should become a public interest matter.
 Universities should promote Universal Design for training the professions
related to this concept, fostering research that allows the expansion,
application, and development of Universal Design.
 Professionals directly related to Universal Design should furnish technical
guidelines in order to achieve its more effective and efficient application,
focused on local development and social inclusion.
 The organizations currently most aware of the need for Universal Design
should contribute to spreading the concept to other sectors of civil society
and play an active role in social vigilance in order to make on-going progress
in accessibility and inclusion through its effective application.
 International and regional agencies should make progress in the legal
framework with the support of international and regional technical standards
and guidelines promoting the sustainable application of Universal Design at
the service of Inclusive Development.
 Multilateral lending agencies should make Universal Design a development
issue and promote its advancement, practical application, research, and
dissemination with economic resources and adopt it as a basic standard for
designing projects and as a requirement for the approval of loans to
countries.
11. We feel that all efforts and actions in this direction will be stronger and more effective
to the extent that we move towards a common agenda for Universal Design and
Inclusive Development and build alliances and partnerships between the different
sectors and stakeholders. Yet it is still necessary to create networks to promote
these issues, to contribute to their spread and constructive debate, and to empower
the various efforts.
12. Finally, we hereby state that we are deeply convinced that if we work to build a world
guided by the principles of Universal Design and Inclusive Development, it will be a
better, more peaceful, more inhabitable, and more equitable world and certainly one
with better quality of life.
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
32
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
New Online Course on
"Building Careers in Design" 
By Elaine Ostroff, Adaptive Environments
This is to introduce you to a new online course, 'Building Careers in Design,' that we hope
you will promote to colleagues, especially vocational and career counselors in your area. The
course will benefit counselors by enabling them to better serve the employment needs of
people with disabilities through the development of quality careers in a range of design fields.
This 6-week 30 CRC credit course is offered through the Interwork Institute of San Diego
State University, in cooperation with Adaptive Environments, Boston, MA. The course fee is
$175. For more information, see www.careersindesign.org.
The course had a very successful pilot in cooperation with the VR agencies in California,
Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Oregon. Counselors applauded the in-depth content,
access to successful designers with disabilities, and easy to use online resources that
enabled them to assess interests and develop well-documented IPEs. The course was
developed through a contract with the RSA National Vocational Rehabilitation Technical
Assistance Center and is part of 'Building Careers in Design,' a web-based technical
assistance project that includes extensive web resources for consumers, counselors, human
resource personnel, and families.
The project intent is to encourage people with disabilities into careers in the design fields,
including architecture, landscape design, web design, urban design, and industrial design.
Design fields are often overlooked as career options for people with disabilities. A printable
flyer that you can use is available online at: www.careersindesign.org/flyer . For more
information contact Kristin Schneider at 617-695-1225 ex 35 or
kschneider@AdaptiveEnvironments.org.

This article originally appeared at
http://disabilityworld.org/04-05_04/access/universaldesign.shtml
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
34
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
Best Practices In Universal Design:
a comparative study
By Betty Dion Enterprises Ltd.
Editors note: We have selected to reprint only the summary of best practices section of
this comprehensive report. The full report is available in print and alternate formats from
Betty Dion Enterprises Ltd., 458 Melbourne Ave. Ottawa, Ontario, K2A 1W3 Canada;
Tel (613) 725-0566 (voice, TTY, fax); info@bdel.ca.
Dedication: This report is dedicated to the memory of our friend and colleague, Richard St. Pierre who worked tirelessly
to improve Accessibility for people, like him, who lived with a disability. Richard, who was a quadriplegic, prepared the
drawings in this report in AutoCAD using adaptive equipment that included a mouth stick and a track ball.
Acknowledgements: Betty Dion Enterprises Ltd. and the Canadian Institute of Barrier-Free Design would like to express
their thanks to the Kentucky AgrAbility Project, University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service for their support and
cooperation, Jian Qiu for translating the Beijing Building Code, Dave Rapson for his endless hours of inputting data and to
Pierre Legault for his unending support and appreciation.
This project was made possible by the cooperative efforts of three Canadian federal organizations. Funding support for
this project was received from Rachelle Lapointe of the Public Service Commission of Canada, as part of the Employment
Equity Partnership Fund who generously funded part of the project.
We would also like to thank John Jones of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Andrew Graham from Agriculture
and Agri-Food Canada whose departments initiated and contributed funding for this project.
The consultant team was led by Betty Dion Enterprises Ltd. in partnership with the Canadian Institute on Barrier-Free
Design, Murray and Murray & Associates, Architects and Jeff Kaster, Landscape Architect. The drawings were prepared
by the late Richard St. Pierre.
1.0
INTRODUCTION
1.1
General
The Departments of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) and the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency (CFIA) have established themselves as lead departments in the areas of
Accessibility and promotion of the rights of people with disabilities. Over the last several
years AAFC and CFIA initiated a number of innovative projects including hosting a national
symposium on disability issues in 1998.
Over 18% of the population of Canada are people who live with a disability, and this
percentage is increasing. As the population ages and people are living longer, the face of the
public service in Canada continues to change. By next year over 30% of our projected 31.9
million Canadians will be over 50. While not all older people have disabilities, the prevalence
is highest among this demographic group.
Universal design makes life easier for everyone, by ensuring that products and environments
35
TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
are safer, more comfortable, more affordable, accessible, adaptable and easier to use,
regardless of our diverse sizes, ages and abilities. Universal design is the guiding principle
for this project.
One important characteristic of universal design is that design solutions do not segregate
users, and the environment does not become less usable by persons who are not disabled.
Designers and building owners have begun to realize that building codes do not
accommodate all individuals. People come in all sizes and have various abilities. The
departments are planning to build new headquarters over the next few years, and have
recognized this as an opportunity to incorporate universal design principles into the new
buildings, not only state-of-the-art universal design principles but “best practices” in universal
design.
The task of conducting an international study of accessibility codes and accommodation
practices in an illustrated best practice guide is a challenging and exciting one and every
effort has been made to search out relevant codes, standards, guidelines and innovative
ideas.
1.2
Best Practices
Best practices in universal design are defined as building practices and procedures that
comply with universal design principles and provide affordable design practices that meet the
needs of the widest possible range of people who use a facility. Not all best practices apply
in the same situation and therefore all recommendations must be carefully considered and
discussed together with architects and building owners.
1.3
Disclaimer
Every attempt has been made to obtain and document data from the international codes and
standards and to present them in a comprehensive manner. As accessibility codes and
standards are constantly being upgraded, changed, and evolving, new and different design
ideas will continue to emerge.
The information in this report has been obtained from many sources, including government
building codes, accessibility guidelines from municipalities and government organizations,
community associations, architects and landscape architects. The consultants have made
every reasonable effort to make this reference document accurate and authoritative, but do
not warrant, and assume no liability for the accuracy or completeness of the information or its
fitness for any particular purpose. It is the responsibility of users to apply their professional
knowledge in the use of the information contained in this document, in consultation with their
architect or other professional.
Literature from manufacturers and suppliers is included as examples only and any products,
services, or organizations that are mentioned, shown, or indirectly implied in this document
do not imply endorsement by Betty Dion Enterprises Ltd., the Canadian Institute on BarrierFree Design, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada or the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The material is presented and company name is included for information purposes only.
36
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
1.4
Format of the Report
This report is presented in two volumes as follows:
(Editor’s note: the full description is included for the reader’s information.)
Volume 1
Section 1 Introduction
Section 2 Building Elements
- Summary of the data analysis
Section 3 Methodology for Building Elements
Section 4 Landscape Elements
- Summary of the data analysis
Section 5 Landscape Methodology
Section 6 Maintenance
Section 7 Bibliography
Section 8 Appendices
Appendix I: Glossary of Terms
Appendix II: Photographs & Drawings
Volume 2
Section 1 Introduction
Section 2 Building Elements
- Data sheets for codes and standards
Section 4 Landscape Elements
- Data sheets for codes and standards
Appendix I: Glossary of Terms
Appendix III: Acronyms & Documents
The summary pages present a summary of the findings, with references to the
corresponding sections in the Data Sheets. In order to highlight the best practice it is
presented in bold.
Following the data summaries, comments and suggestions that were extrapolated from the
various codes and standards are presented, as it was found that they frequently contained
valuable ideas to improve implementation.
The Data Sheets list headings (as abbreviations) horizontally referring to the various codes
and standards examined. See 1.5 for just the acronyms, or Appendix III for a listing of the
acronyms and the corresponding documents.
Following the series of columns for the various International codes and standards, a column
is dedicated to the range of dimensions found, followed by the Best Practice and the source
document for the best practice. A column entitled BDEL represents additional information or
design practices not found in the codes and standards. If there was no information included
in the Code or Standard, the blank column has not been included.
Appendix I contains a Glossary of Terms, Appendix II is the photographs and drawings of
best practices; Appendix III, Acronyms & Documents; and Appendix IV, the product literature
that is contained in a separate binder.
37
TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
1.5
Acronyms
ACC.BD. or Access Board or Access Board - Committee - The Access Board. US
Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board
Access or Access Manual - The Canadian Institute for Barrier Free Design
ADAAG - Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines
ANSI - American National Standards & International Code Council Inc.
Australia - Standards Association of Australia
BDEL - Betty Dion Enterprises Limited
Beijing - Standards Bureau of Beijing, Beijing Institute of Architectural Design & Beijing
Institute of Urban Construction
CFC - Canadian Fire Code
CIBFD - Canadian Institute for Barrier Free Design
CMHC - Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
CSA - Canadian Standards Association
CUD-RBHC - Centre for Universal Design, Removing Barriers to Health Care
ECMT - European Conference of Ministers of Transport
England - Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. The Building
Regulations
Fiji - Fiji Islands Standard. The Standards Association of Australia
G. Robinette - Gary Robinette
Gloucester - City of Gloucester
Going Places - The Canadian National Institute for the Blind
IES - Illumination Engineers Society
Japan - Ministry of Construction, Japan International Cooperation Agency
Kentucky - University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service. Kentucky AgrAbility
Project.
Manitoba - Manitoba League of Persons With Disabilities
NBC -National Building Code
Nordic - The Nordic Committee on Disability
Ontario or Ontario MTR - Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation
Parks Can. - Parks Canada & Public Works and Government Services Canada
Taking Steps - University of Victoria
Time Saver Standard LA -Time Saver Standard for Landscape Architecture
UFAS - Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards
USFS or US Forest Service - US Department of Agriculture Forest Service
2.0
Building Elements
See section 3.0 for Building Elements—Process & Methodology
2.1
Anthropometrics
Anthropometric data is used as the basis for the development of design criteria in codes and
standards but not all of the codes and standards contained in this study included
anthropometric data as part of their documents. It is particularly interesting therefore to
examine the differences that occur in, for instance, the basic footprint of a wheelchair. The
minimum clear floor space to accommodate a single stationary wheelchair and occupant
(AP-01) varied from 650 x 1100mm in Japan, 750 x 1200 mm in the CSA, to 750 x 1220 mm
38
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
in the ADA, 900 x 1200 mm in the Nordic countries, and finally in Access 750 x 1200 mm for
manual wheelchairs, 750 x 1250 mm for power wheelchairs and 750 x 1300 mm for scooters
with the resulting best practice at 900 x 1300 mm.
This surprising variation explains why there are such different dimensions found in
various codes and standards around the world.
The actual dimensions of a wheelchair were presented in the CSA document but most other
standards did not include specific dimensions for wheelchairs. Japan had a maximum toe
height at 450 mm, considerably more than the CSA at 200 mm..
The comfortable clear width for a person walking using crutches ranged from 900–1200 mm
(AP-12), with the Japanese clear width requirement of 1200 mm, the most generous and
900 mm for someone walking with a cane.
The space for a wheelchair to pass a person ranged from 1200–1800 mm, with the Nordic
passing width requirements at 1800 mm and the Beijing standard at 1800 mm for two
wheelchairs to pass allowing the most generous dimensions. (AP-25, AP-26)
The turning radii (360 degrees) for someone using a wheelchair (AP02C) in Fiji was 2250 x
2250 mm, with 2450 x 2450 mm preferred.
The maximum side reach height above the floor (AP-08) ranged from 1220–1600 mm, with
the ANSI specification of 1220 mm judged to be the best. The minimum side reach varied
wildly from 200–450 mm with 450 mm (Beijing) allowing for the widest range of people
including those with limited balance and for people with shorter arms extensions.
Oddly enough, for the maximum side reach over an obtrusion, Japan has 750 mm, while
CSA had 600 mm, a much more inclusive reach range.
The anthropometric comparison provided interesting data, however, as only a limited number
of codes included anthropometrics, this section can not be considered conclusive or
comprehensive.
2.2
Access Route
Access routes include all corridors and passageways throughout a facility. Access routes
must be accessible according to the application of the building code or area having
jurisdiction. Any rise above 13 mm should be treated as a ramp (D-02C) but if there is a rise
between 6–13 mm, it should be bevelled (D-02B). Thresholds at washroom entrances and
at other doors should be avoided. CSA also had the best practices for slopes, cross
slopes, grates and carpets.
Carpets should be stored for a few weeks to allow them to “gas-off” so that they are
less likely to irritate people with environmental sensitivities. New carpets can cause
headaches, nausea and skin irritation in the fast increasing number of people with multiple
chemical sensitivity or MCS. Patterns and sculptured carpets should be avoided as well
as grates. England specifically recommended that monochromatic colour schemes be
avoided.
Interestingly, Fiji recommended that the carpet pad and pile height should not exceed
39
TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
6 mm (CSA allows 13 mm) which is an excellent recommendation (D-10).
The minimum clear headroom requirement (D-12) ranged from 1980 mm (CSA) to 2250 mm
(Access). It was felt that 2250 mm may be a little high and therefore the recommendation is
compliance with ADA, at 2030 mm for clear headroom. CSA and other codes allowed
protrusions of up to 100 mm (D-15).
The minimum clear width for interior accessible routes varied from 900 mm–500 mm (D-19),
with 1500 mm the best practice for clear width in all interior corridors. The minimum
clear width for indentations should comply with the minimum width for doorways at 850 mm.
Japan had an interesting requirement that passing spaces be located every 50 m (D33) and ANSI had an equally valid requirement that the maximum distance between
short indentations should be 1220 mm (D-19F).
It was interesting to note that the Canada Fire Code limited the amount of display
areas in public corridors to 15%.
There should be no sharp edges on walls, fixtures, furnishings or displays and escalators
should not be part of a barrier-free path of travel. Automatic banking machines and other
dispensing machines should comply with the new CSA B651.1 Standard for Automated
Banking Machines.
An interesting comment from Time-Saver Standards is that pedestrian circulation
systems should include loops rather than dead ends.
Comments included that visual clutter and mirrors and all glass or polished metal wall
surfaces be avoided and as well as mats, as they can cause tripping.
2.3
Entrances and Doors
The CSA and the Japanese Standard called for the main entrance door to be equipped with
an automatic door opener, but obviously the best practice would be to equip all entrance
doors with automatic openers.
Sliding entrance doors are the best practice for the main entrance of a facility. If there
are two doors in a series at the lobby entrance, they can open consecutively to reduce the
influx of cold air.
The recommended best practice for the clear width of doors is 850 mm (G-02) mentioned
by Fiji and Access. Japan recommended 1200 mm for the principle entrance (G-02B) and
that exit doors (G-05B) open and close automatically, an innovative idea. An accessibility
symbol is not required on every accessible door, but if there is only one or two doors in a
group that are accessible, the door should have the symbol.
The Taking Steps publication recommended that the entrance lobby have slip-resistant
flooring, especially when wet and that a rest area with seating be provided in the
lobby.
A directory should provide information in both auditory and visual formats
immediately inside the main entrance. It should have characters that are well
40
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
contrasted and a tactile floor plan or map. A prerecorded directory message was also
suggested by Fiji. Access suggested that directories be presented vertically or
horizontally, at an angle and that a series of signs be located at decision points
throughout the facility such as at intersections, elevators, etc. rather than only one
sign at the main entrance.
An interesting recommendation from England is to create a lighting transition zone
immediately inside the entrance door where people with sight impairments can adjust from
the bright outdoors to the more dimly lit interior.
Manoeuvring spaces at doors (G01A -G01F) in both the Australian and Fiji Codes had been
updated to accommodate larger wheelchairs and scooters and should be carefully
considered for application throughout new facilities.
In examining the differences between manoeuvring spaces at doors between the various
codes, Fiji required (G-01H) 570 mm of space on the latch side of doors that push
open, 940 mm on the latch side (G-01I) of doors that pull open and 710 mm on the
latch side when approaching from the hinge side of doors that push open, all
dimensions greater than those specified in the CSA B651 Standard. These are
manoeuvring spaces which would increasingly accommodate people who use power
wheelchairs and scooters. Beijing provided the broader manoeuvring spaces for the front
and side (2000 x 2000 mm) approaches to sliding doors and, in fact, continued with that
dimension for approaches from all directions (G01A-G01F).
The force required to push or pull a door is always an important element in universal design.
The Nordic Code specifies 10 Newtons to push or pull open a door (G08, 09, 09A), a
best practice that will be appreciated by everyone.
Fiji specified the location for call buttons (bells) at a height between 900–1100 mm, and
500 mm away from interior corners, important considerations that are not specified in
other Standards.
England specified the heights for transparent glazing (G-19) a consideration to allow people
to see whether someone is approaching from the other side of the door, which is particularly
helpful at washroom doors.
Some CSA comments on doors included that they be equipped with guard rails to prevent
people from walking into doors that open automatically and that hardware contrast with
their background but Fiji went further and required that doors have contrasting frames.
Kentucky required that doors leading to potentially dangerous areas have a textured
surface on the handle (Comment 26), the same flooring be used throughout a building
to indicate the emergency path (Comment 40) and emergency back-up power be
provided on emergency doors, three useful suggestions gathered in the comments. It
should be noted that the textured surface on the door handle should be distinctive and easily
detected.
An exterior designated smoking area, away from the main entrance is a best practice that will
be appreciated by building occupants as they enter and exit the building, an idea that is
especially appreciated by people with asthma or those with allergies.
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
2.4
Ramps
The slope of ramps are presented in a variety of formats making it somewhat difficult to
make comparisons but best practices indicate a slope between 1:15–1:20 for most
ramps, (E01 A & B) and the maximum ramp horizontal length between landings (E-0lE)
at 9000 mm, a CSA requirement.
The minimum clear width of a ramp between handrails (E-03) is 1200 mm,
recommended by Japan, Fiji and Beijing. The minimum landing width (E-07A) is 1500 mm
to accommodate a wide range of users and the minimum landing size by a door is 1525 x
1525 mm, similar to Kentucky and the ADA.
The ramp surface should be non-slip and Japan required that it be of a contrasting
colour (E-09A). Tactile cuing similar to that used to warn of an upcoming change in
grade at stairs should be provided one step back from the change in slope (Japan and
Fiji). The minimum height of edge protection (E-12) is 100 mm in England and the
maximum height of the lower edge of a raised barrier is 100 mm, which is an ANSI
requirement, both considered best practices.
Handrails are required on both sides of ramps (E-13A), regardless of their rise, although
curb ramps do not require handrails. Handrail heights varied from 665–1000 mm with the
range provided by the NBC (865–965 mm) considered to meet the widest range of users.
A second handrail at a height of 450 mm is suggested for children and others, which
also reduces the risk of people swinging on the handrails. Handrails that are recessed
should have a minimum clearance height of 600 mm (E-20) above the handrail according
to the Australian Standard. Fiji required that ramps be illuminated to at least 150 lux.
Tactile cuing on the underside of handrails on ramps that enter to the exit floor should
be provided, similar to that required for handrails on stairs that enter onto exit floors.
This will alert everyone to the exit floor in emergency situations which may be
extremely important if there is a smoky environment.
Interior ramps are preferred as a means of egress to stairs as they accommodate a
wider range of building users, including people who use wheelchairs.
2.5
Curb Ramps
The design of curb ramps varied considerably with slopes ranging from 1:8 (Australia) to
1:20 preferred, depending on the maximum rise. The best practice would be not to
exceed a slope of 1:12, preferring 1:20, similar to the ADA requirements (C01A-C). The
width of the curb ramp (C-03) varied from 900 mm to 2250 mm (Beijing), with the best
practice being a width of 1500 mm which would allow sufficient space for snow
clearance. The maximum slope of the flared side (C-08) in Beijing is 1:12, (an
improvement from the CSA 1:10).
Corner curb ramps are not allowed as they direct people into the centre of an intersection.
Curb ramps should line up directly across from each other on both sides of an
intersection. The best practice for the length of a level area (C-14) on an island is 1500
mm and the minimum level walking area at the top of the ramp (C-15) is 1500 mm, both
42
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
recommended by Access.
An excellent suggestion from the CUD-RBHC is that detectable warnings should be
provided at curbless walks that cross vehicle traffic lanes to cue pedestrians to a
possible hazard.
A lip is required on curb ramps where they cross a vehicular route as this will provide a cue
to people with visual impairments alerting them to whether they are on the sidewalk or in the
vehicular route, 13 mm is the usual practice.
2.6
Stairs
Surprisingly, the design of stairs varied considerably with the maximum height of risers (I-01)
varying from 180 mm in Canada and the US to 150–165 mm in Fiji and tread depth (I-02)
ranging from 280 (CSA)–325 mm (Access). The gap was very broad when stair nosings are
examined (I-04), with maximum nosing projections varying from 15–25 mm in England to 38
mm in Canada. As stairs must be consistently designed with predictable treads and risers, it
is suggested that CSA requirements be maintained.
The design of handrails ranged from 30–50 mm for the diameter (I-11), the clear space
between the rail and the wall varied from 35–50 mm, with the best practice being the
smaller dimension as this reduces the risk of someone catching their hand in behind the
handrail.
The height of the top of the handrail (I-18) ranged from 760 (ANSI)–1000 mm (Australia)
which is quite a wide range. The middle range suggested by the CSA is recommended,
with the addition of a second handrail at a height of 450 mm.
There was some variation in the treatment of the surface of stair treads where Japan
recommended a roughed surface on the treads while England required the use of detectable
warning (I-23) for the full width of the stair and extending it 400 mm at each side of the stairs,
with the CSA requiring them one tread width back from the stair, contrasting in colour
and texture from their background. Very few other countries required detectable warnings
at stairs.
There were a variety of comments or suggestions on how to warn people with visual
impairments when stairs lead them to exit floors. It is important that people who are blind
know what floor is the exit floor so that they do not continue down stairs into the lower levels
of, for instance, a parking garage. Some building owners have installed gates to prevent
people from descending too far, while others have installed tactile warnings on the
underside of handrails, only on exit floors. Whichever method is used, it is important that
everyone be aware of their purpose.
All exterior and interior stairs must have handrails. Circular stairs should be avoided
and confusing patterns or colours on the stair treads were considered to be
dangerous.
Detectable warnings surfaces which were recommended at the top of stairs, should
contrast from the surrounding surfaces by colour, texture, resiliency and sound and
should not be used within the building for any other purpose.
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
2.7
Elevators
Most countries have elevator standards in addition to accessibility codes and standards. The
data in the data sheets may not reflect specifications in the accessibility code or standard
itself but rather a referenced elevator code.
Most codes allow a 13 mm rise or drop, whereas the best practice would clearly be a
minimal gap. As it is not possible to bevel the rise or drop, it is even more important that the
gap be minimal. This rationale also applies to H-01A, relating to the gap between the floor
and the elevator platform.
The minimum clear width of an elevator door is 915 mm, an ADA specification. The best
practice for the size of the elevator lobby is 3150 x 3150 mm based on accommodating
all wheeled devices. Reopening devices, as specified by the CSA, at 125 +- and 735 +mm will detect guide dogs and children as well as ambulatory people walking through the
doors.
44
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
The minimum time allowances for reopening 20sec. (H-05) and before starting to close, 3
sec. (H-06)and 4 sec. (H-06A) were all judged to be too short to allow sufficient time for
some with a mobility or agility impairment or someone who is blind to get to the elevator on
time. While it is recognized that elevators need to keep moving people quickly, especially at
peak times, it is recommended that at least one elevator be set with greater time
allowances. The best practice for the minimum door opening time before the doors start
to open is 10 seconds, where CSA specifies only 4 seconds.
The minimum centerline height of the lowest control button should be 1200 mm, rather
than the 1370 mm specified in the CSA. The floor registration buttons should not have
the raised characters on the buttons, as the buttons may be activated when people who
are blind read them tactually. It is the best practice to have the raised characters only on
the left. The floor number should be raised at least 1.6 mm. The telephone should be no
higher than 1200 mm, (Access) and the telephone cord should be a minimum of 1000 mm
(CSA) .
The telephone should be equipped with a flux coil and volume control device, as required by
CSA but (H-26A) BDEL recommended that communication also be provided to people
who are deaf or speech impaired by including a TTY or other type of interactive visual
communication system. This is a best practice.
The illumination level (H-31) varied from 54 lux which is quite low to 400 lux, but 200 lux is
considered a best practice. Audible signals should signal the arrival of the elevator
and the direction of travel. Another best practice to make elevators more Accessible is the
inclusion of a mirror at the top of the back wall of the elevator. This will assist people
who use wheelchairs to see behind them as they back out as well as assist them to see the
floor indicators that illuminate as the elevator moves. Mirrors on the back and side walls are
not recommended as they can be disorienting for some people.
One recently introduced feature, bells that ring when a door is held open for more than 10
seconds was considered to be very inconvenient and somewhat harassing as doors must
frequently be held open to allow sufficient time for some people who need a longer time.
England recommended seating in the elevator lobby and fold-down seating in the
elevator and CMHC recommended audio and visual instruction, back-up lighting and a
surveillance camera. It should be noted that all elevators must have a telephone,
although some provincial building codes do not require them.
The appropriate use of colour at the door frame, at the edge of the platform and on all
controls will improve safety for all passengers. Elevators should not have keyed Access or
require that one summon an operator or security staff as this limits the independence of
building occupants.
A best practice allowing a greater number of people to use an elevator is to install a call
button that can be activated by the foot of someone using a wheelchair. It should also
have appropriate signage. In buildings with only two stories the elevator can be programmed
to automatically go to the other floor when someone enters, which increases accessibility as
it does not require that a button be pushed.
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
2.8
Fire Safety
The Regulations Respecting Occupational Safety and Health Under Part II of the Canada
Labour Code has numerous requirements that address fire safety requirements for all
building occupants, including a requirement for fire procedures in alternate formats, the
need for practising evacuation procedures with all building occupants and the need
for the development of fire safety plans in conjunction with building occupants who
have a disability or require some assistance. Only California was found to have similar
requirements in the US.
Fire safety must be considered for all users, visual alarms should be installed for people
who are deaf or hard of hearing (FS-1), a requirement of the ADA. The ADA specifies the
placement (FS-2) (every 15 m) and the luminosity of visual alarms (1-4 Hz). The ADA and
other US Codes require that audible alarms exceed the ambient noise level by at least 15
dB, a best practice. A fire rated elevator, with it’s own elevator shaft, enabling it to be
used in the event of a fire, is a best practice and should be incorporated into the initial
design of a building.
A best practice to ensure communication during a fire or emergency situation for people who
are deaf or speech impaired is to provide a visual messaging in addition to an audible
system or voice announce system (especially if a two stage alarm system is installed).
An area of refuge (a fire safe holding area) served by an exit or firefighter’s elevator is
required by the CSA. At least two (I-37) areas of refuge are required on each floor by
the CSA and each space (I-38) should be at least 900 x 1500 mm, a recommendation of
Access, larger than the CSA dimensions of 850 x 1200 mm. Both the NBC and CSA require
that (I-34) the area of refuge be separated from the floor by a fire separation of at least equal
to an exit, and that it be smoke protected (I-39).
Some other fire safety best practices were found elsewhere in this study including: a different
texture for the floor of the fire exit route (Japan), tactile markings on the underside of
handrails on stairs and ramps on exit doors to alert people who are blind to the fire exit route;
tactile and braille signage at exits.
In reviewing best practices in fire safety preparedness, it was found that an employee at
Agriculture Canada had a buddy, a back-up buddy, a customized fire safety plan, an
evacuation device that he and his buddies had actually practised using and he and his
department participate in regular fire drills. A model best practice for emergency
preparedness.
Another best practice to increase the safety of visitors in an emergency is to post a sign at
the main entrance inviting visitors to identify themselves as needing some assistance in an
emergency. Another building owner provided vibro-tactile pagers or beepers to all visitors
who self identify as requiring some assistance in an emergency. An audible and visual
message was sent to them in an emergency, wherever they were in the building. Accessible
signage in Braille and tactile characters should indicate the exit route and the
accessible fire egress route should be indicated throughout the building.
2.9
46
Individual Washrooms
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
Individual accessible washrooms that can be used by both men and women and
provide adequate room for an attendant or family member of the opposite sex is a
best practice. It is recommended that each floor have an individual accessible washroom.
A best practice recommended by BDEL is to reverse the design of alternate individual
washrooms so that the grab bars will be on the right in some washrooms and on the
left in others. This will ensure maximum accessibility to accommodate the preferences of a
wide range of users.
The code comparison highlighted the need for a room with a minimum size of 4.37m2. This
dimension is compatible with a 3150 x 1500 mm room which would accommodate power
wheelchairs as well as scooters.
The height of the toilet seat (K05) varied from 400–460 mm (CSA), 450 mm in Beijing and
460–480 mm in Australia. There is a great deal of controversy about the appropriate height
of a toilet seat as many seniors prefer a higher seat, while many people who use wheelchairs
prefer the regular height as they can transfer more easily onto the seat. Therefore the best
practice is to maintain the CSA range of 400–460 mm.
Electronic or infrared controls that flush a toilet were not found as a requirement in any
codes, but are increasingly becoming a familiar universal design feature.
The height for the installation of a horizontal grab bar (K-16) beside the toilet ranged
from 700 mm (Beijing)–920 mm (NBC) above the floor. The CSA range of 750–850 mm
remained the best practice.
The height for the top of the lavatory (K-21) must be carefully considered as it must be
weighed against the requirement for the height for adequate kneespace (K-25). If the top of
the lavatory is too low, there will not be adequate wheel under space at the lavatory.
Therefore the height for the top of the lavatory remains 820–860 and the height for the
kneespace has been raised from the CSA of 680 mm to 700 mm recommended by the
CIBFD and BDEL. Similarly, the width of the kneespace (K-23) is increased to 850 mm
and the lavatory toespace (K-27) is increased to Australia’s requirement at 290 mm.
The depth of the lavatory kneespace (K-24) has been increased to 300 mm to
accommodate the longer wheelchairs and scooters.
Australia provided some of the best practices in washroom Accessories, as the maximum
height for all washroom Accessories (K-30) was at 1100 mm, with the maximum height
(K-31) for the mirror at 900 mm and a shelf located between a height of 900–1100 mm.
The coat hook should be located (K-33B) 500 mm out from the side wall and should not
be higher than 1200 mm (CIBFD/BDEL)
The recommended minimum clear opening for the washroom door (K-35) is 850 mm,
compatible with the rest of the building. The force required to open the washroom door (K34A) should be 10 Newtons (Nordic Code), which is below the 22 Newtons currently
identified in the CSA Standard. Gravity hinges as a closing mechanism are recommended
rather than the self closers frequently installed on individual washroom doors which have
made it difficult for many people to get into the washroom before the door closed on them.
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
A flip-up grab bar is recommended on the transfer side of the toilet. This will not
interfere with the required manoeuvring space but can be flipped down and used by people
who prefer to have two grab bars.
Shallow sinks that are marketed as Accessible sinks frequently cause problems for
wheelchair users as the sink is shallow (and the faucet is high) and the water splashes a lot.
As well, the taps are well beyond the maximum reach range making them difficult to operate.
An automatic door opener should be installed on individual washroom doors making
them accessible to a wide population of users. Emergency call buttons, or signal
devices, reachable from the floor should also be installed in all individual washrooms.
The emergency call button should be connected to security staff who are trained to assist
people in the washroom.
2.10
Washrooms
In addition to the Individual Washrooms on each floor, it is recommended that at least one
stall in all standard washrooms be Accessible.
The washroom signage should comply with the Federal Identity Program. The code
analysis showed that the minimum size of the Accessible stall (J-02) varied from 1500 x
1500 mm (CSA) to 1500 x 2000 mm in England to 1600 x 2000 mm in Australia, to
accommodate larger manual and power wheelchairs. J-02B addresses the minimum clear
floor space (1525 X 1525 mm) (ANSI) at washroom entrances, an area not specifically
identified in CSA.
The recommended maximum height of the coat hook (J-03) is 1200 mm, similar to
Beijing and the ANSI Standard in the US. This will bring it to within reach of a wider number
of users. The location and allowable projection (40 mm) from the wall remain the same as
CSA. Australia is the only country that required the force to open a stall door at 19.5
Newtons.
Most of the CSA requirements pertaining to grab bars, location of the toilet, etc. remained the
best practice. The minimum clear floor space in front of the urinal (J-26), is 900 x 1500
mm between privacy shields (J-27), and in front of the lavatory (J-30A) an increase in
size. Similarly, the minimum clear width for the vanity (J-31) and kneespace (J-32) is
increased from 750 to 850 mm. The clear width of the washroom door (J-45) is 850 mm,
similar to the rest of a facility. The minimum height of the kneespace at the lavatory is
increased to 700 mm from 680 mm. This will accommodate taller people who were not able
to wheel under the lavatory.
The Australian Code had a maximum height of 1100 mm for all washroom Accessories
(Item J-39). England has a lower height for the bottom edge of a mirror at 900 mm (J40), rather than the 1000 mm the CSA required and England also required that the travel
distance not exceed 40 m from other facilities, a best practice not found in other
codes.
Automatic flushing devices and emergency call buttons are included in the comments
from the Japanese Code, both recommended for new facilities. An added best practice from
BDEL is that washrooms have no doors, making it easier for everyone to enter, similar
48
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
to the washrooms found in airports. Recessed accessories always allow for more
manoeuvring room in the washroom. Baby changing facilities should be provided in at
least some washrooms.
To assist people with visual impairments all controls should contrast with their
backgrounds and be colour contrasted, a raised vertical marker, 150 mm directly above
the urinal should be provided on the wall that will assist people with visual
impairments in locating the urinal (Access).
Deodorizers that emit perfume should be avoided as they cause reactions in people with
environmental sensitivities. It is interesting to note that countries such as England and
Australia have increased their minimum manoeuvring space requirements but have not yet
changed some of their other dimensions in the washrooms to accommodate larger mobility
aids.
2.11
Showers
Wherever showers are located, at least one shower should be wheelchair accessible, and if
only one is available, it should be accessible.
The interior dimensions for a wheel-in shower ranged from 750 x 1500 mm (CSA) to
1600 x 2350 mm (Fiji). It is felt that the larger dimensions might be a little large as scooters
and power chairs do not generally go into the shower, therefore 1500 x 1500 mm is
recommended. The minimum clear floor space in front of the shower (S-02R) is 900 x
1500 mm and it is recommended that there be no curb or lip (S-03R).
Grab bar requirements complied with CSA although there was considerable variation in the
height for grab bars (S-13), ranging from 700–915 mm, with the middle range 800–840 mm
judged to accommodate the majority of users.
If lockers are located in the shower area, split level lockers are recommended and locker
numbers and locks should be well contrasted and easily operable.
Some excellent comments included the recommendation for a heat lamp; that controls be
offset to the outside of the shower so they can be easily reached; and that faucets be
thermostatically controlled with preset temperatures. Care should be taken to provide a
shower seat that is not slippery when wet and is free of sharp edges (padded).
2.12
Drinking Fountains
Most dimensions provided in the CSA for height, water flow etc. for drinking fountains
are still the best design practice but the requirement for increasing manoeuvring space is
noted.
The recommended dimensions for the height of kneespace (L-09) is 700mm-BDEL, the
width (L-10) is 850 mm (BDEL) of the kneespace (L-12) as well as the minimum clear
floor space 900 x 1300 mm (BDEL) and toe space height at 280–290 mm (Fiji) all
differing from the CSA as additional space is provided to accommodate a wider range of
users, including those who use scooters and power chairs.
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
An interesting provision in the Fiji Standard was the maximum height for the cup
dispenser at 1100 mm, which is lower than the CSA Standard maximum height of all
devices at 1200 mm.
Infrared automatic control devices for fountains were not found in the codes and
standards analysis but as they allow a wider range of users, they have been introduced into
the market place.
Analysis of the comments from the documents uncovered few surprises as the CSA
comments were considered to be the most helpful, i.e. that two drinking fountains be
installed and that they be located in an alcove. The BDEL additions regarding increased
space requirements and the use of automatic infrared activators will allow the
maximum numbers of users to use the drinking fountain.
2.13
Communication
It is important to reduce unwanted background noise and to design a facility to maximize
audition for everyone. The use of white noise or additional sound emitting systems is strongly
discouraged as they mask sounds required for orientation by people who are blind and white
noise can also cause interference with hearing aids.
The Nordic Code recommended the use of sound absorbing materials and the
suppression of noise from ventilation systems, fans, etc., always a good practice.
Japan recommended that intercom systems be provided at all entrances and that staff be
available to provide assistance. England went even further and recommended that intercom
systems be well illuminated, be undercover and have both auditory and visual
instructions.
Australia suggested that a hearing augmentation system as well as a visual
communication system supplement a public address system. Australia also
recommended that audio tapes and a tape recorder be available for use by people
attending meetings and seminars.
A best practice with all communications systems is to provide information in a variety
of formats, ensuring both visual and auditory output.
2.14
Telephones
The design of one accessible telephone that can be used by everyone can pose some
design challenges as it should be equipped with a teletypewriter (TTY) so that deaf and
speech impaired people can use it. The TTY is commonly installed below the telephone
which may interfere with the required kneespace for wheelchair users. The telephone should
also be recessed so that it does not create a hazardous protrusion in the pedestrian route.
The telephone should have push button controls with characters that contrast with their
background and a telephone cord at least 1000 mm long (M-03)(CSA). The maximum
height of the coin slot should be no higher than 1200 mm (M-05), a recommendation of
the NBC and Access. The minimum floor space in front of the telephone (M-06) should be
900 x 1300 mm, similar to in other locations.
50
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
The minimum height of kneespace under the telephone (M-07) ranged from 640–737 mm but
it was felt that 700 mm would be a best practice to accommodate a wider range people
using wheelchairs (Access). Both a flux coil and a volume control device are required (M10,11) to ensure that telephones can be used by people who are hard of hearing.
A flat shelf for the telephone books is also considered a best practice. Fiji
recommended a seat adjacent to the telephone and if it is located in front of the telephone,
it should be a flip-up seat.
At least one telephone in each bank of telephones should be equipped with a TTY, a
best practice. (Note the requirement for a TTY in elevators as well.) Care should be taken to
ensure appropriate kneespace is provided (700 mm), if this is not possible at the telephone
with the TTY, a second telephone should be designated as wheelchair accessible. The
appropriate signage should be provided for telephones accessible to those with hearing
impairments and to those who use wheelchairs (CSA).
2.15
Signage
Within the federal government work environment, the Federal Identity Program provides
specifications on the style, type, size and location for interior signage.
The stroke width to height ratio of letters and numbers (SI-03,04) ranged from 1:5 to 1:10–
1:6 to 1:1 with the large numbers coming from Access. The character height to maximum
viewing distance (SI-08) complied with the CSA requirements as did the illumination level
(SI-13) at 200 lux.
The most significant data relevant to signage was the recommended height of the signage
(SI-17), on the latch side of the door, with CSA at 1500 mm, the ANSI Standard allowing
1220–1525 mm, and Fiji allowing 1400–1600 mm, but the best practice was judged to be at
1350 mm, recommended by BDEL as that height brings the tactile signage to within the
reach range of people who of short stature and those who use wheelchairs.
Comments included that signage be glare free, have uniform illumination, be free of
shadows and that it be located on the latch sides of doors and where there are double
doors, it be placed on the right of the right hand door. All of these comments comply
with the Federal Identity Program.
2.16
Parking
The requirements for the number of accessible parking spaces (O2A-02L) ranged from 0–
5%, 5% being the best practice, except in small parking areas where the numbers were
specified. Kentucky specifically addressed medical facilities where 20% of spaces must be
accessible. Kentucky also specified 1 of every 8 Accessible car spaces be designed for
van use. All codes required that the accessible parking be located near the building
entrance, with the Nordic countries specifying within 10 metres.
The CSA specified the best practices regarding parking signage requirements but significant
differences were found in the stall lengths (05D) where 2600 x 9400 mm and the minimum
height clearance (D-17) is 2900 mm, recommended by Access.
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
Important comments included that persons in wheelchairs should not have to travel
behind other cars, a consideration important for everyone. Wheel stops should be
provided where the fronts of cars may project onto the pedestrian route, another
excellent suggestion that will prevent hazards in the pedestrian route.
The best practice is to have a clearly marked pedestrian route that is outside of the
vehicular route so that everyone can move safely, free from their cars, to a facility.
Contrasting visual and tactile surfaces can be used to reinforce the pedestrian route.
2.17
Training Centre/Classroom
All aspects of the training centre should be Accessible to all users. If raised seating is
provided, then an accessible ramp and manoeuvring space should be provided to a seating
area. Similarly, access to a raised podium or stage should be accessible via a ramp.
The podium itself should be accessible to people of various heights and should be
equipped with a light that illuminates to a minimum of 200 lux. Care should be taken to
also ensure that adequate illumination is provided on the face of the speaker to allow for
lipreading. An assistive listening system (N-02) is required in rooms over 100 sq./m. by
the CSA but the best practice is to have an assistive listening system in all training
facilities.
An excellent suggestion from Fiji is a coloured and textured floor surface or a barrier
to delineate the edge of the podium or stage.
The minimum number of Accessible seating spaces is 2, specified by the NBC but it is
recommended that at least 5% or more be accessible. The best practice would be to
have all seating areas accessible. Special attention should be taken to provide adequate
manoeuvring space into the training room, beside and behind the accessible seating
areas, specified at 900 x 1500 mm by Fiji and others. Fiji also recommends that 800 mm
be provided for the width of kneespace (N-07), with a depth of 600 mm and a height of
between 710–865 mm (N-09) specified by the ADA. The accessible seating areas should
be interspersed throughout the room, at all levels. Accessible seating areas should be
designed to provide clear site lines for both the person in the wheelchair and the person
seated behind them.
Coat storage should be provided at a maximum height of 1200 mm and shelving at a
variety of heights is recommended. (N-13).
A well-illuminated area at the front of the room should be provided where the sign
language interpreter will stand. Separate lighting should be provided for this area so
that it can remain illuminated when the room lighting is dimmed for audio visual
presentations.
2.18
Work Stations
While it is recognized that the design of individual workstations for employees is an
accommodation issue and would be undertaken with the individual employee, together with
the Employment Equity Department, the following best practice design considerations will
increase accessibility and accommodate the maximum number of users.
52
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
Best practices dimensions relating to the wheelchair footprint (900 x 1500 mm),
kneespace height (W-04) at 700 mm and clear width of kneespace (900 mm), and depth
of kneespace (600 mm) are increased from the CSA B651 as reflected in other sections
such as drinking fountains, vanities, etc. This allows for a greater range of users, particularly
people who use mobility aids such as scooters and power wheelchairs.
The maximum height for controls in a workstation is an important consideration and
therefore the Fiji requirement of 830–870 mm is considered a best practice. This is well
below the CSA maximum height of 1200 mm as reaching over a workstations can be difficult.
The comments on the workstation section were plentiful and very useful. Adjustable
shelving and desk height was widely recommended. Supplementary lighting that can
provide increased illumination up to 400 lux will accommodate people with limited vision and
other design considerations such as sound absorption materials and freedom from glare
will assist all users to comfortably use the workstation. Lateral access file drawers,
rotating storage units and moveable storage are all universal design elements that allow
for maximum freedom and individual use.
2.19
Library
Issues relating exclusively to libraries in the code comparisons were very slim. All areas of
the library should be accessible, including the catalogue work stations and reading areas.
The minimum clear width between the stacks (N-14) should be 1065 mm (ADA). The
ADA recommended a best practice that at least 5% or a minimum of one of each element of
fixed seating, table or study carrels be accessible.
An excellent example of a space-saving mechanism that will also provide accessibility for a
greater number of people is moveable stacks that can be stored close together but can be
moved to create wide access routes between them.
There is a resource book entitled The Accessible Canadian Library II, available from the
National Library of Canada which is listed in the Bibliography, which provides more details on
the design of the accessible libraries.
2.20
Cafeteria & Restaurants
All areas of the cafeteria or restaurant should be accessible to all customers. The clear
width for the food service line (N-16) ranged from 914–1065 mm, with the ADA
recommendation of 1065 mm considered a best practice.
It is important that all service areas, condiment and cutlery dispensers and food service
areas (N-18) be at a maximum height of 1200 mm, a CSA requirement. The service areas
must also comply with the CSA maximum reach depth of 500 mm. Tray rails in the
cafeteria and at salad bars should have a maximum tray height of 700–850 mm, a best
practice from the Fiji Standard.
A good design practice in a cafeteria is a continuous tray rail that will allow people to
receive a full range of services, without having to carry their trays to another counter area..
The recent trend towards a variety of “counter areas” provides a more challenging
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
environment.
The footprint area (N-20) in front of counters and vending machines is 900 x 1300 mm
to accommodate a greater range of customers. Controls on dispensing machines (N22) should be illuminated at 200 lux, be colour contrasted and require minimal force to
operate (N-24). Kentucky recommended Braille and large print menus be available.
Menus and menu boards should be well contrasted and located at eye level.
A best practice, from Access was that colour contrasted stops be provided at the end of
tray slides. Staff should be willing to provide assistance to customers. A wide range of foods
are recommended, some free of common allergens such as dairy and wheat. Seating
should be well designed so that moveable seats as well as fixed seating is available,
clear pathways at least 920 mm wide should be provided through the cafeteria and
eating area and colour wayfinding cues can be useful to assist people in making their way
through a cafeteria or restaurant.
3.0
Building Elements–Process and Methodology
The Canadian Institute for Barrier-Free Design was contracted to develop the data base for
the international code and standard review for the building elements. A variety of building
codes, barrier-free standards and guidelines were researched and ordered from a number of
sources. The documents reviewed came from Canada, the United States, United Kingdom,
The Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland), Australia, New
Zealand, Fiji, Japan, Beijing (China) and Europe.
The Canadian Standards Association document CAN/CSA B651-M95 Barrier-Free Design
Standard- Public Safety, A National Standard of Canada was used as the base standard of
comparison to other barrier-free codes, standards and guidelines.
A database utilizing Microsoft Access 97 was created. Two basic files were created for each
element considered in the barrier-free codes, standards and guideline comparisons. The first
file dealt with dimensional notations from the documents; the second file laid out the
pertinent best practice comments as noted in the documents.
The initial questions that were to be considered in the analysis were taken from the
Accessibility Evaluation Guide, produced by Public Works and Government Services
Canada, which is based on CSA B651-M95. As different questions or different ways of
dimensioning or considering an element were found in the various documents, new
questions were added as required.
Together the consultant team analyzed the data, discussed, brain stormed and generally
reviewed all aspects of the comparisons together with the comments to come up with what
could be considered “a best practice”, that is a dimension or group of dimensions that would
allow for the inclusion of the greatest number of people.
4.0
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See section 5.0 for Landscape Elements—Process & Methodology
4.1
Outdoor Ramps
The design of outdoor ramps is similar to interior ramps but with some special considerations
such as snow removal. The best practice for the slope of outdoor ramps should be no
greater than 1:20, regardless of the rise with a maximum cross slope of 1:50, a CSA
requirement.
The minimum clear width of a ramp (OR-7) ranged from 865–2000 mm, with the US
Forest Service recommending 1220 mm.
The width of the landing in most codes and standards is generally tied to the width of the
ramp itself (OR-13), but to accommodate people using larger wheelchairs, a width of 1500
mm is recommended as a best practice. The minimum size for the length of the
landing (OR-14) is 1525, a recommendation of ADAAG, and if served by a doorway it
should be 1525 x 1525 mm, also an ADAAG requirement. Access went even further and
required a landing at switchbacks at 2250 mm deep, clearly an example of a best practice.
Detectable warnings are recommended at the top and bottom of ramps to warn
pedestrians of the upcoming change in grade.
Edge protection on the side of the ramp was recommended by many codes (OR-21), with the
ECMT requiring it to be a minimum of 100 mm in height and BDEL was the only
document that specified that snow and ice removal be removed from the ramp. Again,
while many guidelines only required handrails on ramps over 150 mm, BDEL recommended
that handrails be provided on all ramps as a best practice and the CIBFD recommended
handrails on both sides of the ramp and a middle handrail on wide ramps over 2200
mm in width.
Minimum illumination of 100 lux is recommended on all ramps. Parks Canada was the
only document that limited the design load of the ramp to 488 kg and the US Forest
Service specified 112 N for the design load for handrails. Other interesting suggestions
included that handrails be designed so that they not become hot, BDEL recommended
weather protection and the CIBFD recommended guards in addition to handrails.
4.2
Sidewalks & Walkways
Sidewalks are required to provide a safe route of travel between all facilities (SW-2),
parking lots, drop off areas and the route from public transportation. This stipulation
was found in numerous municipal documents, including the City of Gloucester while the
Manitoba document stipulated that sidewalk be for the exclusive use of pedestrians, a
best practice to ensure the safety of all pedestrians (SW-4).
The minimum clear width for sidewalks varied from 915 to 1800 mm, a requirement of
both the City of Gloucester Accessibility Guidelines and the European Community, while
other guidelines suggested basing the minimum clear width on the volume of traffic.
Gloucester also required that shoulders be provided on both sides of a sidewalk (SW-8),
and if this was not possible, a guard or barrier was required if there was a drop-off. Level
rest areas were required where the longitudinal slope was between 3–5% by the ECMT
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
(SW-11) but the interval varied considerably from 10,000–30,000 mm, with 10,000 mm
being the best practice. Seating or rest areas are appreciated by everyone.
The size of the level landing at doorways varied depending on the different types of
wheelchairs, with the CIBFD specifying 1500 mm for manual wheelchairs, 2250 mm for
power wheelchairs and 3150 mm for scooters, with the larger dimension
accommodating all (SW-14). All guidelines required sidewalks that were continuous, hard,
smooth, stable and non-slip.
Snow clearing is very important to maintain accessible routes of travel, it is important to
coordinate snow clearing between different agencies and a high priority must be given to
clearing a safe accessible route in all directions. Two best practices included an
alternate to the use of salt to reduce its impact on guide dogs and the installation of
handrails on areas prone to ice (SW-27).
Minimum overhead clearance varied from 1980–2500 mm, with the larger number
preferred.
Two documents recommended textural warning where protrusions occurred, but clearly the
best practice is to not allow any protrusions to be included in the pedestrian route.
Most guidelines specified a maximum gap of 13 mm between grates but Access allowed
only a 6 mm gap (SW-36). Clearly a best practice is to install grates flush with the
walkway surface, which was mentioned by the ECMT and catch basins outside of the
pedestrian route was recommended by Gloucester and Taking Steps.
The Gloucester and CIBFD documents both specified that thorny or prickly plants (SW-47)
be avoided, that plants that drop fruit or pods and plants that tend to have invasive
roots be avoided, all excellent practices.
Both the Gloucester and Manitoba documents recommended the use of textured and
coloured pavers to assist in wayfinding. A exterior wayfinding system is
recommended as a best practice leading from the bus stops to the main facility. It
should be carefully designed to provide information in all weather conditions. Another
suggestion is to provide coloured banding on poles or bollards to identify the route from
the bus stop to the main entrance. This best design practice can be combined with the
use of wayfinding lighting on bollards.
4.3
Passenger Drop-off
The passenger drop-off area must be accessible to all vehicles including buses, taxis and
vans. The recommended minimum size for passenger loading zones varied little with the
best practice being 6000 mm per car. The recommended length where buses were
expected was increased to 9100 x 12000 mm and for areas required on the sidewalk
for buses with side lifts, the dimensions are 2400 x 1800 mm.
The maximum cross slope was 1:50 and all codes and standards included a requirement for
a curb ramp. A best practice recommended by the CIBFD is that bollards be located where
the vehicle lane is on the same level as the adjacent walk. This will clearly differentiate
the pedestrian route from the vehicular route.
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The best practice for the clearance height above the vehicle access route was 2900 mm, and
3600 mm where buses were expected. BDEL recommended a covered canopy and a
contrasting texture and colour for the passenger loading area. The CIBFD
recommended signage for the designated drop-off route and waiting time limits.
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4.4
Wayfinding & Detectable Warnings
The jury is still out on detectable warnings in the US, some blind people feel that they are
not required while others feel that all cues including a raised lip, a detectable surface and the
slope of a curb ramp will assist in providing information to assist blind people in wayfinding. If
they are of benefit to some people, then they are considered a best practice (WF-2).
Detectable warnings should have a highly contrasted and textured surface that
provides information. They should be used consistently throughout the facility and a specific
texture should be used to alert people to an up coming change in grade such as
upcoming stairs or a ramp (DW-1). If detectable warnings are to be used for something
other than to warn people of an upcoming change in grade, they should have a different
texture and colour so that they can be differentiated. Detectable warnings should be installed
900 mm back from the change in grade (DW-3). The maximum grade change between
materials was listed at 6 mm by Parks Canada and the Access Board, and 3 mm by CIBFD.
Of course a minimum rise is best. Sound and resiliency changes are also recommended
for detectable warnings. They should be constructed of stable, firm and slip-resistant
materials and should contrast with the sidewalk materials.
Truncated domes at the edge of platforms are in wide use in the US and Canada and
should be provided wherever a platform or drop-off occurs (DW-14). The ADA specifies
that truncated domes have a diameter of 23 mm, 5 mm in height and spacing of 60 mm.
Wayfinding can be enhanced with the use of redundant cues such as landmarks, contrasting
colour, brightness, resiliency, audition and texture. Lighting and signage should also be used
(WF-4).
All codes and standards addressed in different ways the requirements for coloured and
textured wayfinding guiding systems, called a “guide route” in the Nordic code, where the
Beijing code mentions “a strip shape or circle spot shape” to warn people who are blind.
Contrasting colours should be used for doors, door hardware, between walls and
floors and on the floor surface. Lighting should be constant and should be designed
to compliment the use of colour. It should be non-glare, non-reflective and non-blinking or
flashing.
Both texture and colour can be used effectively as a wayfinding guide for all building users.
Different textures together with different colours on walls and floors can be used to denote
different directions (north, etc.) or components of a facility. Colour and texture wherever
there is a change in grade in recommended by BDEL, Fiji and others.
4.5
Lighting of Outdoor Areas
Appropriate lighting will assist everyone to feel safe and comfortable in the outdoor
environment. Lighting is recommended for high use areas and where night use is
appropriate (OL-2) by most documents. Minimum illumination of 200 lux is
recommended on signage by BDEL, the CSA and Ontario MTR (OL-3).
Illumination of 50 lux on stairs was recommended by Parks Canada but BDEL recommended
a minimum level of 100 lux on stairs. Illumination of 20 lux on bridges and broadwalks is
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UNIVERSAL DESIGN
recommended by Parks Canada but BDEL recommends 100 lux here as well (OL-6).
Lighting levels varied from 6 lux on pedestrian routes to 100 lux. Full white spectrum
lighting is preferred by the Illuminating Engineers Society.
The mounting height for lighting fixtures in parking areas is recommended at 6000 10000 mm, and 3000–9000 mm for walkways. Lighting that is well positioned does not
cause glare and is appreciated by everyone (OL13,14). To minimize the effect of shade, a
height of 2100 mm is recommended from grade for the intersection of light patterns.
This will provide a safer and more accessible environment.
4.6
Construction Zones
A number of guidelines, in particular the City of Gloucester Accessible Guidelines, the ECMT
and BDEL have very well defined criteria to ensure the safety of pedestrians in construction
zones. A cane detectable barrier or barricade is clearly a best practice to warn blind
people away from construction areas. The Manitoba League recommended a construction
barricade with three barriers at heights of 150 , 600 and 1050 mm (CS-3) but the most
important consideration was that a completely enclosing barrier be provided. Flexible
barriers, such as the orange snow fencing, should not be used, nor the familiar yellow tape.
Barriers should be well contrasted and accompanied by audible warnings.
The best practice is to provide an alternate pedestrian route (1200 mm wide, ECMT)
around the complete construction zone. It must be safe and the route must be clearly
indicated in all formats (print, audible), not signs such as “use other sidewalk” which blind
people will not see. Going Places specified that the route be straightforward and easy to
follow with right hand angles (CS-9). The Taking Steps document suggested that
construction not be allowed to begin until an alternate safe pedestrian route is
provided (CS-24).
Enclosed pedestrian walkways must be free of overhead protrusions with a maximum
clear height of 2250 mm and well contrasted poles should be installed to assist in
wayfinding along the route that are well contrasted (CS-17), with the lower edge of
bands at a height of 1200–1500 mm (BDEL) (CS-19). Padding on scaffolding and guy
wires (ECMT) is another excellent practice (CS-20).
Concrete barricades should be used on the edge of pathways and sidewalks to protect
pedestrians from parked cars that extend into the pedestrian route.
4.7
Crosswalk Controls
A variety of accessible pedestrian signals are available around the world that assist people to
safely cross the road, but there are two or three that are judged to offer the best features. It
is important to use signal controls consistently at crosswalks and to provide a clear
level area in front of the button or signal activator. Parks Canada specified a clear level
area (CS-5) of 750 x 1200 mm but a larger space of 900 x 1300 mm is preferred.
Pedestrian crossing time in Toronto is based on 1.2 m per second, and the Access Board
specified half a metre per second but the best device was found in the European Community
document that use electronic monitoring of the pedestrian’s crossing speed and
adjusted the light accordingly. The ECMT (CS-8) also included a feature that would
automatically detect the presence of a person at the crosswalk and activate the light
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
accordingly.
The mounting height of the push button (CS-11) varied from 650 mm in Gloucester to 1200
mm in Access but the optimum height of 1070 mm was specified in the Going Places
document. The size of the button varied from 25–50–100 mm, the larger size would
likely serve a larger population. And it is preferred that buttons be placed on separate
poles, where possible. Push buttons are also specified on islands and medians (CS17) in the Australian and Toronto documents.
An auditory tone is emitted by the push-button to assist people in locating it. Once
pushed, the device emits a different sound to inform the pedestrian that they can cross the
street. Although the Toronto installations emit a sound from both sides of the street, this
feature was judged to be distracting as it masks the sounds blind people use to assist them
in crossing the street. A distinct sound for north-south versus east-west intersections was
another feature used in Toronto but this was not recommended, as it presumed that people
already knew which streets go in which direction.
Some other interesting features are found in Australia where there is vibro-tactile arrow
and street announcer. A Montreal firm has also developed a pedestrian countdown
system that informs the pedestrian how many seconds remain until the walk signal. This
feature may be of assistance to people who have a slow gait but it is not accessible to
people without sight. Pedestrian signals should be installed at the request of the local
community.
4.8
Gardens & Open Space
An outdoor garden or well designed open area would be an appropriate and impressive
compliment to the new facilities.
The outdoor garden could be designed to be accessible and particularly enjoyable for
everyone. In order to ensure that there is something for everyone, a multi-sensory
approach is suggested. A fragrant garden (G-6) is suggested in addition to a garden
with flowers and/or vegetables with different textures and colours, that can be
touched.
A review of the various guidelines indicated that the an accessible raised garden with
hand-holds (G-2) and kneelers as well as large pots that be approached from a variety
of sides is preferred. BDEL suggested a height of 460 mm; the 1991 Ontario document
suggests 600 mm for digging into, in addition to a wheel-under potting shelf at a height
of 800 mm, (and maximum reach depth of 500 mm) with plenty of storage area nearby. A
ready water source should be available from the work shelf. Plenty of seating areas (G-8),
both shaded and protected should be provided both in the work area and in the garden itself
(see benches).
In addition to the garden, the outdoor space might also incorporate a fountain or sculpture
garden. Overhead clearances and detectable warning surfaces should all be included. A
barrier curb or guard should delineate the edge of the fountain area (G-18) or other
changes in grade, which can also be visually enhanced by the use of different materials and
textures, which was suggested in most documents.
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Interpretative signage should be an integral part of the design of the outside space
with information provided using simple language, with characters in a variety of formats such
as well contrasted large print, braille and audio formats. Glare-free bold (G-30) simple
characters and images should be considered for signage which is set back from the
pedestrian route, mounted at an incline with a 30–45 degree angle set from the
horizontal plane.
4.9
Benches
Benches should be positioned adjacent to the accessible pedestrian route. The
recommended seating height varied from 430–500 mm, quite a wide range (OB-3) with the
best practice being the provision of benches at a variety of heights to accommodate the
preferences of different people. Armrests were preferred by most documents but the ADAAG
recommended that armrests be provided on only 40% of benches. Seat depths (OB-5) varied
from 450 (CIBFD) to 482 mm (ADAAG), with a range of seat depths accommodating the
largest number of people. The ADAAG specified many details about the design of a bench.
The minimum space requirements for an adjacent space varied considerably from 760 x
1220 mm (USFS) to 900 x 1500 mm, recommended by the CIBFD and most documents
recommended that benches be set back a maximum of 600 mm. A different texture to
orient people to the existence of benches was recommended by BDEL and CIBFD and a
bench contrasting in colour to it’s surroundings (OB-15) was recommended by ECMT and
BDEL. The ECMT specified that sharp corners and edges be avoided (OB-16) and BDEL
recommended that some benches be located in the shade, and the CSA specifies
materials that do not retain heat as a best practice.
The Ontario MTR specified a level area 840 x 1200 mm in front of benches (OB-19), an
excellent idea. ADAAG specified the allowable force of 113 kg for materials. ADAAG
specified that at least 50% of benches be Accessible while the best practice is that all
benches be accessible.
5.0
Landscape Components—Methodology and Approach
There are a number of codes and regulations governing accessibility to the built
environment, however, these documents focus mainly on access into buildings and building
interiors. For example, the CSA, and National Building Code all include detailed
specifications for ramps but provide limited coverage of outdoor facilities such as crosswalks
or benches. Some elements found in the International Codes and Standards are included in
the data analysis sheets. In the US, this gap has been recognized to a certain extent by the
Access Board and guidelines pertaining to the Public Rights of Way are pending.
As a result, many organizations that own and maintain significant public lands have
developed their own policies and Accessibility guidelines applicable to their property and
clientele. Examples in Canada include Parks Canada, the National Capital Commission,
Queen’s University, and various municipalities, though many of these guidelines cannot be
considered instruments for truly “universal” design. These documents, however, do provide a
good source of information in terms of checking for consistency and best practices.
The outdoor environment in most of Canada presents an additional challenge that is not
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often a consideration of American and European Accessibility documents. Winter has a
significant impact on facilitating accessibility and requires careful consideration from a facility
design and maintenance standpoint. Snow, ice, cold temperatures, wind and short day
length are obvious factors that can influence accessibility.
For the purpose of comparing codes and guidelines pertaining to the accessibility of the
outdoor environment, the documents are listed as abbreviations and acronyms in the data
sheets, and can be found in Appendix III. The recommendations under the heading “BDEL”
are a composite from work undertaken by Betty Dion Enterprises Ltd. for various clients,
including Canadian universities and municipalities and the Canadian Human Rights
Commission.
Reference books from various advocacy groups and stakeholder organizations were used to
supplement the information provided by the codes and guidelines. These documents were all
published in the last 2 years.
Together the consultants analysed the data, discussed, brain stormed and generally
reviewed all aspects of the comparisons together with the comments to come up with what
could be considered “a best practice,” that is a dimension or group of dimensions that would
allow for the inclusion of the greatest number of people.
6.0
Maintenance Issues
6.1
Washrooms
Maintenance systems or staff can compromise an accessible facility that has incorporated
universal design best practices. Three examples include entrance doors, washroom stalls
and the placement of the waste receptacle in washrooms.
A heavy door that is difficult to open has been experienced by everyone. The majority of
doors have a mechanism that can adjust the pressure making it easier to open.
A well designed washroom stall will have a stall door with a clear width of 810 mm or greater
and appropriate manoeuvring space beside the toilet to position a wheelchair to allow
someone to transfer onto the toilet. Unfortunately, if a chair or waste dispenser is placed in
the stall, the stall becomes inaccessible to people who use wheelchairs.
The placement of a waste receptacle in the kneespace under a sink or underneath a hand
dryer is another common practice that makes it impossible to use the features. These are
some of the examples of maintenance issues that compromise the original design of the
facility.
6.2
Accessible Entrances
The whole spirit of welcoming people to one’s facility is compromised if the first encounter at
the entrance is difficult. A door that requires a great deal of force to open or a parking garage
that has maintenance materials stored in the accessible parking space are two examples of
unwelcoming practices.
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6.3
Slip-resistant Mats
Mats or temporary carpeting can be a tripping hazard for people walking and can also cause
dangerous situations for people who use canes or crutches. Temporary carpeting can also
get caught between the front and rear wheels of wheelchairs and, in fact, if they are not
permanently installed, they are hazardous to everyone.
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INTERNATIONAL REPORTS
Successful Disability Advocacy at the
World Summit on the Information Society 
Compiled by the Japanese Society for Rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was held in Geneva hosted by the
Swiss Government from 10 to 12 December 2003. The JSRPD interviewed Mr. Hiroshi
Kawamura, Director, Department of Social Rehabilitation, Research Institute, National
Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities, who was a focal point for the disability
family group of the Civil Society Bureau of WSIS. Hiroshi was instrumental in leading the
initiative to put disability awareness in the official WSIS statement. Following is his report on
the evolution of the principle documents of the WSIS, its final outcome and the "Global
Forum on Disability" held during the Summit.
Accessibility of Information & Communication Technologies
(ICT)
During a December 2001 Campaign Meeting of the Asian and Pacific Decade of Persons
with Disabilities held in Viet Nam, Hiroshi called a meeting of ICT task force in his capacity
as the leader, appointed by the region’s Thematic Working Group on Disability-related
Concerns (TWGDC), and proposed to hold an international ICT accessibility conference in
Thailand. The goal was to attract the attention of the general public and Government to ICT
accessibility at an early stage, as such awareness is essential as the ICT infrastructure is
created in developing countries. The ICT Accessibility Seminar proved highly successful in
raising this awareness through the sharing of accessibility guidelines in the Asia-Pacific
region and beyond.
Getting involved in the process of WSIS
In May 2002 Hiroshi was invited to a seminar held by the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU) Asian and Pacific Branch to address the need of people with disabilities. During
a presentation by the ITU Secretariat, he learned of WSIS and decided to invite a
representative from ITU to the proposed accessibility seminar, held in June 2002. The
TWGDC, the Daisy Consortium, the W3C, the Thai Government and the Thai DAISY
Consortium hosted the seminar, during which participants learned about the WSIS and
developed a clear strategy to move beyond the Asian and Pacific region to a global arena. A
declaration developed and adopted by the participants, and endorsed by TWGDC, was
included into the action plan of the Biwako Millennium Framework of UNESCAP and this was
brought to the Asian and Pacific Regional Preparatory Meeting for the WSIS held in Japan in

This article originally appeared at
http://disabilityworld.org/01-03_04/news/wsis.shtml
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
January 2003. Hiroshi invited Mr. Monthian Buntan, Vice president of Thai Association for
the Blind to take part in the regional preparatory meeting, who was the only blind person in
attendance. Only one other participant was observed to have a disability, which leads to the
conclusion that the WSIS preparatory process generally neglected the participation of people
with disabilities.
Disability focal point within the WSIS
The first preparatory conference of the WSIS, PrepCom-1, was held in 2002, followed by
PrepCom-2 in February 2003. PrepCom-2 required that participants be accredited, and
fortunately the DAISY Consortium could become a sector B member of ITU. As a result, the
DAISY Consortium was automatically accredited and was the only disability related
organization at the PrepCom-2. The United Nations decided that the Civil Society should be
recognized within the framework of WSIS, and a move was taken to bring in so-called family
groups. These included the Gender caucus, regional and other groups, yet there was no
proposal to set up a disability related family group. Hiroshi proposed to set up a family group
on disability, which was endorsed by another participant and adopted. During the first group
meeting during PrepCom-2, there were only three participants, one from Italy, one from
Switzerland, and Hiroshi; no persons with a disability were present at PrepCom-2. From this
small meeting, decisions were made to form guidelines for creating a disability focus group
within the WSIS Civil Society Bureau, and Hiroshi, and the DAISY Consortium were selected
as the focal point person and organization. This key development led to the first inclusion of
people with disabilities in WSIS.
Achievement Intersessional
In July 2002, the intersessional meeting of the WSIS was held in Paris and hosted by
UNESCO. By then it was very important for representatives from the World Blind Union
(WBU) or the International Disability Alliance (IDA) to address disability issues and Hiroshi
invited Ms. Kiki Nordstrom, President of WBU as well as Chairperson of IDA. Encouraged by
Kiki’s presentation, and followed by negotiation and lobbying, the Government of Thailand
agreed to raise the issue of accessibility in an appropriate context in the Declaration of
Principles. That was the first major achievement of the disability family in raising awareness
during the preparatory process.
Setbacks and Awareness Raising
Hiroshi and Monthian attended PrepCom-3 in September, 2003, and both were surprised
and outraged when they found that the most important disability-related paragraph in the
conference document had been deleted completely. Disability specific content was
completely eradicated from the text, replaced by words like "vulnerable" or "disadvantaged."
Additionally, there was no understandable clarification why disabilities were deleted, while
specific mentions of other groups of people such as young, children, women, and indigenous
remained. They worked hard over the next two weeks to get disabilities back into the
language of the document. In this context, there was general admission that disability is
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important, but no consensus on how to include disability specific language, and no
conclusion was reached by the end of PrepCom-3.
From an overall perspective, WSIS was unable to reach consensus on two major issues,
Internet governance and the North-South digital divide, specifically the so-called solidarity
funding issue. These issues became fundamental deadlocks, and it became a real concern
that Summit could not be held. If there is no major consensus, there is no value in holding a
Summit, and as a result there were a lot of delicate diplomatic processes and negotiations.
During this negotiation, Hiroshi created a printed appeal, raising awareness of disability
issues and distributed it to almost all participants in the conference hall, raising the
awareness of delegations on the importance of disability issues.
Real-time virtual international collaboration
A weeklong PrepCom-3-Additonal in November was held, during which they tried to get all
disability specific language back. But something essential was missing and that was a basic
principle of disability. After much thought and discussion, he talked with the government
delegations and exchanged ideas with disability concerned people around the world through
e-mails and mailing lists, made possible in real-time through the wireless networking in the
conference room. As a result of this virtual, real-time group effort, a most important hint given
by a comment from Professor Kate Seelman, Associate Dean of School of Health and
Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, who observed that the principle document
did not touch upon universal design and assistive technology.
As a result, Hiroshi lobbied to include universal design and assistive technology in some
appropriate context without specifically saying disability. He reasoned that by excluding
specific mention of disability, those representing women, children, indigenous populations,
and a long list of other groups, would not feel compelled to claim they should also be
included. His strategy was to find the essence of the need in the context of ICT for people
with disabilities and concluded that universal design and assistive technology would help
people with disabilities. The government of Thailand took up this cause and put these
phrases in the context of Declaration of Principles, with support by the Government of New
Zealand. The Government of Mexico supported other amendments related to disability and
the Mexican delegation clearly stated their support of such language on behalf of the
disability caucus. Good relationships were built between governments and disability groups
during this process. Finally, the final text of Declaration of Principles and Plan of Actions,
including support for persons with disabilities, was approved by the WSIS in Geneva.
Global Forum on Disability
Hiroshi's effective role as focal point and efforts on the basic documents of WSIS were not
his only achievements. He also was instrumental in organizing the Global Forum on
Disability, an official event of WSIS held on December 12. It was well attended by 250
people from all over the world. Unlike the WSIS preparatory process, this forum solicited
participation by people with disabilities and focused on ICT accessibility activities, best
practice presentations, and ICT design for all. Working under severe time constraints, the
Swiss organizer had just two months to raise funds to invite people with disabilities from
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
developing countries and organize the Forum. Those attending were highly motivated to
participate and give input to the Summit, and this led to a very successful event. A press
conference was held and all individuals with disabilities who attended the forum were invited
to participate in the half-hour event by the official organizer of the Summit. A video streaming
archive of the press conference is available on the web..
The next phase of WSIS will be held in Tunis, in 2005 and the Declaration adopted by the
forum, which specifies the right of people with disabilities, WSIS summit documents, and the
Civil Society Declaration will give a very good foundation for ensuring persons with
disabilities will be considered in the planning process. A key demonstration of information
accessibility at WSIS was the initiative of Swiss Library for the Blind to produce 9000
CDROM copies of the summit documents in the DAISY format, in the six official UN
languages. Included on the CDROM, was the AMIS playback, allowing the actual documents
to be read through standard text on screen, human voice narration in each language, and
large font on the screen or Braille. These combined efforts gave important input to WSIS and
we look forward to seeing the positive results of influencing the government delegations
across the world and other delegations to the Summit.
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International Workshop on
Accessibility Requirements for
Public Procurement in the ICT Domain
October 19 – 21 2004 in Brussels
By Andries Koster and Petra Jorissen
Accessible Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has a vital role in enabling
participation in the Information Society by people with disabilities and elderly people.
Awareness of equal possibilities for all people is growing slowly. But what about accessibility
of ICT in the European Union? Which things have to be improved? And how? Participants
from all over the world came to Brussels to discuss these topics.
Last October, a three-day International Workshop on Accessibility Requirements for Public
Procurement in the ICT Domain took place in Brussels. This workshop was organised by the
European Union, the United States Access Board, European standardisation organisations
and contributions of the European Disability Forum (EDF) with support of the eInclusion@EU
project.
Participants coming from Japan to Norway visited this workshop and listened to many
different presentations concerning all aspects of electronic accessibility. Participants were
policymakers, public servants, and representatives of disability organisations, normalization
offices, trade and industry.
Many subjects concerning electronic accessibility were discussed, but key issues were:
European policy perspective, analysis of existing technical electronic Accessibility
requirements used in public procurement in specific technical domains, and international
best practices.
Different policies
At the first day, key issues from a European policy perspective came up for discussion. It
became clear that there are big differences between the US and the EU.
In the US, accessibility is a growing market, especially because elderly people are
considered part of the target group. Everyone—from users to industry, traders and
producers—has an interest in being aware of state of the art developments in the field. In
addition legacy about achieving accessibility for all by way of public procurement is already
established. The US is a federal state in which central ruling and enforcement has to be
accepted.
The situation in the EU is different and more complicated. EU consists of 25 sovereign
countries which want to cooperate, but the EU has to deal with many different languages, 25
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different governments, and different cultures. None of the countries oppose accessibility. But
what is the foundation on which to build special accessibility arrangements?
In the EU, the goal is to achieve the biggest possible group. In other words: middle of the
road policy is leading. In public procurement this seems to be an unavoidable judgement.
Especially elderly people are considered as the target group that needs Accessibility. Old
age often means loss of capability, and as people in general grow older the target group is
growing every day. A growing group provides incentive to address Accessibility, but this does
not mean that ICT is accessible to people with all kinds of disabilities. For instance, blind
users or users without limbs often need special adaptations and facilities.
Different EU members found different solutions to the problem of inaccessibility. Spain, for
instance, has a huge organisation of blind people, funded mainly by that national lottery.
Called Once, it takes care of special facilities for people with disabilities. In Nordic EU
countries, disabled people have individual rights to get active support from society. People
can get adaptations to their houses, wheelchairs and many other different facilities to
participate. Dutch disabled people often become stakeholders. This means they get a budget
from their (local) government to purchase special facilities. It is a businesslike way.
International harmonization
While the world seems to become smaller and smaller, technical developments are getting
bigger and bigger.
Worldwide, many initiatives can be recognized to improve accessibility in particular. Making
the finances available often influences the idea, the development process and the target
group. Nowadays a lot of well described details exist already. To serve the mission by reuse
and exchange of already achieved results and knowledge there is a severe need for
standardisation. Many workshop participants seem to recognize the abbreviations of some of
the diverse norms committees and many others seem to be flabbergasted by them. In many
presentations there is a wish for harmonization of the standards. Harmonization is
unavoidable.
Italy and Ireland both gave a presentation of good practices which have a focus on native
law and government rules.
W3C develops WAI Guidelines to address the accessibility of each component used in the
process of content production and presentation to the end user. W3C, www consortium
abreviated, is an international, vendor-neutral consortium. It develops core standards for the
web. The activities are split up in 4 domains: Architecture, Interaction, Technology and
Society, and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
Denmark designed a tool to align the demands in procurement and the WAI rules. That tool
makes a typical split between the requirements of the procurement and the guidelines
provided by the WAI.
The Netherlands has a special program to make websites accessible, financed by the
government. Public service and 300 companies subscribed the intention to make their sites
conform to Accessibility guidelines. This initiative had a major result and gave an impulse to
greater awareness of Accessibility.
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User interface
In ICT techniques, the importance of a clear and good user interface is widely accepted. The
user often finds a standard layout on his screen. Different programs give the user the idea of
recognition of routines already known from other programs. This familiarity causes the user
to experience comfort and ease. This approach is used for all kind of applications, although
web applications were mostly mentioned. The U.S. software industry has paid a lot of
attention to this subject.
Another chapter is the hardware in which the software is integrated: think of telephones,
automatic tellers, voting machines and ticket dispensers. In houses more and more
appliances appear with screens and speech to react to or interact with. Everybody has to
work with this; whether your body is small, big, athletic or weak. Well known are problems
with colour, allergy, readability and understanding. Good guidelines for finding solutions
already exist; British Telecom presented a lot of these findings arising from fundamental and
practical surveys.
The public procurement is very interesting in the U.S. Compared to the EU the market
requirements are more simple and the turn over is gigantic. Public procurement can be seen
as a powerful instrument for all stakeholders. Policy makers promote Accessibility to achieve
higher production and better sales figures. The demand in the market will increase with the
growth of the elderly part of the population.
Industry
Practices in the US have shown that manufacturers have learned the possibilities that
Accessibility offers to the market. This positive approach is typical for the US. ICT market
leader Microsoft proudly promotes the company’s focus on Accessibility as a win-win
situation. Producers in other parts of the world do not have this attitude yet. They position
themselves as a part in the chain of companies. They see heavy dependencies of their
suppliers and their customers.
Their experience is that the material is tough and complex. There is no reasonable ground to
expect that this situation will change in the short term, but progress and success on a longer
term is quite achievable.
Source of inspiration
Accessibility appears to be very alive and a source of inspiration. Access for all is the end of
route for the part of society populated by disabled, chronically ill and elderly people. Not so
long ago, such groups were occupied in activities as making simple things. Today, the aim is
equal participation in the society. The aim is clear, but not yet reachable. For the time being
there will be big differences in various parts of the world. It is important to bundle cooperative
efforts to achieve results on the shortest possible term. The workshops indicated good
progress in the coming years.
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Introduction and the Benefit of Harmonisation
In his opening speech, User Needs for European eAccessibility Requirements, Yannis
Vardakastanis, President European Disability Forum (EDF) pointed out:
EDF has been campaigning for many years on the issue of e-accessibility and e-inclusion so
crucial to ensuring disabled people are integrated rather than excluded from society. The role
of new technologies in the information and communication field is central to daily life in the
modern world. Without equal access to such technologies disabled people will never be able
to integrate properly. We will never be able to have equal access to the labour market. We
will never be able to have equal access to education, cultural and social life. Accessibility to
ICT technologies must be recognised, first and foremost as a rights issue.
If we look at what has happened in the United States, the 'US Amendments Act 508' has
shown that the US Federal agencies have been required to make their electronic and
information technology accessible to people with disabilities. This US law applies to all
Federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information
technology. Under Section 508 agencies must give disabled employees and members of the
public access to information which is comparable to the access available to others. The
advantage of this approach is that the requirements are mandatory and its rules can be
tested in court. Such requirements provide a strong signal to goods and service providers.
This approach has an enormous influence on multinational companies operating in Europe in
this field.
Furthermore, such a policy strengthens the responsibility of governments towards their own
employees with disabilities.
Standards
European standards which clearly define accessibility requirements in relation to the built
environment and ICT are also necessary. Effective user consultation is essential in defining
such a standard; there is a need to systematically involve representative disability NGOs in
the standards development process as well as to facilitate disability NGOs’ capacity to
monitor how well standards are being implemented.
We are aware that standards set the guidelines as defined by experts in the field, but they
have to be implemented. Standards alone will not lead to effective change. For this to
happen, non-discrimination legislation is needed.
The existing legislation in public procurement and electronic communications, strongly
supported by EU non-discrimination legislation in the field of employment, provides us with
some important opportunities.
EDF wishes first to see effective use and implementation of these legal instruments by the
Member States and stakeholders concerned and, second, to see the further strengthening of
accessibility requirements in the EU public procurement legislation and the legislation on
electronic communication technologies.
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In relation to electronic communications, it makes sense from a user’s perspective to bring
the electronic communications legislation on equipment and services and content together
under one common legislative framework. The current artificial divide in the legal framework
makes no sense to consumers and reduces the effectiveness of implementation.
Without doubt the top priority for us must be access for disabled persons to emergency
services. In particular, work must begin without delay to install real-time text communication
in all emergency call centres across Europe together with comprehensive training of
emergency call centre staff on how to receive and respond to emergency calls from disabled
people.
We must recognise the important role of each of the stakeholders and the importance of
building working partnerships between them.
EU institutions and national authorities in EU and accession countries must review the scope
of community and national legal frameworks aimed at combating discriminatory practices in
all fields, with particular regard to legislation on accessibility, to ensure that disabled people
have the same right of access to public and social facilities as other people. Local authorities
have a major role to play in implementing accessibility criteria in public procurement and
must be strongly encouraged to integrate the needs of people with disabilities in urban and
community policy, and to draw up plans of action on disability in collaboration with
representative disability organisations.
EDF also recognises the importance of building relationships direct with industry,
manufacturers and service providers in order to share information, break down
misunderstanding and promote effective implementation for providing accessible goods and
services.
Voluntary commitments on access for disabled people made by industry have an important
role in raising awareness; such actions demonstrate corporate social responsibility and have
a place in promoting social inclusion for disabled persons. However, voluntary commitments
must not and cannot be a substitute for comprehensive non-discrimination legislation.
In conclusion, EDF hopes that this conference will lead to the following actions to be
undertaken to improve ICT access:
 The development and implementation of European requirements in this field;
mandating the European Standardisation authorities to undertake this work and to
promote its implementation;
 The creation of an e-Accessibility mark for goods and services compliant with
standards on e-Accessibility;
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The setting of specific targets in relation to implementation of e-inclusion in the
eEurope Action Programme or follow up and setting down of objectives and targets
for implementation horizontally across all areas of the eEurope Action Programme;
The need to extend the demands of EU legislation in the field of ICT to require
access to ICT services AND equipment and content;
The revision of the RTTE Directive in order that mandatory requirements, rather than
just optional requirements, on access to electronic equipment and goods are
explicitly laid down in the Directive;
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Annual reporting to Communications Committee COCOM undertaken in an open and
transparent way by Member States regarding implementation of their obligations
under the telecommunications legislative package and the full implementation of the
Inclusive Communications committee - INCOM recommendations on accessibility
matters;
Explicit recognition in the 6 Framework Programme on Research and Development
and all forthcoming R&D programmes of the need to prioritise Design-for-All and
User Involvement in the development of ICT technologies; and
The introduction of comprehensive non-discrimination legislation in the field of
disability.
Ulf Dahlsten, Director of Emerging Technologies and Infrastructures Applications at the
Directorate-General Information Society of the European Commission, said the ICT sector is
a strong economic force with hundreds of billions of Euros already. The market is still
growing, yet 40% of people older than 50 years assess themselves as not participating in it.
In addition, in comparison with rest of the population, people with disabilities have 20% less
entrance to the labour market. The best ICT objectives are to promote and pursue equal
access and to encourage participation instead of passive reception of benefits.
Concerning accessibility, it will be useful to apply the following instruments: Certification
from suppliers and legalisation. There is a need to implement standards; develop tools, such
as a wizard, to simplify the procurement practice; raise awareness about the needs of the
disabled; and to pursue continued research and development. Harmonisation of standards,
and learning of good practices in ICT all over the world will build a more inclusive society.
The Current European Situation
Italy
Daniela Battisti Ph.D., Coordinator of the Research and Study Unit within the Cabinet of the
Minister for Innovation and Technologies
In Italy, tools and legislation towards accessible information technology have made progress
in the last several years. The government has developed design and evaluation techniques
for assessing websites based on two levels of accessibility—one technical, and the other
subjective—and published results of their surveys in a White Book in 2003.
Later that year, Parliament approved the Stanca Act, a law based on the principle that only a
global approach can solve problems of accessibility. The most important provisions concern
training of public employees (technicians and users), ICT and research, school, and working
spaces for disabled people.
Battisti added that the Italian approach is in compliance with international rules (for example
W3C, ISO) and is succeeding in finding a shared consensus among associations of the
disabled, accessibility experts, and hardware and software suppliers.
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Denmark
Rasmus Shermer is head of unit in the Centre of Excellence IT for all in the Ministry of
Science Technology and Innovation
In Denmark, the Danish national IT and Telecom Agency has produced a Public
Procurement Toolkit, designed to make it easy for authorities to include accessibility
requirements in public procurement as well as in development and purchase of digital
solutions in general. The Toolkit offers concrete specifications on how to make accessible
solutions as well as information on challenges.
Each guideline consists of two documents. The first lists technical specifications for
accessible solutions, based on international standards, guidelines or laws, e.g. Section 508
and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (W3CWAI). The second document describes the
obstacles presented by inaccessible technology and provides information on who benefits
from accessible solutions.
In a procurement situation, it is important to have unambiguous specifications. The Public
Procurement Toolkit is available in a Danish version at: www.oio.dk
Ireland
Donal Rice, ICT Accessibility Co-ordinator, National Disability Authority (NDA), Ireland
Ireland’s Employment Equality Act (1998) covers employment of persons with disabilities and
provision of accessible technologies to employees, and disability is one of nine categories
protected from discrimination under the Equal Status Act (2000). But the Disabilities Bill
(2004), which requires public service providers to delivered electronic information in a format
that is accessible to people with vision impairments who have access to assistive
technologies, is not yet law.
The National Disability Authority (NDA) assists the Minister in the co-ordination and
development of policy; undertakes and commissions relevant research; advises the Minister
on standards; and monitors the implementation of standards and codes of practice.
NDA launched the NDA IT Accessibility Guidelines v1.1 in 2002. The goals of these
guidelines are to motivate users, provide guidance in addition to rules, and to be easy to use.
The guidelines encompass several technology types, including the World Wide Web, public
access terminals (e.g. ATMs, information kiosks), telecommunication devices, and
application software.
The next iteration of NDA IT Accessibility Guidelines will be completed in 2005 and
represents a move away from a checkpoint approach for web accessibility to offer “How To”
information for technical issues, such as how to create accessible data tables and forms, as
well as non-technical issues such as using colour sensibly and how to add new content. The
new guidelines incorporate emerging technologies such as digital TV and 3G mobile phones
and provide online forums for developers and clearer advice and direction for procurers.
NDA has also developed an award symbol for accessibility; that program will be launched in
2005.
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Consumer needs for public procurement accessibility
requirements
Chiara Giovannini, Programme Manager, www.anec.org
ANEC was established in 1995 as an international non-profit association by national
consumer organisations. Co-funded by the European Commission and EFTA, ANEC’s
members represent consumers from 24 EU Member States and three EFTA countries
(Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland).
ANEC’s mission is to represent consumer interests in standardisation and to comment on
legislation related to standardisation. We assert that it is a basic consumer right to have
access to products and services. Discrimination exists if older people and people with
disabilities cannot use many of today's mainstream products and services.
Design for All (Dfa) means designing mainstream products and services so that as many
people as possible can use them easily—whatever their age and ability. Benefits of this
approach are that products are easy to use, they offer wider choices, and provide
independence, innovation, and cost savings. Design for all is a growing market. This is not a
minority problem—Design for All benefits all of us.
The challenge of DfA standards
CEN/CENELEC Guide 6
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Identical to ISO/IEC Guide 71
Guidelines for standard-makers to take into account the needs of elderly and
disabled people
Urgent need of implementation mechanism
Information Society for All
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Membership in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
ETSI Human Factors:
o Access symbols and guidelines on consumers interfaces for use by disabled
people accessing interactive digital TV services
Public procurement benefits both consumers and industry, as it will increase the market
demand of accessible mainstream ICT products and services. Accessibility could be a
prerequisite for EU structural funds.
ANEC sees standardisation as an appropriate tool to encourage Design for All and as a
challenge for standard makers, and calls for enhanced opportunities for all consumers to
participate in the development of standards. Developing these standards will help realise the
full potential of the legislative instruments which encourage a Design for All approach. Public
authorities have a key role to play as public procurers with regards to the accessibility of ICT
products and services.
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Introduction to the “Technical Day”
Lutz Kubiztke, eInclusion@EU Project
Public procurement can be used to improve accessibility to the Information Society by people
with disabilities and older persons. The standardisation process can be used to set up
harmonised accessibility requirements. As we have seen, Accessibility is anything but a
minority issue. Increasing accessibility will enable millions of European citizens to participate
fully in society and allow those millions of potential customers to use ICT products/services
effectively.
Technological developments appear to increase problems of inaccessibility, but public
procurement can be an important means to improve the situation. Public purchasers
(including local authorities) have considerable market power. Legislation in the U.S. has
been a "trail blazer" in this approach, already influencing the global market. The current EU
directive provides a rather "soft" framework that needs to be harnessed by means of national
legislation/regulation.
There is much diversity in current national approaches. Some address the issue through
legislation and regulation, some address specific ICT domains or products (web content, info
kiosks, software, telecommunications equipment, etc.). Others provide supportive resources
(guidelines, tool kit, awareness rising, advise, etc.) or reward compliance with accessibility
criteria (e.g. quality marks for accessible web content).
Standardisation plays an important role in that it allows public procurers to refer to
established accessibility standards/guidelines. Existing standards/guidelines tend to be
adapted to local circumstances (e.g. "translated into Danish procurement language"), so
there is an interest in harmonisation to avoid fragmentation.
Focus of the "technical day"
 What are the practical requirements for addressing accessibility in public
procurement ? What ICT domains/products are concerned ?
 What type of requirements are important with respect to these?
 Do existing standards cover the accessibility requirements sufficiently?
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What the US Government Buys:
Driving Social Policy through Procurement
Mary Mitchell, Deputy Associate Administrator, U.S. General Services Administration Office
of Electronic Government and Technology
The US government has an extraordinary financial impact in their purchase of information
technology. The 2004 federal budget for IT investments was nearly US $64 billion, including
more than $4 million in computer hardware, more than $2 billion in wired networks, and
approaching $4 billion in software products.
Less visibly, two-thirds of U.S. federal programs are delivered by state or local governments
or non-profit organizations. These groups must comply with Section 508 only when a
federally-funded program explicitly requires it (which is highly recommended). Additional IT
expenditures came by way of other federal grant programs and contracted services that can
require Section 508.
What US Citizens Have to Say
Sixty-seven percent of American Internet users have used a government web site or online
service. Many of them said that conducting transactions with government is easier because
of e-government. 74% of this group believe that the benefits of e-government will continue to
grow and positively affect the way government operates over next 5-10 years (Source HartTeeter Research by The Council for Excellence in Government with support from Accenture,
April 2003).
There are 24 million pages of information on US Federal Web pages; Firstgov.gov indexes
36 million pages of State pages. Section 508 assessment is part of launch criteria for EGovernment Initiatives.
What is Section 508?
In 1998, amendments to the Federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973 included the requirement that
electronic and information technology developed, procured, maintained, or used by the
Federal government be accessible to people with disabilities. This strengthens the law to
ensure that people with disabilities have equity in the use of electronic and information
technology (E&IT). The Access Board was established to update and publish technical
standards and the functional performance criteria necessary to achieve electronic and
information access. Section 508 focuses on the overall accessibility of electronic and
information systems, not on providing individual accommodations. People with disabilities
may still need specific accommodation software or devices.
How does Section 508 impact the States?
State compliance is required only when a federally-funded program explicitly requires it, but
states are encouraged to consider adoption of Section 508 as the baseline because
 It includes a broad range of technologies
 Resources and tools exist to help implement it
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Industry has responded to Section 508 and is promoting it as the basis for a
worldwide harmonized standard
Ongoing work in W3C applies mostly to Websites –Section 508 goes a bit further. We may
want to combine efforts and align standards between the European Union, US and Pacific
rim.
Studies have shown that functional and severe limitations increase as people get older. The
average age of a U.S. federal worker is 46.2 years—at which point 23% have functional
limitations and 6% have severe limitations. Combined, that is more than a quarter of the total
workforce.
Collaboration Approach to Build US Framework
The Accessibility Forum
Over 640 organizations are members, including more than 100 federal agencies and
programs as well as E&IT vendors, AT vendors, consumer / user advocacy groups,
researchers, and technical experts. The objective of this group is to assist government in
making informed decisions about Section 508–related procurement. The Forum developed
and validated a substantial set of resource documents on technology and accessibility
information related directly to the Section 508 technical standards. A “Buy Accessible
Wizard” relied on this essential input to deliver a practical web-based tool to help users
determine and document Section 508 requirements that apply to a particular E&IT
acquisition; future functionality is planned to include contracting, installing and accepting
products.
How the US Government Buys
The General Services Administration is authorized to establish government contracts which
all federal agencies can order from. This is a convenient way for agencies to buy goods and
services that allows Section 508 requirements to be built in. Long-term government-wide
contracts exist for thousands of commercial products and services. In FY 2002, over 55% of
all Federal IT purchases were made through this system; state/local governments can also
purchase off the IT contracts. Usage of this system is growing at over 20% per year.
Buy Accessible on Section508.gov
“Buy Accessible” is a partnership between government and industry to assist federal
personnel in completing market research necessary to insure that they are buying accessible
EIT products and services.
As a link from the Section 508 website, the Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC)
hosts a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) to allow vendors to complete a
template describing how a particular product or service conforms to Section 508. VPATS are
a uniform tool for identifying features meeting Section 508 standards and enabling
government requestors to compare products. Outside of Buy Accessible, a VPAT can be
requested as part of market research, procurement, RFP, etc. The GSA reviews to ensure
VPAT is being used as it was intended.
See best practices and a VPAT template at www.itic.org.
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Resources
Information:
 www.section508.gov
● www.estrategy.gov
 www.access-board.gov
● www.disabilityinfo.gov
Online Training from GSA's Section 508 Center
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Designing Accessible Websites
Accessible Conferences
Buying Accessible E&IT
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Electronic Forms & E-mail
Accessible Video and Multimedia

Buying Accessible Computers
Contact Information
Ms Terry Weaver, Director, Center for IT Accommodation, Terry.weaver@gsa.gov
Ms Maxine Hill, Deputy Director, Center for IT Accommodation, Maxine.hill@gsa.gov
International Guidelines for Web Accessibility
Wendy Chisholm, W3C/WAI, Editor and staff contact for Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines Working Group
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
Based on feedback from WCAG 1.0, requirements for WCAG 2.0 are that the guidelines be:
 Testable
 Applicable across technologies and formats
 Clearly written and easy to use; and
 Allow an easy transition from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0
The WCAG Working Group brings together participants from research, industry, the disability
community, education, and government in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia to develop
guidelines to make Web content accessible for people with disabilities. The Techniques Task
Force—made up of evaluation tool developers, testers, and people with disabilities—is
developing Techniques and Test Suites. Efforts are coordinated with working groups on
Education and Outreach, Evaluation and Repair Tools, etc. and to address issues of device
independence, internationalization, quality assurance and other areas of concern.
Review and comments
Public drafts of the proposed guidelines have been presented in June 2003, March 2004,
and July 2004. The Working Group made targeted requests for review, held mailing list
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discussions, presentations, face-to-face meetings, and a walk-through. Based on input from
these sources, the Group has closed 398 issues since March 2004.
International Standards for Accessibility
Update – September 2004
Richard Hodgkinson
Overview of ISO Accessibility Standards
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Activities span ISO/IEC (JTC 1), ISO, CEN and ETSI committees
 JTC 1 = Information Technology
No single committee responsible for producing accessibility standards:
 Dedicated accessibility standards
 Accessibility recommendations incorporated into other standards
Use of ISO/IEC Guide 71 (CEN Guide 6 & Japanese equivalent)
Management of accessibility standardisation activities:
 European Design for All and Assistive Technologies Standards Coordination
Group (DATSCG)
 JTC 1 investigating establishment of Special Working Group to manage
accessibility standards
Proposal to create a Special Working Group on Accessibility in ISO/IEC JTC 1
(Information Technology)
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Recognizing the various activities at international, regional national levels, in
consortia & formal bodies
New group to act as project coordinator (will not create new standards)
Goal end - result: internationally harmonized set of standards, or recommendations
for standards.
 Make use of existing processes for transposing existing specifications into
International Standards.
 Propose initiation of new work in appropriate forum
Will invite participation from organizations already developing standards or
requirements for accessibility
Will seek direct input from user organizations, via appropriate means (participation,
information gathering, liaison, etc).
What’s happening and where?

Interfaces for users with special needs ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 35/WG 6
 Universal Remote Console Protocol (NWI from US INCITS v2)
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Framework for establishing and evaluating accessibility in interactive systems
(NWI from Canada)
 Guidelines for accessibility icons & symbols (ISO/IEC TR 19766)
 Survey of accessibility icons and symbols (ISO/IEC TR 19765): Over 50 icons
and symbols "harvested" from Microsoft, IBM, Apple, CEN, ETSI, BSi, ICTA,
RNIB, National Disability Arts Forum, etc. Permission of design "owners"
required for inclusion.
System software documentation ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 7/WG 2
 Recommendations in "S/W Documentation Guidelines"(ISO/IEC 18019:2004)
and "Cover Information for S/W packages"(ISO/IEC 9127)
Ergonomics for people with special requirements ISO/TC 159/WG 2
 Data & guidelines for the application of ISO/IEC Guide 71…to address the
needs of older persons and persons with disabilities (NWI)
Human centred design processes for interactive systems ISO/TC 159/SC 4/WG 6
 Guidelines for older persons and persons with disabilities –Information
communication equipment and services Guidelines (NWI from Japan ISO
924120)
Software ergonomics and human computer interaction ISO/TC 159/SC 4/WG 5
Software ergonomics for WWW user interfaces ISO CD 23973
 Will include some accessibility recommendations, but direct users to WCAG
WAI guidelines and ISO 9241171
 CD ballot successful and over 40 pages of NB comments received!
 DIS ballot scheduled for December 2004 Guidance on accessibility for human
computer interfaces ISO TS 16071
 Published in 2003
 Based upon US HFES 200 guidelines c. 2000 (now revised)
 Currently under revision as ISO 16071 >> ISO 9241171 (Guidance on
software accessibility) 7
Guidance on software accessibility ISO 9241171
Major influencers and new input:
 US Section 508 Requirements
 CWA 14661 –Guidelines to Standardises of ICT products and services in the
CEN ICT domain
 US HFES 200.2 –Software user interfaces –Accessibility
 UNE 139802:2003 (Spanish software accessibility standard…30+ new
guidelines)
 60+ new guidelines from Canada
 ISO/IEC Guide 71 (CEN/CENELEC Guide 6)...
INTERNATIONAL REPORTS
Assistive Technology and Public Procurement
Harry Knops, President Association for Advancement of Assistive Technology in Europe,
iRv Hoensbroek
Assistive Technology and Public procurement
The Association for the Advancement of Assistive Technology in Europe (AAATE) has 250
members and is active in 25 countries. Its main activities are a journal, Technology and
Disability, and bi-annual conferences and workshops. The next bi-annual conference is in
Lille, France, in September 2005; and the last bi-annual workshop took place in Düsseldorf,
Germany, in 2004.
We categorize Assistive Technology applications as those which improve, neutralize, or
compensate for a perceived problem.
The AT market
We describe the AT market as follows:





Characteristics
 national, regional, local
 lack of innovations
 SME’s
 important market from US, Asia
A shift of responsibilities is now taking place within the public, private and individual
sectors.
There are a variety of disability models in Europe: medical, social and, now, a market
model.
The support of (public) procurement can be broken into various components:
 User requirements
 Testing of products
 Information provision
 Guidance of tendering
 Assessment of tenders
 Development of agreements
Challenges for the EU include:
 Harmonisation and standardisation
 Procurement process
 Testing and use of results
 Information provision
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Intelligent Buildings – The Need for Standards to Aid
the Adoption of Networked Applications and Services
by Older and Disabled People
Stephen Pattenden, The Application Home Initiative (TAHI), CENELEC SMARTHOUSE
Code of Practice Project, Consultant - Telemetry Associates Limited, UK
The Application Home Initiative
Mission – “To accelerate the adoption of networked products and services by connected
home-based users”
Activities
 TAHI Open Architecture for Service Delivery (TOA)
 Modelling of Aggregation of Services
 Trials – Managing & monitoring home equipment (EM), Delivery of aggregated
services (SA). (Elements of Social Care)
 Promotion – Conference, Bulletins and Website
Organisation and Funding
 Not for Profit organisation – Industry and Academia
 Support from UK DTI
 Matched by TAHI Members
The SmartHouse Code of Practice
Part of the CENELEC SmartHouse Project – Phase II
Objective: “to deliver a Code of Practice document that provides any stakeholder in the
SmartHouse information and recommended standards for implementation.” Supported by
ICTSB, the CoP will cover the Issues and provide Recommendations in 10 main sectors of
the SmartHouse. (note: Services, Consumers and User Interface Sections). It is charged with
identifying gaps and therefore requirements for further standards and research. Phase II will
complete by 19th August 2005 with a draft Code of Practice and a Report to the Commission
For Phase III, see http://cenelec.org and follow SmartHouse link Forum 30th November.
What is an Intelligent Home?
People can be aided through support in their living environment in relation to their degree of
capability and dependency. An intelligent home can be a home which:
 has connected and interactive entertainment systems,
 is connected to the Internet,
 has many connected systems--Security, Lighting, Energy, Occupancy, etc.,
 fully communicates with the outside world,
 can have services delivered to it and run applications remotely,
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

is designed for accessibility, and
may be constructed from energy-efficient materials.
The role of the Intelligent Home
The Intelligent Home includes a wide range of applications and services, sensors and user
interfaces, such as sensors of occupancy, utility and water use, movement; alarm sensors,
security sensors; systems and equipment with various interfaces; PCs, audio visual systems
and communication devices; applications and services that diagnose and monitor equipment
(and people) and keep the home safe and secure. They are mainly “stand alone” but they
need to be “joined up” to provide the information needed to provide personalised support for
elderly and disabled people. Working in concert they can provide a “cocoon” for people,
especially the disabled, and build accessibility.
Information Flows
For all people, information flows to and from the user and information system. For elderly
and disabled users, accessibility requirements for the presentation and capture of
information increase.
Many standards already exist from ETSI, CEN, CENELEC, ISO/IEC etc., and there are
guidelines that outline physical requirements (such as ICTSB – Design for All or
CEN/CENELEC Guide 6). They largely define requirements of the device or interface; but
there are many requirements on the home system for it to work as a total system rather than
as individual elements
Needs for Research and Standardisation
Requirements for “joined up” systems



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

Common description of systems architecture
Common way of describing elements in the system
Common ways of building applications and controlling them
Ways of feeding multiple items (and streams) of data into applications and getting
intelligent results.
Ways of capturing a person’s needs and then using the systems to provide support.
A common way of presenting information to UIs
Information systems that intelligently adapt to the person
Adaptation and Personalisation
TAHI Open Architecture and SmartHouse
TAHI Open Architecture is:
 Building a model of the Service Supply Chain
 Working on object descriptions
 Working on application agents to control services
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future


Outputting an abstracted view of services and applications
Working to provide an input to standardisation domain and
SmartHouse is:
 Delivering understanding of the issues
 Recommending existing standards
 Highlighting gaps
 Lead to Directives?
 Still looking for experts
Must do and must avoid
Avoid setting standards that stifle creativity
 We need ways forward—new technologies will require different approaches
 There is a problem in setting UI requirements for adaptation that limit the creativity of
the designer
Systems must ensure
 End to end security and trust
 Privacy is maintained (there is a real conflict between capturing the necessary data
and the privacy of the individual)
 Interoperability between systems to deliver “joined up” solutions
 Priority for life/mission critical systems and safety
Access to Multimedia in Broadcasting (Digital TV)
Clive Miller, Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) and ANEC, UK
Importance
Television is the dominant form of entertainment, and consumers show an increasing use of
interactive services. Television has a greater reach than Internet—98% to 60%.
Access Features
Appearance of Text on screen
 Clear font: sans serif, Arial, Tiresias
 Large text: at least 14 pt on paper
 Contrasting colours
 No background images
 No moving or flashing text, unless urgent
 No timeouts
Audio Description
 On TV or streamed on Internet
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
Narrative of on-screen action
 Careful balance of detail
 Include any text that appears on the screen
 Identify its availability
 Two standards available
Remote Controls
 Clearly labelled buttons font and colour
 Well spaced, tactile, responsive, contrasting
 Grouped according to function
 Easy to change batteries
 Front panel controls and display
Future Possibilities



Speech enabled devices
Braille output
Systems approach to home entertainment
Summary
As a bad example, one hospital multimedia terminal required extensive use of touch-screen
display with no buttons or speech alternative. In contrast, the Netgem iPlayer AD is a good
example: it receives Audio Description, speaks channel names, its Internet connectivity
provides spoken information, and it is affordable because of software solution.
To achieve the greatest accessibility within the medium of television, one should incorporate:
 Text on screen guidelines
 Audio description
 Suitable remote controls
 Consider future enhancements
Accessibility in public procurement of ICT:
The current situation in Europe
Kevin Cullen
Results from the eInclusion@EU project
The eInclusion@EU project focuses on policy in relation to eInclusion and eAccessibility with
the objective of providing evidence-based support for policy decisions. The project collects
and analyses information on selected policy-relevant topics from 27 European countries and
international; informs and facilitates exchange and dialogue amongst stakeholder; and
prepares policy roadmaps.
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The first topic, addressed by a core team of research organisations (Belgium, Switzerland,
Germany, Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, UK) and national correspondents in other
European countries, is accessibility in public procurement of IT. Throughout Europe, quite a
lot is happening (of direct or indirect relevance), and there is a considerable diversity of
approaches:
 Specific references to including accessibility requirements in ICT procurements (in
legislation / regulations / other contexts)
 Variety of other legislation / regulations of indirect (potential) relevance
 Various standards / guidelines / toolkits etc
There are also different levels of awareness / attitudes / barriers etc.
1. Specific references in legislation / regulations / other
Requires or references procurement in some way
Web
X
Other IT
Switzerland
X
X
Germany
X
Linked to Equality Legislation
Greece
X
Italy
X
Spain
X
Within eGovernment framework (eGIF)
Accessibility Law and wider disability
policy
Information Society legislation
Portugal
X
United Kingdom
X
Belgium
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(X)
X
Malta
(X)
(X)
Slovak Republic
(X)
(X)
Context
eGoverment-related initiative
(Walloonia)
Equality Legislation
Disability / Information Society
(Ministerial resolution)
Within eGovernment framework (eGIF)
(Anticipated)
(Anticipated—within context of a
procurement portal)
INTERNATIONAL REPORTS
2. Other laws / regulations of potential relevance
Might (be interpreted to) have implications for procurement
Spain
Web
X
Other IT
X
Context
Information Society Law; Equality
Laws; Action Plans
Information Society Law; Equality Law
France
X
Ireland
X
X
Equality Laws; Disability Bill
Italy
X
X
Accessibility Law
Portugal
X
X
United Kingdom
X
X
Disability / Information Society
(Ministerial resolution)
Equality Law (Codes of Practice)
3. Standards / Guidelines / Toolkits
Are (or could be) used for procurement purposes
Austria
Web
X
Other IT
Belgium
X
Switzerland
X
Germany
X
Denmark
X
Greece
X
WAI, Level A in web procurements
Spain
X
France
X
Finland
X
Ireland
X
TAW Accessibility test (working on
translating and adapting WAI)
ADAE guidelines on web accessibility /
usability; Accessiweb label
JUHTA Committee guidelines on web
design; recommends compliance with
WAI
Guidelines for procurers and others
(X)
X
X
Context
WAI, Level A (required for government
seal)
Blind Surfer label
Based on W#C; (working on wider IT
guidelines)
Requirements catalogue for web
service procurement: based on WAI
Toolkit for procurers
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4. Awareness / attitudes / barriers
Awareness is generally low amongst procurers, and sometimes amongst disability
organisations also. However, accessibility in procurement is very much on the agenda in a
few countries, but not in most. Such awareness is likely to come more onto the agenda with
the national transposition of the revised EU Directives (also the Council’s Resolution on
accessibility of public web sites), but care needs to be taken in the national transpositions.
Most attention so far has been on public web sites
Barriers
Various (potential) barriers have been detected, including lack of awareness, lack of skills,
lack of suitable standards/ guidelines / toolkits, and difficulty in implementing guidelines (e.g.
WAI) in procurement.
Attitudes / perceptions:
 View that IT accessibility is best addressed in a reactive, case-by-case manner
 Many standard hardware / software products are already accessible (US regulations
have helped this)
 Customer (departments) should specify needs, not specialist procurers
 Accessibility is (may be) a cost burden
So far, accessibility tends to be addressed where there are local “champions;” may be
selective (e.g. focus on web, not on DfA)
What is needed to advance things in Europe?
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

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Strong national transpositions of EU Directives
Exchange of experiences / good practice
Suitable (internationally harmonised) standards to reference
Toolkits and other technical supports for procurers
Increased awareness in policy (and disability organisations)
Awareness-raising and training of procurers (and consultants)
Broadening of current focus on web to Design for All for all ICT and all users
Research and dissemination on cost-benefit aspects
Shift of emphasis towards proactive rather than reactive approaches to accessibility
INTERNATIONAL REPORTS
United States – Access Board
Why was Section 508 needed?

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21% --or 54 million persons in the United States have some level of disability
The Federal government employs about 168,000 persons with disabilities
The Federal government spent $1.7 trillion in 1999, of which $38 billion was spent on
information technology
More than two-thirds of Americans have some type of access to the Internet; in less
than a decade, e-mail has become a fundamental communication tool
In 1998 the U.S. Postal Service delivered 101 billion pieces of paper mail; estimates
of the number of e-mail messages transmitted that year range as high as four trillion
Purpose of Section 508


The purpose of section 508 is to ensure that technology does not stand as a barrier
to employment and the full productivity by people with disabilities
Section 508 is not about assistive technology; its purpose is to improve access to
"mainstream" technology (making it easier to provide assistive technology)
History of Section 508



Section 508 was signed into law on August 7, 1998
It applies to all Federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use
electronic and information technology
Although it only applies to the U.S. Federal government, its impact is being felt in
state governments, the private sector, and around the world
What does Section 508 require?


Federal agencies must ensure that electronic and information technology is
accessible to employees with disabilities and to members of the public to the extent it
does not pose an "undue burden" (significant difficulty or expense) to the agency
Undue burden is a high standard to meet
What is the Access Board’s role?




Congress assigned responsibility to the Access Board to develop accessibility
standards for electronic and information technology
Periodically review and amend the standards to reflect technological advances or
changes in electronic and information technology
Technical assistance and training on the standards
The Access Board, after consulting with Federal agencies, industry, and disability
organizations, published standards setting forth:
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future

 a definition of electronic and information technology, and
 technical and functional performance criteria
Final standards were published on December 21, 2000
What do the standards cover?


Types of products covered by section 508 include:
 Software applications and operating systems
 Web based information and applications
 Telecommunications products
 Video and multimedia products
 Self contained, closed products
 Desktop and portable computers
Also covered is compatibility with adaptive equipment people with disabilities
commonly use for information and communication access
What else is required?
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
A report is required every two years by the Department of Justice on the status of
electronic and information technology accessibility in the Federal government
The first report was issued in April 2000; the second report was released in June
2004; the third report is in progress
What remedies are available?
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

Section 508 provides remedies to employees of Federal agencies and members of
the public who are aggrieved by violations of its requirement
Individuals can file private rights of action in court
Complaints can be filed with the Federal department or agency alleged to be in non
compliance
What is the cost impact?


The costs of the standards represent 0.01 % to 0.06 % of the total Federal budget
or…
0.23 % to 2.8 % of the amount spent on information technology
Potential expansion of the reach of Section 508


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The U.S. legislative branch and the courts are not mandated to comply with section
508
The Congressional Office of Compliance recommended that Congress apply the
requirements of section 508 to Congressional offices and to the Government Printing
Office, Government Accounting Office, and the Library of Congress
INTERNATIONAL REPORTS
Why harmonization is important for accessibility



Accessibility is not just a Federal issue. States and local governments address
accessibility requirements as do codes and standards organizations
Accessibility is becoming a global issue especially in terms of access to information
technology products
Opportunities exist for fragmentation and conflicts if we are not vigilant and
committed to harmonization
Why harmonization is important for accessibility


If standards differ from state to state or country to country, it will confuse users, result
in less access, and erect barriers to trade
It is necessary to coordinate standards and to promote international activities
Where to get more information




www.section508.gov(Federal Information Technology Accessibility Initiative)
www.ittatc.org/(Information Technology Technical Assistance & Training Center)
www.usdoj.gov/crt/508(Department of Justice 508 page)
www.access-board.gov/508.htm(Access Board 508 page)
Towards Accessible ICT Procurement in Canada
Unique Challenges…
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
2nd largest country in the World (9,976,140 sq km)
6 time zones
Extreme temperature ranges
33 million people-low density
Nearly 90% of the population is concentrated within 160 km of the Canada/US border
 strong North-South pull vs. East-West
Canadians very knowledgeable about other countries and their actions
The Impact of Disabilities
About 5 million Canadians (16% of the population) have a disability; this number increases to
30% in the Aboriginal population. About half of all seniors report disabilities. Disabilities
reduce autonomy and prevent people from participating fully in society and the economy,
with an annual cost to the Canadian economy in billions of dollars. Virtually all Canadians will
experience a disability, care for someone who does or know of someone.
The Government of Canada is key
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Canada has 14 governments—the federal government, 10 provinces, and 3 territories. Each
treats disability in a different way. But the government can act as a catalyst to increase
connectedness in Canada by creating the right policy, legislative, and fiscal frameworks to
facilitate e-commerce. The government should work in partnership with private sector,
voluntary sector, research/academic community, and other jurisdictions on innovative
solutions, and act as model user of information technologies and the Internet to improve
services to citizens and businesses, put content on-line, and encourage take-up.
Why Federal Involvement?




Market fragmentation means many disabilities will never be addressed or only be
partially addressed
Market gaps due to intermediation: AT users may not be buyers (purchasing done by
medical plans and other support programs)
Government support needed to strengthen sector’s ability to deliver innovative
solutions for a wider range of disabilities
This could accelerate the development of solutions, help more persons with
disabilities integrate into society and the economy, and thus reduce the overall cost
of disabilities to the economy
Canada firsts


First country to mandate 100% captioning of the broadcast day
First country to adopt the WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as policy
Legislative Situation

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
Section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms prohibits discrimination of grounds
of disability
Canadian Human Rights Act
Employment Equity Act
Ontarians With Disabilities Act
Program/Policy Approach: Canada
In Canada, Federal, Provincial & Territorial governments rely primarily on programs and
policy to encourage the use of Assistive Technology and employment of persons with
disabilities, including, for example:
 Government of Canada Disability Agenda
 Assistive Devices Industry Office, Industry Canada
 Web4All, Industry Canada
 Ontario Disability Support Program
 Opening Doors Program
 Urban Entrepreneurs with Disabilities Initiative
 Employment Equities Special Measures Initiative Program
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

Social Development Canada (various programs)
Federal Public Service –Job Accommodation Network
Program/Policy Approach: Advantages & Disadvantages
Advantages:
 Generally provides direct funding to support implementation
 Tends to incorporate a range of programs and participants
 May be enhanced by complementary initiatives
 Supports individuals, agencies, and small business
Disadvantages:
 No legally binding requirements on government and/or business
 Not universal (limited to certain groups, regions, and/or criteria)
 Mostly short term (limited to specific fiscal years or government)
 Sometimes overlapping and/or competing programs
 Limited affect on the visibility of accommodation and related benefits
Significant investments in 21st century research and innovation

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

Canada Foundation for Innovation: $1.9 billion to improve research infrastructure in
the areas of health, environment, science, and engineering (post-secondary and notfor-profit institutions, hospitals)
Canada Research Chairs: $900 million to help universities establish and sustain
2000 research chairs by 2004-2005
Networks of Centres of Excellence: $90 million to support partnerships among
researchers and the private sector
Tax incentives: reduction in corporate tax rates and reduction in the income inclusion
rate of capital gains
Standards




Canadian Standards Association
 develops voluntary industry driven standards (Barrier Free Design, Design for
Aging, Accessible Banking Machines)
 Adopted Guides 50 and 71
Standards Council of Canada
TSACC
TBITS (Treasury Board Information Technology Standards)
International Involvement

ISO
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
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ITU
WIPO
WTO
W3C-WAI
Federal Government Policies

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
Duty to Accommodate
Communications
Common Look and Feel
The AT Industry in Canada

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About 250 companies in every part of the country
All are SMEs, few are publicly traded
The wide variety of disabilities means extreme fragmentation of the marketplace
Costs of development and commercialization are significant while the number of
users for any particular technology may be small
As a result, it is hard for these companies to recoup their investment
Assistive Devices Industry Office



Advocacy, sector promotion, awareness raising, identification of market gaps
 Accessible News
 Websites
Development of standards to ensure new technologies accommodate disabilities
 Barrier Free Design
 Automated Banking Machine
 Telephone keypads
 underway: kiosks
Participate in Government-wide activities
 Access Working Group
 Accessibility Domain Architecture Team
 National Librarian’s Access Council
Contact
Mary Frances Laughton
Assistive Devices Industry Office, Industry Canada
3701 Carling Avenue, Ottawa Ontario, CANADA K2H 8S2
Tel: 613-990-4316
Fax: 613-998-5923
Email: laughton@crc.ca
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Accessibility and Public Procurement in the UK
Jenny van Tinteren, Accessibility Solutions Team,
Department for Work and Pensions
What’s in place in the UK now?
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Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA)
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) policy role
Disability Rights Commission
Guidelines for UK Government websites
WAI W3C Guidelines
eGovernment Interoperability Framework
ISO Technical Specifications
Accessibility and procurement

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


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
UK Cabinet Office
eGovernment
Digital Inclusion Panel
Partnerships with industry and voluntary sector
ADI
Intellect
EU Directive -Office of Government Commerce consultation
The DWP’s policy approach

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
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
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
Diversity and Equality policy and DWP Objectives
Accessibility Solutions Team
DWP IT Accessibility Guidelines
Support to IT and telephony projects
E-Learning products
Contact centres
Project Management lifecycle
UNITY project
Accessibility and procurement - DWP



Accessibility and usability spelled out in the Business Requirement
Policies and standards included in supplier briefings and draft model contracts
Bidders are asked to specify in their bids how accessibility requirements will be met
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




Evaluation
Alternative solutions
Partnerships
The contract
Maintenance and support
Conclusions
The DWP aims to be an exemplar, but we are still learning. Accessible services support UK
e-Government strategy. Innovation and enterprise are encouraged through the partnership
between government and IT industry
Contact:
Jenny van Tinteren
Department for Work and Pensions, Accessibility Solutions Team
Hallamshire Business Park, 100 Napier Street, Sheffield S11 8HD
Tel: +44 114 291 1766
E-mail: jenny.van-tinteren@dwp.gsi.gov.uk
Summary of EU Procurement Workshop
All over the world are initiatives to improve accessibility, with a great deal of diversity in terms
of strategies, success, budget, engagement and objectives. To avoid double work, to learn
from each other and to promote business, harmonisation and standards are becoming
available in all kinds of varieties.
To reach a critical mass of improvements, mainstreaming has been presented as the answer
good for everybody. Can it be that the human being and human body has such a complexity
that there are cases where individual design on a person by person basis would have to be
preferred? An example could be prostheses and that kind of individualized product. Where
the level of mainstream products and specially made products intersect has not yet been a
part of the discussions.
The legislation presented from diverse countries shows the same characteristics. Canada
and the USA are both examples of how a federal government has addressed accessibility by
procurement policies, and effectively implemented them. The focus in the European
(Union’s) Commission has been primarily in the free trade market. Accessibility budgets and
legislation are so far primarily in the hands of the local governments. In EC meetings slowly
other aspects are beginning to receive attention too. EU Directives are the results of this kind
of cooperation. They have the intention and the goal to achieve less discrepancy between
the members.
Strict rules have to be maintained to integrate accessibility in the structure of the diverse
companies who are sequentially participating in the production process. Encouraging reports
have been presented at this meeting on inventories of standards and legislation worldwide.
On the other hand, a lack of interest in finding solutions, the problems of protectionism and
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certain oppositional policies were characteristic of some of the reported practices of
governments.
Attending the meeting were Microsoft, Adobe and other good examples of firms willing to
present themselves as “locomotives” or engines on the accessible products track. They have
incorporated the idea as a mission to be and to stay on the edge. The most progressive
companies seem to have the approach of: “Don’t talk but deliver accessible solutions. That’s
good for you and good for us.” Finally, we have noted that in parts of the world with strong
central government guidelines for accessibility, a lot of good practices have now been
identified.
Indeed, assessment can improve by using procurement as a tool. One well fitting template,
providing the solution for all over the world, is, however, not yet available.
The atmosphere of the meeting has been open and cooperative. Many varied aspects of the
overall picture were brought into focus. From this point of view the participation in the
meeting by such diverse parts of the world, such as Japan, China, Norway etc. has been
very valuable. The USA and not to forget Canada already use a procurement toolkit with
accessibility requirements.
All participants were in agreement that there remains a lot to be done.
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Where There Are No Wheelchairs:
an overview of non-governmental approaches
to wheelchairs in developing countries 
By Steve Kurzman (info@stevenkurzman.com)
This article offers a brief overview of some of the major non-governmental organizations
involved in the provisioning of wheelchairs for people with disabilities in developing countries.
A future article in Disability World will survey current wheelchair solutions available in
selected developing countries from a more user-centered perspective.
There are many people, organizations, and governments whose work involves wheelchairs
in an international scope; the ones described below are a partial list at best, limited to several
prominent NGOs whose work reflects the diversity of philosophies and products in the area.
The Free Wheelchair Mission
The Free Wheelchair Mission is perhaps best known for their unique wheelchair design
which incorporates a plastic patio chair as the seat and seatback of the wheelchair. Inspired
by a Christian philosophy of giving, their primary goal is to "provide the transforming gift of
mobility to the physically disabled poor in developing countries."
(www.freewheelchairmission.org) While the Mission does not evangelize directly, according
to their 2004 public relations video, "because these chairs are freely given, the Free
Wheelchair Mission and its partners [mostly non-denominational churches and missions] are
being welcomed into countries around the world previously closed and unfriendly to
outsiders." (www.freewheelchairmission.org/videos/2004Mpeg.mpg)
The Mission's founder, Don Schoendorfer, watched a disabled woman in Morocco crawl
across a dirt road 25 years ago and has been haunted by the image of immobility ever since.
He was inspired to found the Mission in 1999 and has since shipped 23,000 free wheelchairs
to 33 different countries, including recent deliveries to China, Ghana, India, Iraq, Mexico,
Panama, Peru, Uganda, and Zambia. The Mission's funding is fairly grassroots; most of their
work is funded through individual donations and small fundraisers, while foundations and
corporate employee matching programs account for the rest. They are also implementing a
new direct mail fundraising effort this winter.
Free Wheelchair Mission estimates that there are 100–150 million people in the world who
need a wheelchair. Accordingly, their approach is straightforward: to design the least
expensive wheelchair possible and distribute as many as possible. The basic design concept

This article originally appeared at
http://www.disabilityworld.org/09-11_04/access/wheelchairs.shtml
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is to assemble a chair on wheels from components already being manufactured in high
volume at low cost.
As a starting point, Schoendorfer selected a molded plastic patio chair because it's
waterproof, durable, and inexpensive. The first model used a standard chair from Home
Depot, but the Mission now purchases custom chairs manufactured with a UV inhibitor in
softer PVC plastic to increase the chair's lifespan. He then wrapped the chair in a steel frame
and added bicycle wheels, mountain bike tires, and 8-inch castors. They also add a footrest,
side panels, brakes, and a seat cushion to finish the chair. Schoendorfer is currently
developing a lap table to fit across the arms of the chair for working and reading. The
Mission's average cost to manufacture, ship, and distribute a wheelchair in 2003 was just
over $41.
The chair is one-size-fits-all, so they use fit children by stacking 2 or 3 seating cushions and
using a seating harness, which is also used for adults with special seating needs. They
estimate durability at 5–10 years, but thus far only have anecdotal data that some of the
original wheelchairs donated in 2000 are still being used, according to Brett Trowbridge,
Marketing and Strategic Advisor for the Mission. They also get anecdotal feedback through
an orthopedic surgeon on the Board of Directors who accompanies some of the deliveries.
While Trowbridge admits the chair is not perfect, they believe it is better than nothing—which
is what most of the recipients had before receiving the wheelchair.
The Mission ships the chairs in modular form, 550 per container load, with assembly kits and
instructions illustrated with photographs to avoid language barriers. Partner organizations
such as local Rotary Foundation clubs, World Vision International, or other Christian relief
organizations and churches receive, assemble, and distribute the chairs. Partners with the
appropriate resources, such as World Vision, provide rehabilitation services such as physical
therapy and training on how to use the chair, though most do not.
The Free Wheelchair Mission is currently gearing up for their Christmas campaign with the
goal of reaching 25,000 chairs shipped by the end of this year. You can learn more about the
Mission at www.freewheelchairmission.org.
Hope Haven's International Ministries and Wheels for Humanity
It's easy to discuss these two organizations in conjunction with each other—not only
because they share much of the same philosophy and practices, but also because they are
run by two brothers: Mark Richard at Hope Haven and David Richard at Wheels for
Humanity. Both organizations are notable for their efforts to responsibly and appropriately
recycle used wheelchairs from the United States to developing countries.
Mark Richard was already familiar with wheelchairs from working as a personal assistant to a
friend who used a chair, but became an activist while doing volunteer work in Central
America about twenty-five years ago. In the late 1980s, he was working with a Safe Haven
for Boys project in Guatemala. While driving home from Guatemala City one rainy night, he
saw one of his neighbors—a woman with a disability—crawling across the road in his
headlights. He later met her and offered to get her a wheelchair. When he and his wife
returned to the U.S., Mark contacted his friend and wrote an article asking for donations for
the newsletter of a spinal cord injury association in Wisconsin. He received twenty chairs,
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refurbished them, and drove them down to Guatemala to deliver to his former neighbor and
others.
In 1993, Mark became Program Director for Wheels for the World, where he developed their
system of collecting, refurbishing, and working with local rehab clinics or disability
organizations to deliver wheelchairs to developing countries. Sponsors who donated
wheelchairs were given information and a photo of the new owner of the chair, a practice
later adopted by other organizations in the field. By 1996, he was working full-time with Hope
Haven's International Ministries in Iowa. (Hope Haven was founded 40 years ago as a local,
day alternative to boarding institutions for Deaf children and now offers services to children
and adults with disabilities.)
David Richard had heard his brother describe his work for some time and, after
accompanying him on a trip to Central America to deliver chairs, founded his own
organization, Wheels for Humanity, in southern California in 1996. Wheels for Humanity
relies on funding from foundations, fundraisers, and individual and community donations.
Both organizations accept donated wheelchairs, and completely clean and refurbish them
using volunteer labor and donated components from companies. Wheels for Humanity
expects to collect 5,000 chairs during 2004 while Hope Haven expects to receive
approximately 8,000, which means quite a lot of volunteers. Wheels for Humanity relied on
over community members to donate 10,000 hours to cleaning and rebuilding chairs last year.
In addition to the retirees and students who volunteer about half the needed work, Hope
Haven also works with the South Dakota Department of Corrections, which has created
wheelchair refurbishing workshops at three of its prisons. Inmates can volunteer to refurbish
chairs in exchange for learning new skills, participating in a socially productive activity, and
token payment.
Wheelchair users (or potential users, as the case may be) in developing countries are more
likely to have polio or cerebral palsy than spinal cord injuries, which have a low survival rate
without the appropriate medical resources. One-size-fits-all chairs are often not appropriate
for these users. Accordingly, both organizations do a lot of custom fitting and seating, and
recycle a lot of high quality reclining and tilt-in-space chairs. Mark Richard remarked that the
quality of the recycled chairs has improved over the years, and Hope Haven now recycles a
lot of high-end models such as Quickie IRIS and TS (both of which have a base price of
approximately $3,000). Richard feels that other organizations, such as Whirlwind, work with
active-user chairs, so he tries to focus on users' more specialized needs.
Although both organizations accept any donations, they try to place the recycled chairs in an
appropriate context, such as delivering hospital-style chairs for indoor use in institutions
rather than everyday outdoor use. In addition to wheelchairs, they also recycle other
assistive technology and a variety of physical therapy equipment. According to David
Richard, wheelchairs make up only 40% of the equipment recycled by Wheels for Humanity.
A typical shipping container load contains about 150 chairs ready for delivery, plus 50–100
pairs each of crutches and walkers, and 10–15 transfer boards and other pieces of physical
therapy equipment.
Both organizations also work a lot with children. David and Mark estimate that over a third of
Wheels for Humanity's recipients and about half of Hope Haven's recipients, respectively,
are children. The latter has found that they don't have enough children's chairs to meet the
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demand of their partners, so Hope Haven has started working with ROC Wheels
(www.rocwheels.org) to produce appropriate chairs for children with cerebral palsy. ROC
Wheels is currently manufacturing two children's models and will also soon start making an
active-user rigid frame chair for adults (all in various sizes). They currently make the chairs in
Iowa, but plan to start shipping parts and materials to developing countries to manufacture
them there.
Custom fitting and seating services require a lot of preparation and information about chair
users' individual needs. Both Wheels for Humanity and Hope Haven work with rehab clinics
to identify recipients, and then work with a clinic team of physical and occupational therapists
and certified rehabilitation technology specialists to do the custom fittings. Wheels for
Humanity prefers to work at clinics with orthotics and prosthetics services because they can
train the P&O technicians in wheelchair repair and ensure long-term availability of repair
services.
They recently collaborated, for example, with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation,
who run an orthotics workshop in a hospital and rehab center in Nam Dinh, Vietnam. The
director of orthotics for VVAF met with the rehab center director, who identified recipients for
wheelchairs. Staff then took photographs and collected information on impairment, seating
needs, function level, and measurements. They sent the information to Wheels for Humanity,
who then selected appropriate chairs and assembled a clinic team to travel to Vietnam. The
team worked with a local physical therapist to custom fit and seat the users, train them and
their caregivers (usually parents) on wheelchair mechanics, seating, how to avoid pressure
sores, and other important topics.
Hope Haven uses a very similar distribution process, and Mark Richard added that he tries to
contact both local wheelchair manufacturers and disabled people's organizations for
collaboration. The latter train new chair users, and he encourages local producers to fill the
repair niche for donated chairs as a way to build a customer base, such as a shop in Antigua
that both builds Whirlwind wheelchairs and refurbishes chairs for Hope Haven. Hope Haven
is also an active organizer of the Association of Mobility Providers
(www.rocwheels.org/Mobility_Providers/), or AMP, a network of professionals working in the
rehab technology field. The AMP is currently working to develop distribution standards to
ensure appropriate wheelchair provision in developing countries.
You can learn more about Hope Haven International Ministries at
www.hopehaven.org/InternationalMinistries/ and Wheels for Humanity at
www.wheelsforhumanity.org.
Motivation
Based in Bristol, England, Motivation is known for their work with appropriate technology
wheelchairs, but they see that as only the beginning. Motivation aims "to enhance the quality
of life of people with mobility disabilities" and they view their work with wheelchairs and other
mobility devices as only part of this broader goal (www.motivation.org.uk/).
Their approach is holistic and encompasses five areas: poverty, rights, capacity, and
services as well as products. According to Executive Director and co-founder Richard Frost,
when the three original founders of Motivation began working in Bangladesh, they found that
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many potential wheelchair users were dying because of complications from pressure sores
and other health issues. Helping people to get and stay healthy was necessary before they
could even consider equipping them with chairs. Then, once people were healthy and had
wheelchairs and training on how to use them, there were limited opportunities available to
them to participate in their communities. The problem was obviously much bigger than
simply the need for wheelchairs and lead to Motivation's broader approach.
According to their web site, "Motivation began in 1989 when David Constantine, a wheelchair
user, and Simon Gue, both Industrial Design students at the Royal College of Art, London,
won the Frye Memorial Prize for their design of a wheelchair for the developing world.
Designed to be made from locally available materials, the design was simple, easily
adaptable and ideally suited to the often rough environment of many developing countries."
(www.motivation.org.uk/_history/) Constantine, Gue, and Richard Frost brought the
wheelchair design to the Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed in Bangladesh. After
graduating from school in 1991, they returned to establish a wheelchair workshop and have
been working since then.
Motivation works only by invitation from local disabled people's organizations or rehab
centers. The invitations usually come in the form of requests to provide wheelchairs or build
a workshop, so they work with the local partner to study user needs and local capacities, and
develop appropriate solutions. In Nicaragua, for example, they work with local partners to
provide vocational training and find employment opportunities to address poverty among
people with disabilities. They conduct peer-to-peer trainings with disabled people's
organizations and lobby governments to address rights issues. Motivation is also interested
in collaboratively developing a set of international standards for wheelchairs and has
successfully worked with the government of Sri Lanka to implement standards for
government wheelchair purchasing.
They work with local partners to set up wheelchair workshops and train "Wheelchair
Technologists" to develop services and capacity. For example, Motivation has worked with
the Tanzanian Training Centre for Orthopaedic Technologists (TATCOT) to run a Wheelchair
Technologist Training Course. The organization is also interested in developing a
certification process similar to that used by International Society of Prosthetics and Orthotics
(ISPO) to certify P&O technicians as part of an effort to help wheelchair technologists
achieve credibility and recognition as professionals.
Motivation does all their wheelchair design in the partner's country and does extensive field
trials for new chairs. As they have worked with local partners over the years to design
wheelchairs for projects, they've developed several models to meet specific needs.
Motivation now has a family of wheelchairs that are adapted to local use for each project.
Their first model was developed for use in Bangladesh to improve upon the Everest &
Jennings inspired hospital-style wheelchairs used in the spinal cord injury unit at the Centre
for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed. This first four-wheel model offered better mobility and
lighter weight—more suitable for active use—as well as more adjustable and less expensive.
When they began working in Romania, they found the wheelchair developed in Bangladesh
was not appropriate so they redesigned it.
When they began working in Cambodia, steel tubing was not available so they used wood.
They also developed a three-wheel chair, with a longer wheelbase for added stability in rural
areas. People already used three-wheel chairs and preferred them in testing. They have also
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
redesigned the three-wheel chair with steel tubing in subsequent projects, and it is widely
built in Southeast Asia and Africa.
They have also developed a dedicated tricycle wheelchair as well as tricycle drive
conversion attachments for four-wheel chairs. Tricycles are frequently more appropriate in
rural areas because they cover long distances more easily than standard wheelchairs, so
Motivation designed an attachment to convert chairs, making them suitable for mixed
distance and urban use. They've designed the dedicated hand-powered tricycle in the past
two years and are also testing power assistance systems in Sri Lanka. So far, users have
found the battery-powered model easier to refuel (because of relatively easy access to
electrical sockets) but prefer the performance of the petrol-powered version.
Motivation, like other organizations working with wheelchairs in developing countries, is
attempting to grapple with the scale of need. According to Frost, they considered the scale of
their and their partners' work and felt they had not yet scratched the surface. The problem
was how to build wheelchairs on a larger scale, with higher quality but lower cost.
Additionally, many of their partners are more interested in providing services than
manufacturing products, and reducing the labor required to build wheelchairs would free
them up to focus on those services. Their response is the Worldmade project: a centrally
produced, appropriately designed three-wheel wheelchair. Motivation will have the
Worldmade chairs manufactured in China and shipped to several pilot countries to be
assembled and distributed. The goal is to produce 3,500 Worldmade chairs next year and
scale up to 10,000 chairs annually.
You can learn more about Motivation at www.motivation.org.uk.
Whirlwind Wheelchair International
(Full disclosure: the author was an intern with WWI during 2003–4.)
Whirlwind is unique in this field in that they neither make nor give away wheelchairs—they
design them and create local capacity to build them. The organization is not a provider of
wheelchairs but rather a hub or re-distribution center for knowledge of appropriate
technology wheelchair design, engineering, and small-scale manufacturing. At the same
time, Whirlwind's wheelchair design embodies a philosophy—grounded in the consumer and
disability advocacy movements—which is simultaneously all about the chair and all about the
person using it.
Their approach is described by Director of Operations Marc Krizack in an article titled, "It's
Not About Wheelchairs": "Providing wheelchairs is not about wheelchairs. It is about
integrating people with disabilities into their society.... When the needs of the end user are
considered first, the most appropriate wheelchair (not merely the cheapest) can be provided,
and with other targeted assistance, the wheelchair rider can go to school, get a job, and
become a net contributor to society."
(www.whirlwindwheelchair.org/articles/current/article_c02.htm)
Accordingly, Whirlwind is as much a philosophy of wheelchairs as it is a type of design or an
organization. Although they are grounded in the San Francisco Bay Area's disability
community, both Chief Engineer Ralf Hotchkiss and Krizack speak as much from a general
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perspective of consumer advocacy as a more specific position of disability advocacy.
Whirlwind was one of the earliest, if not the first, proponent of appropriate design for wheeled
mobility: wheelchairs should be designed for the user's lifestyle and activities, and for her
local environment, whether that be outdoor terrain or indoor architectural features.
Borrowing a term from software development, Whirlwind also approaches wheelchair
engineering as an "open source" design project, which loosely means that a product is
collaboratively designed and can be freely modified by anyone for non-proprietary use.
Another critical element of their approach is involvement of wheelchair users in the design
process. As a wheelchair user himself, Hotchkiss believes that most ideas that have led to
important advances in wheelchair design have come from wheelchair users, such as Herbert
Everest with the original folding Everest & Jennings chair of the 1930s and '40s, and Marilyn
Hamilton with the first high-performance Quickie chairs of the 1980s. Another aspect of their
philosophy is local production, largely for reasons of consumer empowerment and to support
sustainable infrastructure for wheeled mobility.
For much of its existence, Whirlwind has been synonymous with Ralf Hotchkiss, who
became a paraplegic in 1966 and began working with wheelchairs almost immediately when
his first chair broke a half a block from the hospital. He quickly fixed the chair and started
working on and designing others. As he spent much of the 1970s working for Ralph Nader
on product safety issues and gaining an awareness of consumer advocacy issues, two
events radicalized him as a wheelchair user and engineer. One was the break up of the
Everest & Jennings monopoly on wheelchairs, through an antitrust suit in the late 1970s. The
other was developing an improvement to hospital-style chairs to narrow them, allowing
easier access to restrooms, for example, and being rebuffed by both Everest and Jennings
and Invacare because the improvements would be too costly to them.
Hotchkiss was already actively working in independent living projects in Central America
when he began working on wheelchairs in Nicaragua in 1980. The aim of the original design
was to be comparable to the new lightweight active use chairs from Quickie, but more locally
appropriate and sustainable in developing countries. This first chair was ten pounds (~4.5
kg) lighter than standard Everest & Jennings chairs and had folding footrests, parking
brakes, and more convenient armrests. In 1990, they adapted the chair to deal with
architectural barriers in Russia where doorways and elevators are uniformly too narrow to fit
wheelchairs through. This second Whirlwind has a horizontal handle underneath the seat
that allows the user to fold the seat and narrow the chair while remaining seated. Their third
chair, the Africa I, was developed to be more easily made and repaired in Africa where
materials such as bearings were either prohibitively expensive or unavailable. It was
designed to be more self-aligning so it would still open and close easily when made without
jigs and fixtures and used needle bearings instead of ball bearings.
Whirlwind's current chair, the Liviano, represents a shift in the organization's approach to
manufacturing and services. The design has a longer wheelbase and is more adjustable than
previous versions. It also requires higher precision fabrication and will be made using sets of
jigs and fixtures. The Liviano is part of the Whirlwind Industrialization Project (WIP), a
strategy to simultaneously increase the scale of production while improving the consistency
and quality of the chairs and expanding beyond design to package the wheelchairs with
services.
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
Whirlwind's approach as been to work on a very small scale, aiming to serve the lowest
common denominator of manufacturing. Shop Manager Chris Howard jokingly described the
typical Whirlwind workshop as "three guys in a shack in back of a house." Although aspects
of Whirlwind designs are widely used around the world—around 45 countries—they estimate
that their network of workshops has produced roughly 50,000 wheelchairs to date and
Whirlwind wheelchairs are now being produced in about nearly two dozen countries.
(This is not to say that everyone in the Whirlwind network are "guys." A sister organization,
Women Pushing Forward (formerly known as Whirlwind Women), has worked since 1994 to
mentor and train women with disabilities in wheelchair building, independent living, and
empowerment. Women Pushing Forward became an independent organization earlier in
2004 but continues to work with Whirlwind and currently works in Mexico, Uganda, Thailand,
and Colombia. You can find more information about them on their web site at
www.womenpushingforward.org.)
Like Motivation, Whirlwind has been looking for a way to increase scale while still retaining
their belief in local production. WIP aims to industrialize small- and medium-size wheelchair
production by designing, producing, and supplying jigs and fixtures to local workshops and
factories. They are also beginning a project in Colombia, which will incorporate educational
and employment training, peer training and advocacy, and rehabilitation services along with
wheelchair production.
More information about Whirlwind Wheelchair International is available on their web site at
www.whirlwindwheelchair.org.
The Wheelchair Foundation
The Wheelchair Foundation has established a name for themselves as the largest volume
supplier of wheelchairs to developing countries. Since their founding in 2000, they have
given away over 300,000 chairs, more than all the other organizations described in this
article combined. Their goal is straightforward, if ambitious: to provide 1 million wheelchairs
to people who cannot afford one by 2007, while raising awareness about the need for
wheelchairs in developing countries.
The Foundation's approach is based on volume. They estimate that approximately 100–130
million people in the world need wheelchairs (believing that the WHO and UN estimate of 20
million people only accounts for 20–25% of the actual need), so they aim to provide basic
mobility to as many people as possible as efficiently as possible. They do this by purchasing
huge numbers of wheelchairs, which minimizes cost by economy of scale, and working with
non-government organizations that distribute the chairs.
Kenneth Behring, a successful businessman and real estate developer, started the
Foundation in 2000. Behring was already well established as a philanthropist in educational
and other fields when he first donated wheelchairs in Africa and Eastern Europe in 1999.
According to the Foundation's newsletters, "his personal contact with the recipients gave him
a greater understanding of how much hope and happiness can be given to a person who
receives a wheelchair,' and he started the Foundation the next year (Changing the World
Wheelchair Foundation Newsletter, vol. 1). Behring contributed $15 million of his own money
and the organization quickly grew to be able to provide 10,000 chairs per month.
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The Wheelchair Foundation is funded through donations from individuals as well as a variety
of corporate, ethnic, and religious donors. The organization matches each $75 donation with
their own funding to purchase and donate a chair for $150. They also receive $5 million in
funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the State
Department and a $5 million transportation grant from the Defense Department to ship and
deliver wheelchairs to Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries in conflict.
The Foundation primarily purchases wheelchairs made in China and ships them (280 per
container) to partnering non-governmental organizations in recipient countries. They are
currently trying to expand to have chairs manufactured in other countries as well. For
example, according to Vice President of Public Education Chris Lewis, India has so many
trade barriers to importation that the Wheelchair Foundation is working on a way to
manufacture chairs in India instead of trying to import them. They also occasionally work with
small, local manufacturers in some countries, such as Vietnam, who have smaller capacity
but can match the price of Chinese factories.
The Wheelchair Foundation works with a wide range of partners to actually distribute and
deliver the chairs, including First Ladies' charities in Central and South American countries,
the Church of Latter Day Saints, and over 2,000 Rotary Foundation clubs around the world.
They seem to be fairly flexible, depending on needs; for example, they used the Red
Crescent Society to distribute chairs in Iran and the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. The partnering
organizations pay the duties on the containers, clear them through customs, and distribute
the chairs. Some partner organizations have the expertise in rehabilitation, but most do not
provide services. They collect a photograph of the recipient in their new chair and their story,
which the Foundation passes along to donors.
The Foundation has recently started the Behring Wheelchair R&D Center at Dalian Jiaotong
University in Dalian, China to work on wheelchair design and distribute drawings to allow
local shops to make chairs.
You can learn more about the Wheelchair Foundation on their web site at
www.wheelchairfoundation.org.
... And Moving Forward
This article offered an overview of some of the major non-governmental organizations
involved in provisioning wheelchairs for people with disabilities in developing countries. On
one hand, all of these groups are responding to the same problem: a need for wheelchairs in
the developing world. On the other, there is an enormous diversity of approaches to design,
production, distribution, and delivery.
The second part of this article will address these issues from a more local perspective.
Simply put, what are the results of these various approaches? What impact do they have on
wheelchair users, both technically in terms of durability and socially in terms of quality of life?
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following individuals for generously taking the time to speak with me
about their work for this article: David Constantine, Richard Frost, Liza Hayes, Ralf
Hotchkiss, Chris Howard. Marc Krizack, Chris Lewis, David Richards, Mark Richards,
Stephen Stocks, and Brett Trowbridge.
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BLINDNESS & PRINT DISABILITY
International Conference on Libraries for
the Blind and Print-Disabled:
Moving Toward a Digital Future
When representatives from libraries around the world gathered at Microsoft to share best
practices for improving services to people who are blind or print disabled, Microsoft
Chairman Bill Gates joined them to explore ideas for converting print and audio data to more
accessible digital formats and distributing library resources over the Internet.
REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 15, 2004—Imagine what it would be like if more than 95 percent of
all print publications, from textbooks to popular novels to magazines and daily newspapers,
were simply unavailable to you. For millions of people worldwide who are blind or have other
print disabilities such as mobility impairments or learning disabilities that prevent them from
using traditional printed materials, that limitation is a fact of life. It doesn't have to be that
way.
Last week, the Microsoft Accessible Technology Group (ATG) hosted a three-day
international forum called, "Libraries for the Blind and Print Disabled: Moving Toward a
Digital Future," which attracted library representatives from around the world and featured a
keynote address by Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect.
Gates talked about the advantages of digital technology over traditional analog formats, such
as audio tapes, explaining how digital technology can lower the costs of converting and
distributing content, enable libraries to share information more easily, and make more
information available to more people. Gates also pointed out that digital formats often
provide a better user experience for people who are blind or have print disabilities, allowing
many different people to access the same information online simultaneously and making it
easy for individual users to locate specific information within texts.
New strategies to improve library services
The forum, held November 8–10 on the Microsoft corporate campus in Redmond, brought
together approximately 75 representatives of libraries worldwide that provide services and
programs for people with print disabilities. Attendees enthusiastically shared best practices
and discussed new strategies for improving their services and programs. The event was
cosponsored by the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) Consortium, formed in
1996 to lead the worldwide transition from analog to Digital Talking Books.
According to Madelyn Bryant McIntire, director of the Accessible Technology Group at
Microsoft, the purpose of the forum was to facilitate a focused discussion among libraries
that serve people who are blind or print disabled, one that could lead to a unified strategy for
transforming library collections from analog formats into digital information that people could
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TECHNOLOGY & DISABILITY: a global glimpse of the future
access from their personal computers and hand-held devices, such as Pocket PCs and
Smartphones.
"Our goal for the event was to provide a forum where libraries could develop a common
vision of a future where there are no barriers, and start planning for a digital technology
infrastructure that would allow them to move from analog to digital formats," she said "An
integrated, collaborative, global approach would increase exponentially the number of
publications that are available to people with print disabilities and enable them to access
information much faster."
Digital technology opens new opportunities
That's not just a theory. Two years ago, Gates accepted the Louis Braille Gold Medal from
the World Blind Union in recognition of Microsoft's historical commitment to accessibility and
its contribution to developing a digital library system for the Canadian National Institute for
the Blind (CNIB). The medal is awarded to individuals who have made an exemplary
commitment to advancing the rights and freedoms of blind people around the world.
The CNIB Digital Library is one of the world's most advanced libraries of alternative content
formats. When it debuted, more than 105,000 Canadians who are blind or print disabled
gained instant access to thousands of books and magazines, and more than 40 newspapers.
The new technology transformed the way the CNIB distributes information and resources,
and provides users with more options for accessing content.
"For sighted people, technology makes access to information easier. For people who are
blind, like me, it makes access possible," said Jim Sanders, president of the Canadian
National Institute for the Blind (CNIB). "Thanks to the CNIB Digital Library, I can now read a
newspaper the same day it hits the newsstand, or read a best-selling book online instead of
waiting for it to arrive in the mail."
The CNIB Digital Library combines all of the library's online services, including the CNIB
catalogue and digital repository of books, in one unified, bilingual, Internet gateway. The
online library also includes the Children's Discovery Portal, which enables children who are
blind or visually impaired to play online games, get homework help, sample or read books
online, and chat with other Canadian children who are blind.
Microsoft designed the CNIB Digital Library software to meet the accessibility needs of
people who are blind or visually impaired. It works with leading assistive technology
products, including screen readers and braille keyboards. It also works well with any backend system, which means that other libraries could use the same software regardless of their
technology infrastructure.
Microsoft plans to make the technical specifications and components of the CNIB distribution
system available, free of charge, to any library for the blind and print-disabled that wants to
use it. Libraries will need to pay for implementation and any customization they want to do to
the original solution, but the software itself will cost them nothing.
The DAISY standard for talking books and multimedia publications represents another
leading technology in this field that is respected and used by an ever growing number of
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libraries, including The CNIB in Canada and Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic in the United
States. According to George Kerscher, Secretary General of DAISY, the consortium's vision
is to make all published information available to people with print disabilities, at the same
time and at no greater cost, in an accessible feature-rich format that is also easy to use.
"For a blind person reading a DAISY Talking Book, the functionality is very similar to a
sighted person reading a print volume," Kerscher said. "They can easily get to chapters and
sections, browse the text, skip the boring bits, go back to the interesting items, and
essentially do everything you do with any complex print book."
Connecting special needs and mainstream issues
According to Gates, however, having the right technology is only part of the solution.
"Microsoft's vision is one of empowerment for everyone," Gates said during the questionand-answer session following his keynote. "Empowering people who are blind or otherwise
visually impaired includes ensuring that our software incorporates a broad range of
accessibility features and works well with screen readers and other assistive technology
devices. It also means working with libraries and publishers around the world to eliminate
barriers that keep a lot of printed information beyond the reach of the visually impaired."
Among the barriers standing in the way of a global digital library for people who are blind or
print disabled is the lack of universal standards for converting, distributing, and maintaining
digital media. Many libraries around the world are working to convert their collections from
analog to digital, but the lack of common standards results in a lot of duplication.
Because many libraries are spending their limited resources to accomplish the same tasks,
the amount of digital content they can provide is severely limited. In addition, many libraries,
along with publishers and other content providers, are using formats or technologies that are
not designed to work well with the systems others are using. This makes it impossible for
libraries to share content freely, one of the key benefits of moving to a digital format.
Another missing element is any effective way to coordinate national copyright laws that
protect the intellectual property of authors and publishers. For example, United States
copyright law allows libraries to reproduce most printed material for use by people who are
blind without paying any royalties, but that applies only inside the U.S. The forum hosted by
Microsoft offered library representatives an opportunity to explore how they might create
agreements that would enable them to share resources across international borders, and
offer global solutions that respect and accommodate national copyright laws.
Gates advised the library representatives at the forum to look for ways to keep their ultimate
digital solution for people who are blind or print disabled aligned as closely as possible with
solutions being developed for mainstream markets.
"We ought to be able to connect mainstream issues with special needs, to create a bridge
between the two," Gates said. "The advantages of accessing different types of digital
information on a variety of devices are not limited to the visually impaired. The pioneering
work being done to serve their special needs today could have widespread benefits for every
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user tomorrow—and keeping the two closely connected will help lower costs and speed
development."
At the forum, Gates reconfirmed that Microsoft is committed to doing whatever it can to help
libraries leverage new technology to improve their distribution, convert their collections from
analog to digital formats, and provide better service and more information to people who are
blind or have print disabilities. Madelyn Bryant McIntire said the Accessible Technology
Group will continue to lead that effort at Microsoft.
"Libraries are places of refuge," she said. "If we can help libraries solve the problems we
discussed at the forum, we can make digital libraries places of refuge for people who are
blind or have print disabilities. That's a goal worth working hard to achieve."
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DAISY is... 
by George Kerscher, Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium
"In the Information Age, access to information
is a fundamental human right."
—from George Kerscher's presentation
to the United Nations, Bangkok 2002
I believe that by now you have heard about DAISY. The context may have been in:
 Replacement for analog cassettes for persons who are blind and print disabled;
 Advanced XML Publishing Techniques;
 Standards for information systems optimized for persons with print disabilities;
 United Nations recommendations for Information and Communications Technology
(ICT) serving persons with disabilities
 Interoperable Multimedia
 Digital Talking Books (DTB)
 Ideal reading System for Persons with disabilities
 Interoperable Hardware or software players
 or DAISY is a Better Way To Read!
The fact is that DAISY is all of these and much, much more. This brief document will explain
the basics of the DAISY Concept.
DAISY is: A Better Way To Read
The Digital Accessible Information SYstem (DAISY) is an approach to reading that is
recognized worldwide as an ideal approach to making high performance information
technology available to persons with disabilities. Documents that conform to the DAISY
standard offer a rich reading experience that may include synchronized audio and structured
text along with images. DAISY is a multimedia standard that enables content creators to use
technology to its greatest advantage. Yes, it supports traditional presentation of images and
text, but it goes beyond this flat approach to include human narration, powerful navigation,
and the potential for adding video and animation.
Print-based publishing has had 500 years to evolve. You will not see any significant changes
to that format, because it is fully mature. The DAISY approach to reading incorporates all the
strengths of traditional publishing and adds powerful navigation and multimedia components.
All DAISY publications contain a "navigation center" that allows the reader to quickly go to
any place in the document. Never before has multimedia allowed random access into the

Copyright © DAISY Consortium, December 2003. This article originally appeared at
www.daisy.org/publications/docs/20040510214528/daisy-in-brief_final.htm.
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flow of the presentation. The reader can navigate by a hierarchy of headings, by pages, or by
other significant constructs. Forward and reverse are supported, and sophisticated speed up
is provided in playback.
DAISY is: For All People and Languages
The DAISY standard was originally developed to benefit people who are unable to read print
due to a disability, but the design requirements are intended to serve all readers including
the mainstream population. All known character sets are supported through the
implementation of International Standards Organization (ISO) character encodings.
Developers within the DAISY Consortium agreed that local national language support was an
absolute requirement. As a result of these design decisions, the playback systems and the
production tools can all be customized for any language. For example to localize a hardware
player, approximately 125 prompts, plus numbers 0 to 99, need to be recorded in the local
language. They are installed in the player and the player then works for that language. But,
don't worry, most languages are already supported in the players available throughout the
world. The production tools have been designed in the same way. A national Language
Toolkit is provided as a component of the production tools. Just translate the menu and
messages file, and the production tools will then operate in the local language.
DAISY is: An Open Non-Proprietary International Standard
The DAISY Consortium set out to use existing standards wherever possible. We have a
close relationship with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the standards setting body
for the Internet. As a result, the DAISY standards are applications of XHTML, XML, and
Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL), which is what provides DAISY's
multimedia support. We did need to create specifications for the navigation center, and we
created an XML tag set to represent constructs found in most books.
Open, non-proprietary standards that have a proven track record for accessibility are what
the DAISY Consortium has recommended as a foundation that WSIS should build on. The
DAISY standard meets this requirement and it is also extensible. We invite collaboration and
participation in the ongoing developments of the standard. There are no royalties associated
with the implementation of the DAISY standards. There are compression techniques that
may be used that have royalty implications, but the DAISY standards are completely open
non-proprietary and have no royalty associated with the implementation.
DAISY is: Known for Conforming Interoperable
Hardware and Software Reading Systems
There are three pieces that make up interoperable systems:
1. There must be production tools that assist in the creation of conforming content;
2. There must be conforming multimedia documents ;
3. There must be reading systems that play the multimedia books.
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Great care has been taken to ensure that the three conditions above exist. We have created
open source validation tools that check DAISY multimedia documents. the open source
validation tools can quickly point out errors in books that production tools have created. The
hardware and software reading systems have different features and functions, but we
constantly demonstrate how any DAISY book can be played on any of the DAISY players.
Because the DAISY standards are open and non-proprietary, and because validation tools
and sample content are available, player manufacturers can deliver completely interoperable
reading systems.
DAISY is: A Consortium of Non-Profit and For-Profit
Organizations
The DAISY consortium was founded in 1996 and consists of a growing membership of
organizations around the world committed to developing equitable access to information for
people who have a print disability. It consists of:
 A board of 12 members situated in organizations around the world;
 Full Members that have one representative on the board;
 Associate Members that have advisory privileges;
 Friends who build products and services and that participate in our work groups.
Vision
Our vision is that all published information is available to people with print disabilities, at the
same time and at no greater cost, in an accessible, feature-rich, navigable format.
Mission
The DAISY Consortium's mission is to develop the International Standard and
implementation strategies for the production, exchange, and use of Digital Talking Books in
both developed and developing countries, with special attention to integration with
mainstream technology, to ensure access to information for people with print disabilities.
Goals
We have identified five major goals which will guide the work of the DAISY Consortium over
the next few years. These are:
 To create and promote the worldwide standard for the navigation and structure of Digital
Talking Books;
 To encourage and foster the establishment and development of Digital Talking Book
library services in both developed and developing countries;
 To maximize the accessibility and utility of electronic books and multimedia documents
for people with print disabilities;
 To secure the recognition and adoption of the DAISY Standard for navigable multimedia
documents among mainstream product developers and book publishers; and
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
To encourage and foster the establishment and development of a global talking book
library, which transcends geographic boundaries and linguistic differences, and which
embraces cultural diversity.
DAISY is: Ready for Your Country to Endorse
As stated earlier, the DAISY Consortium advocates open non-proprietary standards that
have proven track records of accessibility for the world's information systems. The DAISY
standards meet this requirement. National libraries serving persons with disabilities are
encouraged to implement the DAISY standards and to join the Consortium. We expect that
there will be a variety of solutions in providing information technology in the world, and the
DAISY standards stand ready to be included as a primary format.
It is clear from the many organizations that make up the DAISY Consortium that it is an ideal
system for persons with print disabilities. It is also excellent for the mainstream population.
We believe that publishers should cooperate with DAISY Consortium Member organizations
to help make their publications accessible. We also hope that formally published information
will be accessible to every person in our society; extending the DAISY standards to meet all
the mainstream needs is an important direction to explore. This is why we say that, "DAISY
is for all!"
Visit us at www.daisy.org
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Audio Description:
Access for All 
By Joel Snyder (jsnyder@ncicap.org)
I think it was back in prehistoric times when two sighted cavemen were munching on some
leftover saber-tooth tiger when one fellow screamed to the other, "Look out behind you,
there's a mastodon coming from the left!" There you have it, ladies and gentlemen—the
origin of Audio Description (AD).
I came to description a little more recently. For 25 years I've been working with this narrative
technique that provides access to visual images for people who are blind or have low vision.
It was developed for the first time as an ongoing service in the performing arts here in the
Washington, DC area in the United States. Since that time I have been lucky enough to help
performing arts groups, media producers, museums, schools, libraries, and other venues all
around the world and on the web develop AD programs.
Audio Description is a kind of literary art form in itself, to a great extent. It's a type of poetry—
a haiku. It provides a verbal version of the visual—the visual is made verbal, and aural, and
oral. Using words that are succinct, vivid, and imaginative, audio describers insert phrases
between pieces of dialogue or critical sound elements during performing arts events and on
video or film; in other contexts, timing is less critical but the fundamental goal is the same: to
convey the visual image that is not fully accessible to a segment of the population and not
fully realized by the rest of us. The rest of us, sighted folks who see but who may not
observe.
AD can enhance arts experiences for all people experiencing exhibits in museums, theatergoers, folks at the cinema or watching television at home (you can make a sandwich in the
kitchen while the TV is on in the living room—you won't miss a moment of the action), and it
can even improve kids' literacy skills. It's useful for anyone who wants to truly notice and
appreciate a more full perspective on any visual event but it is especially helpful as an
access tool for people who are blind or have low vision. You'll find it these days at arts
events, on broadcast television, and in the cinema, but also at weddings, parades, rodeos,
circuses, sports events, even funerals.
New applications for audio description
Not too long ago I conducted a workshop in New Haven with day care workers and reading
teachers on what I think represents a new application for audio description. We
experimented with developing more descriptive language to use when working with kids and

This article originally appeared at
http://www.disabilityworld.org/09-11_04/access/audio.shtml
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picture books. Some of these books are deficient with respect to language skills—they rely
on the pictures to tell the story. But the teacher trained in audio description techniques would
never simply hold up a picture of a red ball and read the text: "See the ball." He or she might
add: "The ball is red—just like a fire engine. I think that ball is as large as one of you! It's as
round as the sun—a bright red circle or sphere." The teacher has introduced new
vocabulary, invited comparisons, and used metaphor or simile—with toddlers! By using audio
description, these books are made accessible to kids who have low vision or are blind, as
well as help develop more sophisticated language skills for all kids. A picture is worth 1000
words? Maybe. But the audio describer might say that a few well-chosen words conjures
vivid and lasting images.
As I alluded to earlier, description has been around as an ongoing service for over 20 years.
Indeed, AD is no longer in its infancy. It is beginning to grow and grow up—becoming more
sophisticated, and in greater demand all over the world. New applications continue to
emerge—in building literacy, with long-distance learning efforts, in offices and at
conferences, as part of interactive computer games, and even within theatrical productions
(as demonstrated by the New York City–based troupe Theater by the Blind).
The newly reconstituted Audio Description International [www.adinternational.org] now
boasts several hundred members—describers and users of description—from around the
world. Working as a consultant to audio description programs is now possible for users of
description and formal training to become an audio describer is becoming more available.
For Media
A study conducted by the American Foundation for the Blind revealed that blind or low-vision
people watch television about 24 hours per week. But for a televised drama the music score,
several bits of dialogue, a few precious sound effects provide the only aural clues to the
staged action; a visually impaired viewer is likely to lose key elements of the program.
In the United States, in areas where a local television station is equipped to participate, a
special audio channel ("SAP"—Secondary Audio Program) is available on stereo televisions
to receive the described narrations inserted between portions of dialogue in the original
soundtrack. WGBH in Boston began its Descriptive Video Service (DVS—WGBH's name for
audio description on television) in the mid-‘80s. More recently, its "MoPix" program offers
description (combined with rear-window captioning) for first-run feature films in movie
theaters (cinema). The National Captioning Institute, a leader in media access for over 20
years, provides closed captioning for 65,000 hours of television each year. Now, its
Described Media division produces description for a broad range of American broadcast
television including "Sesame Street," feature films, and a myriad of programs on cable and
network channels. Another U.S. provider of description for the media is Tulsa, Oklahoma's
Narrative Television Network. NTN's founder and president, Jim Stovall, is an accomplished
athlete and businessman, totally blind since the age of 30.
Appended to this article is some brief material that may help you see what description is all
about by having you, figuratively, close your eyes. In live presentations, I often ask people to
listen to an excerpt from the American Broadcasting Company's (ABC) nationwide broadcast
of Stephen King's "The Shining," first with no picture on the screen and no description—just
as someone with no vision might experience it if he or she had no access to description.
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Then I play the same excerpt as described by the National Captioning Institute's Described
Media division: and finally, one last time with the video intact so a sighted viewer can make
his or her own judgments about the effectiveness of the descriptions. What follows this article
is an annotated script of the description for this 90-secord excerpt. The notes will afford you
some insight into our reasoning for using the precise language we used—why we chose the
words we selected to bring these images to your mind's eye.
For Theater
In a live theater setting, at designated performances (depending on the availability of the
service and how it is administered), people desiring audio description are provided
headsets/earplugs attached to small receivers, about the size of a small pocket calculator.
Often, before the show, a taped or "live" version of the program notes plays through the
headsets, after which a trained describer narrates the performance from another part of the
theater via an FM radio or infrared transmitter. The narrator guides the audience through the
production with concise, objective descriptions of new scenes, settings, costumes, and body
language, all slipped in between portions of dialogue or songs.
For Museums, Galleries, Art Exhibitions
Museums use Audio Description techniques to translate the visual to a sense form that is
accessible to people who are blind or have low vision. Using these techniques for the
description of static images and exhibitions, museum docents find that they develop better
use of language and more expressive, vivid, and imaginative museum tours, greatly
appreciated by all visitors. In this way, docent-led tours are more appropriate for the lowvision visitor and docents find that their regular tours are enhanced. A lively and vivid
descriptive process enables docents to make the museum experience more accessible and
more meaningful for everyone.
Recorded AD tours, specifically geared to people with low vision, are increasingly common.
Combined with directional information, these recorded tours enable visitors who are blind to
use a simple hand-held audio player to tour at least a portion of the museum independently
and with new access to the visual elements of exhibitions. Other curators are interested in
having certain videos within an exhibit or a particular film described.
Opportunities for Audio Description are all around us. Its growth as an access technique is
only constrained by our imaginations and the building of AD skills in a greater number of
people. For instance, another potential for AD involves audio books. These tapes are used
by millions of sighted Americans. It may only be a matter of time before the soundtracks of
films and plays with an added audio description narrative are available so that anyone can
experience (or re-experience) those arts events without actually being there.
International experience
Over the past fifteen years, it has been my privilege to train describers and do AD workshops
throughout the United States and in over a dozen countries around the world, most recently
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in Portugal, Russia, and Germany. After leading several days of AD training in Moscow, I
came home with a new insight into the arts and access. My colleagues there taught me that
audio description, access to the arts, is about Democracy. In the United States, a
prosperous, democratic nation, accessibility generally is not yet viewed as a right, as a
reflection of the principles upon which our nation was founded. People in Russia are
wrestling with economic circumstances attendant to any new democracy, yet to them the
word itself means "access to everyone." I learned that from my friends there and I share that
wonderfully inclusive notion with you here.
It's an idea that still requires broader acceptance and understanding. A blind fellow visiting a
museum with some friends in the United States was once asked, "Excuse me, but what you
doing in a museum? You can't see any of the exhibits." His response? "I'm here for the same
reason anyone goes to a museum. I want to learn, I want to know and be a part of our
culture." His inability to see shouldn't deny him access to our culture and I believe it the
responsibility of arts institutions to be as inclusive as possible. His story illustrates the
importance of access to culture, everyone's right.
We have a rich and varied culture in the United States. That's certainly true in countries
around the world. All people need to be full participants in their nation's cultural life—there is
no reason why a person with a visual disability must also be culturally disadvantaged. There
needn't be a state in the U.S. or a nation world-wide that doesn't offer access for all its
people. Perhaps with a focus on people's abilities , we will come much closer to greater
inclusion and total access.
For more information on Audio Description, visit www.audiodescribe.com
References
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Axel, Elizabeth. 1996. Making Visual Art Accessible to People Who Are Blind And
Visually Impaired. Art Education for the Blind. New York, NY.
Charlson, Kim. 2001. Making Theater Accessible: A Guide to Audio Description in the
Performing Arts. Bay State Council of the Blind. Watertown, MA.
Ellis, Fay. 1991. A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words for Blind and Visually Impaired
Persons Too!—An Introduction to Audiodescription. American Foundation for the Blind.
New York, NY.
Grambs, David. 1993. The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary
Quotations. W. W. Norton & Co. New York, NY.
Groff, Gerda and Gardner, Laura. 1990. What Museum Guides Need To Know: Access
for Blind and Visually Impaired Visitors. American Foundation for the Blind. New York.
Packer, Jaclyn and Kirchner, Corinne. 1997. Who's Watching: A Profile of the Blind and
Visually Impaired Audience for Television and Video. American Foundation for the Blind.
New York, NY.
Schaefer, John. 1995. Sight Unseen: The Art of Active Seeing. GoodYear Books/Scott
Foresman. Glenview, IL.
Author: Joel Snyder is Director, Described Media, National Captioning Institute, Vienna,
VA and President, Founder, Audio Description Associates, Takoma Park, MD
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