Closing Plenary
Jutta treviranus: Could we have all the rapporteurs come
to the front?
Okay everyone we are going to start with the first report
back.
Thank you, our first report back will be from the Technology
Levers. We have Colin here.
Colin Clark >> Can everyone hear me okay? So I will tell
you a little bit about our breakout session related to
Technology Levers. I really wish I could actually just invite the
whole group, but we had 21 people and a really lively debate.
rich material that we talked about
One of our goals was actually to go through the roadblocks and
get past the roadblocks into some creative ideas for things we
could do, build, and foster
(tape starts)
But we made a pretty big list of roadblocks. I have the all these
slides to compare.
I won't bore you with the details, but we have 16 roadblocks
that we identified. So we distilled that down to 4 or 5
roadblocks that captured the main points.
The first was education, but I know there's actually an
education group coming next so I won't steal their thunder.
So we will start with the design and development process as a
huge roadblock. The model that designers,developers, people
creating content and software, was often a roadblock because
it tacked on accessibility at the end. It was left to the end or
people who didn't know how to handle usability and
accessibility. So we wanted better tools and
standards. Methods for designing and building technology.
Number two in roadblocks was the support integration. So
many questions about how do I use assistive technology. So
when there is good accessibility built into a system, users often
don't know how to access it, how it works et cetera. So we saw
support and integration as another roadblock.
Participation and leadership, especially people with disabilities
in all aspects of our world but in education, in product design
in all it's cycle support process, et cetera.
And lastly models, the costs, the policy, the legislation,
standards , information about return on investment et cetera
is scarce and so is a roadblock.
Things got really interesting in our group once we got to
disruptive trends. This was a really rich discussion and some
debate we had. But we have a number of trends that
were quite interesting, worth outlining.
First the rise of mobile devices, especially tablets is really
changing the model for software accessibility and technology.
And some examples we talked about included the revolution in
the AAC space in terms of language aids and augmented
communication. There's a whole cost revolution in terms of
how much these otherwise very expensive esoteric assistive
technologies now cost, how much more available they are, in
the world of the iPad and other tablet devices.
But also when we look at this new model app store and mobile
devices, there's a question about the sustainability of the
business models. if everything costs 99 cents in the app store
or $3.99, how do really difficult involved assistive technologies
get supported, sustained in the long run.
Another disruptive trend we saw was the move away from the
medical model to designing for environmental disabilities or
sorry environmental barriers and designing for aging and
linguistic diversity.
Away from disability and towards user experience and design.
Another disruptive trend is a rise in the involvement of users
and community. Use based reviews, crowd sourcing, open
access and open source. Consumers in this model are
becoming producers as well and that's a really positive
disruptive force, I think.
Legislation is becoming a positive disruptive force as well. The
Impact of good legislation on driving participation in
accessibility. The AODA was cited as well as the UN Convention
on the Rights of People with Disabilities as increasing that
participation and knowledge. We saw a drive towards
harmonization of legislation globally making it easier to launch
large scale worldwide products. We had people from IBM and
Adobe excited about who are talking about the challenges of
many different legislations across many of the countries and
hopefully a draft toward harmonization.
Intellectual property was both a positive and a negative
disruptive force. So we asked the question how can we think
about ownership in a different way so the community benefits
but there's still the opportunities for profit and business?
Number 6 in our disruptive trends and one sort of close to my
heart is the rising era of cross platform computing. Desktop
and mobile, the web, et cetera. We talked about what is
happening in terms of increasing equality in terms of market
share, of desktop operating systems between Windows and
Macintosh, certainly mobile devices between android, RIM and
Blackberry and the iPhone. Web browsers that now all have
roughly equivalent market share, and what that means a
broader reach for assistive technology as well as a dependence
on open standards and open access. So right now this is causing
a fragmentation, so it's negative a disrupter , but we also saw it
as a very positive disrupter in the long run.
Lastly the widespread use of search engines and the increased
value of semantics and alternative formats especially in the
field of media video captioning, et cetera. We had all kinds of
side benefits and allies came out of this. Increased usability that
comes from thinking about accessibility. For example, the
benefits that we all experience here at the conference over the
last few days from the realtime captioning. We all benefitted
from being able to see and better understand the speakers.
Some allies, the aging, second language learners, low literacy,
et cetera.
I talked earlier about the side benefits of increased awareness
that comes through standards and legislation, And we talked
about an attitudinal shift which I think I have referenced earlier
as well. It's not about disability but about needing something
different which we all experience.
I think this is my second last slide. Really interesting ally that I
think Don Tapscott certainly made great reference to in his talk
earlier, the younger generation as a silent ally. There was a
great example of a mother who's kids watched TV with
captions turned on and the sound off so that nobody knows
they were watching TV when they are supposed to be doing
homework. There's greater awareness among digital videos.
Kids who know how to use these access features for all kinds of
purposes they weren't designed for even. And that's pretty
exciting.
Another side event is that accessibility mandates can shift into
user delights. Not just, oh I have to do this extra stuff and I
have to produce this alternative formats. It's more time and it's
a distraction, if I’m a professor, let's say from my research, et
cetera. But we had lots of stories about people who when
faced with an accessibility mandate actually had this aha
moment where they realized the teaching and learning
experience or the usability experience was substantially better
as a result of inclusion and accessibility.
Lastly we talked about how to leverage these disruptive trends.
Tor youth, we wanted to encourage curriculum development
really early on. Like we want to look at information and
communication technology as it emerges. Students we want to
see young getting engaged in inclusion and learning about
diversity.
We want a little more research and take that research not just
into papers and academia, but get it out into the world through
outreach and awareness. More usability research, publicize it
and in general get our numbers on accessibility, inclusion,
return on investment.
And I think most interesting doing some personal story
collection and sharing. Leveraging user delight, those aha
moments that I talked about and stories to help inspire and
explain accessibility inclusion in a concrete and grassroots way.
That's it. Anybody want to add anything I missed from our
discussion?
Okay, thanks.
Clapping
Mike >> I was just going to say, Colin, I think that there are
adult men who use captions so their wives don't know they're
listening ball games.
Laughter
Jutta Treviranus: Thank you. Who is next? Who would
like to go next? Christine?
delay for set-up
Christine Staddon >> So I was part of the CRPD and
Policies Issues group. Talking about the opportunities with
new -- inaudible
So we talked about roadblocks. We got into much deeper
discussions on all of these things but I just tried to pick up
the highlights.
One of the huge things that came out of it was that the
(UN) Convention does not give a lot of specifics around
how to implement it. What is reasonable accessibility and
those types of things. So that every country can read and
understand their obligations under the convention
differently. It also doesn't tell countries how to
implement it so that the extent of the information
to be done at the individual state parties level, or the
individual countries.
The other things that we found were roadblocks were
some countries do not have the components or the
building blocks in place, such as funding sources to help
people approach the convention, user group instruments,
such as advocacy by people with disabilities to allow
participation. Specifically we were talking about
people with disabilities, but obviously other people as well
to implement the articles in the convention.
And we talked a lot about the ability of groups to respond
to the convention and how that worked. And it came out
that people cannot respond as individuals, but they can
respond as groups. And they produce things such as
shadow reports that would go along with reports that
countries would produce. But that in practicality, there are
not the financial resources to support groups to do that.
So we didn't talk in terms of disruptive trends. That's not
the term we used so I'm not sure if this fits exactly, but
these are the things we talked about. As ways we could
work around or that could be used to leverage better
implementation of the convention.
So one of the things, providing clear definitions of
accessibility and look at not providing access as an actual
form of indirect discrimination. To put some funding in
place, you know, every country is going to do this
differently, but that will allow the participation and
implementation of the convention articles such as
self-funding individuals to participate in the process.
This came out of a discussion of, they found that they only
get a clear and real picture of what's happening for people
with disabilities in their country when they actually talk
directly to people with disabilities.
Governments and groups can present things, but if they
aren't actually talking to the people who live in the country
and experiencing the implementation of the convention,
They’re not getting a real picture of what's happening.
The other suggestion that came out to work against the
barriers was providing a network of experts who would
work at a high level to provide an overview of the key
instruments that states could use to help them implement
the convention.
What is to be delivered? What are the main priorities and
how do you deliver it?
There's also discussion around creation of a benchmark
tool with specific questions to avoid the dangers of selfassessment. So people can still in some ways produce
these reports as a self-assessment but that if you give
them directed questions like an example that was used
was how accessible is your website? Is it 100% accessible.
Is it 90%? If people indicate it, then there's a way to
actually check to see how accessible those things were.
In terms of an aside -- as I said, we didn't talk about these
under the questions the way they were. But one of the
things that was talked about was industry often argues –
and Gary Birch was in our group who works a lot with
industry brought this up -- that they will often say that
requirements and regulations will limit they're ability to be
innovation. And there was a strong sense this is a myth
that really needs to be dispelled. Disability access does
not harm innovation, often spurs innovation and
influencers need to help designers understand if they
design to technical specifications, they are going to have
the ability to increase their market share.
So in terms of leveraging these things, we felt that there
was huge market opportunities especially in North
America, Europe to give incentives which could be
laws, regulations, fines or other types of carrots that
actually work a more positive incentive for industry to pay
more attention to accessibility. An example that we used
was of making closed captioning mandatory in all
televisions in the US. Things like that made that
accessibility future available mass marketable and in fact
television manufacturers had to not make tv’s that didn't
have closed captioning because they couldn't sell them in
the US market.
Seeing mobile devices as a gateway for persons with
disabilities to access applications, technology, and
resources. And a huge enabler to bring a new world to
people with disabilities. And there's a trend for all
individuals to customize their personal mobile devices and
their personal things that they operate. So this -- we can
leverage this customization to increase access for people
with disabilities.
And there's also -- the group talked about a need to
standardization on communication devices. Some basic
standardize around some basic components so if they
were in every device, then people could count on having at
least those basic features. This was to counteract devices
that become obsolete really quickly. Gary again brought
up the example of people he works with through the
Neil Squire Society, they get their devices and the mobile
stuff working very well and then the software gets upgraded. And then mobile devices become obsolete and
they then have to go through a whole set of challenges to
try to customize it again.
And one possibility that we talk about was the Cloud
Technology. And there's a lot of hope around this to
provide abilities for customization and access to software
all over the world. But one of the things that we brought
up as a downside to the cloud is now we are talking about
communicating with two places and there could be
problems accessing the device either from your device or
from the cloud. The another things that we talked about
around the cloud was how do you protect standardization
technologies and how any information, such as privacy of
the users in the cloud?
One of the things too that we talked about was working on
new ways to tackle issues on working with all groups
around the standards.
One of the things that was brought up was developers and
accessibility features can't get the attention of service
providers. We have to try to convince them to start
thinking about it as an ecosystem. That multiple people
are impacted. So it's not just about their service provision
or their web developing or their designer who lives in a
silo.
We felt that part of the other ways we could leverage was
provide education in other countries around training and
education for IT professionals, engineers and policy
makers around what accessibility is and why it creates a
more open world.
Industry uses the medical model of disability and as was
mentioned in the previous thing, we to start looking at it
as a social model around what is needed and functionality
as opposed to starting to separate people with disabilities
from the aging population or from other users who need
different features or as extreme users.
question from audience inaudible
I didn't have specific examples in the case studies because
they came up in the conversation we are having.
>> questions?
clapping
Jutta Treviranus: Any additions, comments, questions?
No? Then we will move on to the next group, then.
Francis Jewett >> I don't know whether you can -- yes. I
don't know whether you have any hope of reading this or
not. You can see by the list how extensive our discussion
was and this is scarcely half of what we talked about and
there's been a lot of consolidation going on.
I do hear some themes, so I think we can go through some
of this fairly quickly.
Certainly one of the roadblocks is that proposed solutions
are simplistic and overly functionalized and are not
grounded in reality.
That they are not culturally appropriate and they are not
individualized for specific users.
Another incredible roadblock which we could put a lot of
things under was inadequate financial resources and going
back to the idea that was raised this morning about
austerity, ideology. That of course affects teacher
development. It blocks the opportunity for teachers to be
able to get the comfort level that they need to keep up
with their students who already have a much greater
comfort level.
So that's a very critical piece, and the disparity increases
over time rather than decreases. So the requirements for
educators to have that time to become comfortable and
probably we will never be as comfortable as the new
generation of students.
Financial resources for more appropriate technology. And
obviously, some very substantial investments have been
made in technology, but the lifecycle changes so fast that,
you know, some of the newer technologies, although they
may be less expensive, are replacing something that is
terribly expensive and there's reluctance to spend the
money when those investments have already been made.
As well for some of the technologies, the technologies are
hard to learn for both teachers and students.
Then another really important point that was made had to
do with the training of Educational Assistants. That's a gap
that probably needs to have some thinking as well.
Again, in this group as I'm sure every group, a roadblock is
commitment from leadership. That is critical across the
board.
Not enough advanced preparation and planning for the
needs for accessibility and too much response to requests
and requirements after the fact. In other words, stopgap
measures are frequently taken when it could be -- sorry,
when it could be that if some time and care had been
taken up front, there wouldn't need to be the changes and
adjustments after the fact.
So that whole idea about thoughtful, careful, planning
before design and development is important, and that's
already come up this afternoon.
Students lack control over their needs, and we did go on
and on about that.
Not adequate testing, and we see that across the board.
The people who do the development know absolutely
what they intended to do and how they intended it to
work and why would anybody else not know as well? You
know, that kind of thing, that kind of attitude is around
way too much. So quality assurance is something that
needs to become an integral part of the development
of a variety of approaches for extreme users, and we really
liked that term.
Another roadblock is adequate integration of access to
technology with mainstream students, so that students
who are using these special technologies feel separated
from the rest of their peer group, and sometimes the rest
of the peer group feels isolated from the people with
technologies because they have special devices that other
people think are really cool, and they would like to have
them too. So it goes both ways.
On curriculum design, and that, of course, came up and I
will talk about it as well, and of course we are left with the
whole issue of residual segregation. It's not supposed to
be there overtly, but it certainly is very much present
covertly.
So some disruptive trends. Even though that list is very
long, it still is only part okay. Let me see if I can pull things
out quickly. New technologies to support multi-modal
communication. We talked about that before, especially
social media.
Let me choose some other things.
The importance of champions.
The need for inclusive design to be incorporated into
curriculum, and that goes across a number of
technologies.
A disruptive trend that kept coming up very frequently was
e-learning and e-books. E-learning’s been around for quite
a while. It is nonetheless a disruptive technology and
needs to be a whole lot more disruptive.
One of the examples was the possibility or extreme user's
work to be recognized in the Global community and the
example that we talked about was the Mozilla program
World Web Craft where people can be involved and their
work is out there and everybody all over the world can see
it.
Another disruptive technology that we saw was storage on
the cloud, and as people have devices, the smaller the
device, the easier to lose. You put all of your life into this
device and you then have to replace it. So easier, better
access to the cloud is going to be extremely important
going forward.
Something that came up, debriefing learning experiences
so that we all are more reflective about the experiences
we are involved in.
An important idea that came up, and there were several
examples in our group. The power of peer-to-peer learning
and near peer learning. That could be working
collaboratively in development teams as well as working
collaboratively in learning teams.
And one of the things that we were regretting was the use
of litigation as a way to get the world to listen. Yes, it's
there as a tool, but it's too bad because it is very expensive
and time consuming. And that's it. The End
clapping
Jutta treviranus: Thank you. I think all recognize that
these discussions were far richer than we can stick into the
few minutes we have.
>> I have a question, actually.
Pina D'Intino
>> I just wondered if in your group --
it's not working ( the microphone)?
I wondered if in your group discussion, the topic of the
structure in which students or even educators are being
marked or how we evaluate success in the programs, if
that came up. The rigidity of the system, I guess.
Francis Jewett >> Yes, there was some significant
discussion about that, and I think it was significant
discussion.
The example of the world web craft was an important part
of that larger discussion that in fact the evaluation was in a
much broader community than a classroom-based
experience.
And I don't know how we're going to be able to capture
that in real institutions, but that ability of students to be
able to demonstrate their learning in competitions and in
collaborative efforts that are out there for the world. Is
really important and often gives the student much more
personal sense of worth than getting an "A" grade.
So it's a problem. We don't have any solutions.
Pina >> Thank you.
Jutta Treviranus: Thank you. Any other quick comments
before we move on to Societal Trends. Lizbeth, I
understand that you're left. I know you're left.
Lizbeth Goodman >> Looks like someone cleaned up
our slides. It looks much tidier already. Someone cleaned
it up. Thank you very much.
So first thing, thanks for the chance to be here. I didn't say
that yesterday morning. Thank you to our great group.
We had a fantastic Societal Trends group.
We identified many, many, many roadblocks. We didn't
write them all down but quickly the ones we wanted to
talk about were the roadblocks of bureaucracy and policies
which could be solved by involvement of all stakeholders
in the development of policies as well as in the
implementation.
Lack of a common language. We had people from a
number of cultures around the table speaking to that.
Lack of full genuine engagement in compliance.
Lack of governance, triggers gaps in
The compliance framework due to lack of funding and
other reasons.
The problem of perfectionism. Or the need to share small
triumphs and achievements along the path rather than
waiting for a simple complete and perfect solution to be
shared.
The need embrace open source tools and methods which
break down silos rather than speak with other cohorts
There was quite a lot of discussion in our group about
open source methodology and the ways in which we can
use that to make a big difference in all kinds of ways.
I will come back to that.
( being told how to use the computer screen)
Thank you.
The need for publication making experience public in print
on-line and broadcast in social media.
Problems of internal communications within universities.
Several of us work in large bureaucratic structures called
universities
Not only the impasses of inoperability of computer
systems but also disconnected messages between
departments, between all the prospectors who have paid
us to engagement with.
Perceived or real hierarchy of need. That is, the
emergency of cross- culturally. The need to prioritize
disability issues in cultures, where for instance peace
shelter and food might be the most important immediate
issue and yet it is still important to improve the disability
issue. There was a quite a lot of discussion on how best to
do that without shifting other very important topics off the
table. Yet without just marginalizing the disability issue to
the point where it will never be addressed.
We'll even need there to be enforcers . We'll need real
Implementation.
Ways to push forward at disability research as it applies to
all countries and to establish a joined up plan to
make real impact in appropriate ways. And I'll come back
to this as well.
The need for humour was identified as a roadblock
and I'll come back to these examples again
We are talking about very visible public performances and
compliances . That could demonstrate the added value to
everyone for compliance actually in operation
And finally, I think this is our last roadblock.
Recognition of the important role that women have
played in this movement as in all cultural transformation.
I think that's our the roadblocks.
Then we came to Societal Trends in a more general way.
The subject of proliferation of knowledge’s, societies on
line, inclusive models etc. And the need for attitudinal
change.
So that the united convention sensitized and created
empirical understanding, but there's still lack of
governance, clear direction and mandate for
achievements.
So that compliance, having compliance needs to be unified
and we need that common language.
We discussed a number of key words which in all of our
various cultures and context have both pros and cons.
So I hope to give you a few details but we spoke about
the word disability and ability, access, diversity inclusivity
etc. And the pros and cons of each of those.
Then we spoke about the lack of research and
developing world disability. The lack of public
visibility issues in the developing world is serious.
And awareness raising and the futility and capability of
people with disability is still driven in some cultures by
more of a charity sense or a medical model rather than by
a general societal of understanding that people with
disabilities can and do engage fully.
The contextual nature of how disability is shaped and
when is visible from country to country. It’s still really hard
to manage due to cultural difference.
We spoke about the language, and we got thinking an
engagement in fully informed design, a space of the
technologies.
Sometimes in the developing world and sometimes
wherever we may be, the extreme throw of money at a
situation without really involving the stakeholders in
developing the design.
Now were onto disruptive trends.
This is a much shorter section, you will be pleased
to hear.
But we came up with communication channels to be set
and made visible both on-line and in real spaces
Internationally. Perhaps via a portal or a dialogue space to
link the many different international sites.
We spoke a lot about locative gaming. I spoke in particular
like a broken record about locative gaming and
co-opertition models or games to make visible where the
gaps in provision are. So we may have volunteer industry
sponsored cross -sectoral community into co-opertition
model game. Co-operative environment, we’ll come to an
example of that.
An one idea however would be - you know what coopertition games are. When you use mobile
phone technologies. The idea would be to create a
scenario wherein a real genuine full compliance game
scenario could be achieved by insuring that no one wins
the game until power tokens are used effectively by all
the people who power within the game. So effectively a
mock of a political situation to represent and grow the
idea of the importance of role play internationally.
And this can of course be implemented in the real world.
If you know on the online games where if you win,
something real happens in the world. So if you plant more
trees online, actual trees get planted. With the rain
forest has been cut, so it's a real suggestion.
And increased visibility of women leaders with disabilities
both live and on-line. And on-line advocacy, Ellie spoke
about the mobility international USA group for Wild
Women Network.
And global prioritization that is building on successes and
recognizing immediate people.
And we’re almost done.
We spoke about who are our allies? These are some of
the characters who came to the fore.
•
The Guerilla GRRRLS
•
The Occupy movement
•
Pride
•
The women of the black sash in South Africa who
are teaching voting using different kind of salvages or
anything they could teach people democratic vote
techniques with
•
G3ict
•
MIUSA- Mobility International USA (wild women)
•
The Independent Living Movement
•
ACTRA
•
the IDRC masters programme
•
sports organisations and paralympics
sportspeople
• champions such as Stephen Hawking in UK and Rick
Hansen, Marly Mattin, Michael J. Fox
•
All people should be our allies. . .
Finally we came up with a couple of case studies.
Situations, events, prototypes which have already
happened or which we want to see happen.
Which are good examples of the kinds of the disruptive
trends.
We are talking about again the example of Chick to Go
which if you know is a $50.00 worth of technology using a
switching to control a wheelchair device. Using a gyro
scope some of our women wheelchair users made new
Vertical Chick to Go. Where they went out into the streets
of East London in wheelchairs and remapped all the
Google maps to show where we had streets which were
not accessible in preparation for the arrival of the
Paralympic Athletes who were arriving in London.
And that was another kind of game but really genuine
impact in the world.
Helen spoke about Atlanta Cinema of Disabilities works
showing work on this theme.
Guerilla integration of disability work through all Women's
Allied Organisations, without necessarily advertising the
work as ‘about disability’
coney2012 as a model: so getting kids and young people
using the social media to really get people engaged in any
kind of social issue and that instance to stopping child
abuse but in our instance it might be disability awareness
And then a proposal for the future would be a public
intervention in some kind of humorous performance art
mode. And this is where I will end so.
One of many possible examples would be based on the
Irish knitting map where they knitted a whole map of
Ireland. We'll be able to do one of Ireland using digital
stream to make an actual artifact. The idea is that we
could do a modified Women on Wheels using social
media, and stage demonstrations and performances
numerous mode. Making things, maps, building things,
objects, performances, but perhaps in the car parks and in
those leading to parliament buildings. At times important
to make disability an issue.
That's where we wrapped up. With the ideals of disability
advocacy, rights tardis not just another subway on the
disability rights super highway part of the digital
inclusion roadmap discuss but actually a whole new way
of looking at ethernet together, and and effecting some
kind of see change in policy and in the transfer.
clapping
Thank you.
Jutta Treviranus: Any quick comments or questions?
>> This is Charles Silverman speaking. I want
to say how much I appreciated, the tardis metaphor. I'd
not heard that before. That's totally brilliant.
And revealing myself as a Dr. Who fan may be one thing,
but the another thing that I want to mention is the whole
issue around people with disabilities not just involved or
included, but playing major directorial roles in centres like
this one. Centres around the world that are focused on the
disability issues.
Recently , with the AODA process in Ontario, we have
stakeholders with disabilities come together with
representations -- representatives from government
and representatives from industry. As you might imagine,
the people who are really empowered were the folks
whose staff assistants prepped them for that day. Who
came on salary. Who were savvy about the ins and outs of
communications in a process driven committee. People of
disabilities coming often to those events not being
funded, not having staff support, and not knowing the
culture of what you do at the conference table.
That kind of empowerment has to come as part of a
mindful educational process. That's the other piece of
education that’s missing. It's not just about people being
included. It's about people being fully empowered to be
driving these initiatives.
Lizbeth Goodman >> I think that's absolutely right, yeah.
Another member of the committee not named
>> Thanks Charles. We did talk about it, and that's what
we were discussing when Jutta was there. That we
definitely need a platform not for advocacy, but also for
mentorship because we all come with different
experience. We may have a common goal to be
somewhere, and we may have disability as a common
goal, but we do have different skillsets and experiences
that we can share and mentor. But obviously what we are
lacking is the platform, and also I see that advocacy is
becoming a taboo word. Nobody wants to use it.
However, it does empower. It has empowered us in the
past and I think with proper advocacy, we still empower
each other and assist in going in the direction that we
want to go.
Jutta Treviranus: Thank you. So on to next -- was there
one more question? Yes, Greg.
Greg >> You had a long list of partners and
collaborators and I think you might want to just add the
disability groups, there are a wide range of other groups
raising the floor international. You use different kinds of
(inaudible) person additional caveat on the end so
so for people who read this it becomes oh I don't see
see my group or something like that captured or added.
Jutta Treviranus: I'm not sure if there was a response
Lizbeth Goodman >> I just said good idea. Sorry. We will,
we will.
Jutta Treviranus: Wonderful, great.
So we are doing well, Vera tells me. So I think I became
overeager in trying to move this along because I
understand there are multiple people that are waiting to
go on flights, et cetera.
So we’re on to our last group, and who is reporting back
on the Economic Levers? Wonderful
Gunela Astbrink >> Hi, well, as the other rapporteur said,
we had a great discussion. Covered off a lot of different
areas. Great group of people, and again, there's common
themes coming out which you’ll see in the slides as we
move along.
Am I going in the right direction? (talking about slides)
Okay. Roadblocks.
So we talked about a roadblock being availability of data,
evidence and stories that create value.
We have talked in a number of times about the need for
data, that corporations can take on board, governments
can take on board, and having evidence-base to use when
we develop policy. There's scattered data around, but it
needs to be relevant for the particular aim, and stories.
There're certainly are stories, but again, they need to be
focused for a particular audience.
And getting into the business language, we felt that often
we talked amongst ourselves about these important issues
and we speak our disability language in our terms. But if
we're going to communicate with corporations. We need
to use their language so that it is recognized and relevant.
Again, macro conversations, but they need micro
examples. We are talking about stories again, so not only
talking about statistics, but saying, okay here is an example
of a group of people who could make use of these
products, and this would be the number of people, and
using it in a particular way.
Cultural and branding bias against disability. Again, we
have heard through the last couple of days about people
being put in boxes. Because this one is about economic
factors, it is about how corporations look at people with
disabilities, low economic status and with older people.
They’re just going to want the basic product. It's not worth
our while in investing in that particular area.
And then lastly in this roadblock section, transitioning the
market from disability products to mainstream products.
Again, we talked many times about apple products and
how it's a universally designed product with a range of
accessibility features, and moving that into everyday
business speak. That's the way we should move.
Disruptive trends.
We talked a lot about value creation and making money.
For corporations, the bottom line is obviously essential. If
we come up with arguments that will indicate, yes,
corporations can make money after all providing products
that will meet the needs of people with disabilities and
older people, that will make a difference.
Branding, again. Branding in a way that the message gets
through that people with disabilities are a viable market.
And using advertising agencies who have a massive
influence over the thinking about different product
adoption and also public interest messages.
So finding government funding, finding some type of
funding to have advertising agencies understand the
disability message and then transform that in a message
that will be understood by corporations and governments
so that we can get that message across in a strong
manner.
Side benefits and allies. well, we have heard numerous
times about curb cuts. And again, it's about dealing with
side benefit and the usefulness of products that are
accessible and useable, then they used by a wider range of
people and so that will lead to increased sales.
Putting disability issues into a customer framework. So
again mainstreaming and broadening the attraction.
Very importantly, any time new products are being
developed, there should be consumer engagement so that
people with disabilities, right from the start, have an
opportunity to say what is important in a product and
when a product is assigned, how a particular features can
be incorporated to make them as accessible as possible.
And leveraging disruptive trends. We have heard
previously about public procurement and here we have
government incentives. It's, again, this thing about carrots
and sticks. legislation and regulation are vital but the
incentives or carrots with public procurement means
companies will be encouraged to develop products that
are accessible to meet the accessibility criteria of
governments.
And then of course advise that those general products be
available.
I mean, it's interesting, for example, not that that's
necessarily public procurement, but with Apple products,
you have accessibility features, one being screen reading
software. And now we see other companies also
including that in their products.
Having business and universities working closer together.
So we've got the research excellence coming out of
universities, and engaging more closely with business. So
there is that good interaction and the communication.
And we have heard this one many times. It's teaching
Universal Design or teaching accessibility as part of various
University courses. And that might not be in IT, in web
development, but it really can be across any university
discipline. It could be in business courses, for example, in
tourism courses, in whatever it might be. So we are not
just saying disability-centric. We are saying across the
board. Let's talk about Universal Design.
And finally, we have some examples and case studies.
Japan, for example, is a country with the largest increase
of aged people in the world. And they are very technology
focused generally in Japan. And have used technology to
assist older people especially and then consequently a
number of people with disabilities both in cell phones,
easy to use phones. For example, in Japan there's a phone
called the (phone name) phone which was designed for
older people. It has such user friendly futures
that -- Vera's very good. (reference to coordinator holding
up sign to end)
it sells to the general community.
We heard about the Maxwell House containers, the way
that they've been redesigned to make them more easy to
use and unscrew the tops, but also because of the
different configurations in size. The company is actually
making more money out of that.
And also looking at the green economy as a way to get
leverage onto our courses in disability.
Thank you very much.
clapping
Jutta Treviranus: Any quick comment? Okay. Thank you.
So we promised a very quick wrap up and as we said at the
beginning, this is only the beginning of the conversation.
How many of you here met somebody that you
passionately agree with.
And how many here met somebody that you passionately
disagree with? How many of you have made arrangements
to keep in touch, to collaborate?
Great.
And how many of you have changed your ideas, learned
new things or expanded your perspective?
Both hands, good.
As I said at the start, our main goal is to create a
committed general knowledge committee that will fuel
this agenda moving forward.
Now we need to sustain this and make it irrepressible. We
will synthesize the conversation so far and put it online.
And we will publish a white paper, but that will not be the
end of this momentum.
We will, with your help, meet again. So please stay tuned,
and we are hoping to continue this conversation and to
continue this momentum.
I'm going to give the floor to Axel to end the day.
Axel Leblois: Thank you very much, Jutta. And thank you
all for staying until the very last minute. Typically at long
conferences we go to, the audiences shrinks and then at
the end I have 5 or 7 people left. But today is great. Thank
you so much for your commitment.
Jutta: Don’t give them any ideas.
Axel: No ideas, right.
So just to say this was a very spiriting event. As Jutta
Said this is just the beginning. We will follow-up with
online activities to get your input. I think it's very
important that perhaps as we post on the internet some of
the proceedings, we can have some structure, a
questionnaire something so you can instruct your input.
so we really can capture everything that was said here
incase we do not capture something. That will include, of
course, an evaluation of the conference. Perhaps a
rankings of the topics of the titles used most important in
your mind.
This was very interesting session those past few days. I
think some of the concept we knew were out there
really came into the spotlight and I think that's one thing
that brings tremendous value, these dialogues.
So I want to thank sincerely Jutta, the entire team at OCAD
University, the Government of Canada, Province of
Ontario. All of our friends from the industry who put the
meetings together. All those folks who came from far away
to participate here in Toronto for this meeting.
applause
Jutta Treviranus: We want to thank you. Because of
course you've done all of the work. And thank you for
coming. Thank you for tolerating our time keeping. The
mistakes that we promised you and and hopefully we'll get
better and better at this. And my team will kill me if I say
once again
But thank you so much for all you contributed and we will
engage you in this continuing conversation. Safe journey
home. If there is anything you need or any information
you require, we are still here to help you.
So this is the end of deep, for now, stage 1. And stay
tuned for further stages.
Thank you.
Applause