You Are Here: IT Accessibility Committee April 2006 Newsletter
### Edited by Joel Obuchowski
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If you would like to provide comments about or items to include in future newsletter editions, or suggest items to be included in our upcoming meeting agendas, please e-mail Debi Orton (dorton@goer.state.ny.us) and Joel Obuchowski (jobuchow@ins.state.ny.us).
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*** NEXT IT ACCESSIBILITY COMITTEE MEETING ***
The IT Accessibility Committee April meeting will be held on Thursday, April 13, from 2:30 to 4:00 in the Forum offices at 411 State Street in Albany. Please plan to attend this meeting, as we will be discussing two important initiatives.
The first is a proposal for a change to the Statewide Technology Policy P04-002, Accessibility of State Agency Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications, specifically, the procurement language to be included in all procurements. The present language requires that all web content developed by outside vendors comply with the Policy. While the Policy cites Mandatory Technology Standard S04-001 as identifying how agencies will make their sites accessible, experience shows that vendors who read the policy were often ignorant of the standards. We are proposing that this procurement language be amended to explicitly require compliance with the standards. Below are the existing and the proposed language:
EXISTING LANGUAGE:
Any web-based intranet and internet information and applications development, or programming delivered pursuant to the Contract will comply with NYS Office for Technology Policy P04-002, "Accessibility of New York State Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications", as such policy may be amended, modified or superseded, which requires that state agency web-based intranet and internet information and applications are accessible to persons with disabilities.
PROPOSED CHANGE TO LANGUAGE:
Any web-based intranet and internet information and applications development, or programming delivered pursuant to this Procurement will comply with NYS Office for Technology Policy P04-002, "Accessibility of New York State Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications", and Mandatory Technology Standard S04-001, as such policy and standards may be amended, modified or superseded, which requires that state agency web-based intranet and internet information and applications are accessible to persons with disabilities. Web content will not be considered a qualified deliverable unless and until it conforms to Mandatory Technology Standard S04-001, as determined by quality assurance testing, such as HTML code validation for conformity with the applicable W3C specification and specialized testing for accessibility issues.
OTHER TOPICS
In addition to the vote on whether the Committee should formally recommend this change to the Office for Technology, the Committee will also be discussing next steps with reference to acquiring a NYS-specific validation tool. Discussions have been underway for months now on finding a tool that would allow State agency web developers to test their sites for New York's hybrid standards. The Committee will hear a report on those discussions and will be asked to choose what course of action to take to further this project.
Finally, we will be discussing recent discussions with Adobe's accessibility expert, Greg Pisocki, plans for a fall session on Adobe Acrobat Best Practices, the details of our full-day presentation at the May 11 AT Expo, the debut of the promotional video Curb Cuts and Web Sites, and the progress of updating our curriculum.
If you only attend one Committee meeting this year, this will be the meeting to attend!
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LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!
Work has begun on filming a new educational video: "Curb Cuts and Web Sites," a companion piece to the popular Successful Web Communications training series sponsored by the NYS/PEF Professional Development Committee. The promotional video, designed for a general audience, heightens awareness of the challenges people with disabilities can face when attempting to use the web, and offers some guidance about making positive changes to lessen those barriers.
The video will premiere at the Governor's AT Expo (see below under "Upcoming Events"), scheduled for May 11, 2005.
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*** RECENT NEWS ***
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Now That's Using Your Brain (from Wired.com)
By Rachel Metz 02:00 AM Apr, 03, 2006
Typing an e-mail with your fingers is a snap. But what if you could do it with your brain?
Brain-wave typing could become reality in just a few years. It would open up a world of communication with caregivers and loved ones for people disabled by ALS, cerebral palsy or high-level spinal-cord injuries. With little or no muscle control, communicating clearly, or even at all is difficult, if not impossible.
Researchers in the brain-computer interface, or BCI, Group at New York State Public Health Department's Wadsworth Center are enrolling patients in trials of a system that could enable them to send e-mail and communicate using their brain waves. They hope to have five to 10 people testing the interface by June.
Worldwide, 170,000 people could potentially be helped by such a device, according to a recent study by Arthur D. Little, a consulting company working with product-development group Cambridge Consultants to create a business plan for the technology.
Mark Manasas, a group manager for Cambridge Consultants, describes the setup: A caregiver uses a laptop to start up the system. An electrode-laden skull cap tracks brain activity with an EEG and relays it to an amplifier. Brain waves are then translated into computer activity. The patient has an additional screen to use for communication.
Patients will start with the P300 model, which shows them a matrix of images or letters that flash rapidly in a random sequence. When users focus on the letters or pictures they want to select, a spike occurs in the brain's electrical activity, and after several cycles with the same result, the system selects that letter or image. Communication is slow -- users create two to four words per minute.
Scientists also developed the sensory motor rhythm, or SMR, system, which allows users to concentrate on moving various body parts to manipulate a cursor on a screen.
A scientist with late-stage ALS is already using the P300. He had previously used an eye-gaze system, in which a camera tracked his eye movements -- not a very satisfactory system for him. Now, he's using the BCI to send e-mail and do other tasks four to six hours a day, said Wadsworth BCI project head Jonathan Wolpaw.
"He's really happy with it," Wolpaw said.
James Heywood, CEO and founder of the ALS Therapy Development Foundation, said while many BCI products work in the lab, they don't function so well in the real world. A system is only useful if patients can integrate the device into their lives and use it to communicate effectively, he said.
For that to happen successfully, the product will have to get cheaper for one thing. The amplifiers used in the lab cost from $10,000 to $13,000, Manasas said. Eventually, they'd like to get the cost down to under $5,000, he said.
They'd like to shrink its size, too. "One day it would be great if this were a handheld pocket-PC device connected to a cap," Manasas said.
Pedro Irazoqui, an assistant professor at Purdue University who designs BCIs and neural prosthetics and consults for Cyberkinetics, a BCI company, said the product could be useful but will eventually be eclipsed by products that use brain implants. Those give users better control over what they're trying to do, he said.
Still, "giving (people with conditions like ALS) any kinds of means to connect with the outside world is a big step forward," Irazoqui said.
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New Software Tackles Colorblind Challenges
Per Yahoo! News, 3/13/06
By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology WriterSun Mar 12, 10:44 PM ET
Like many colorblind people who have adapted all their lives to a particular way of seeing things, Harry Rogers says his inability to discern red and green hasn't caused him much trouble over the years.
Even so, there is one particular challenge: Making sense of charts, graphs and other colorful material on his computer screen. Sometimes he sees a weather map online and says to himself, "Is it raining or snowing there?"
And so the 48-year-old electrical engineer was eager to try eyePilot, a new program that gives colorblind people several ways to filter multichromatic images on their computer screens.
Move the PC's cursor over an item, and eyePilot reports what the color is. If the user clicks on a color name, all instances of it on the page will flash. Or one color can be made to stand out by converting the rest of a page to gray and white.
EyePilot also offers the software equivalent of a TV hue knob, allowing users to adjust the overall spectrum of a page until telling contrasts are more easily viewed.
"It's kind of refreshing that somebody's looking at it," said Rogers, who lives in Andover, Mass. EyePilot "has enabled me to do some things that I have not been able to do before."
In part because computer-savvy baby boomers are getting older, powerful technologies to assist users with disabilities are becoming more prevalent, from speech recognition software to screen magnifiers.
But few efforts have gone into improving the view for people with color blindness, even though about 8 percent of men and roughly one-half of 1 percent of women have some form of it.
EyePilot, which formally launches Monday for $34, comes from what might seem an unlikely source: a small defense contractor named Tenebraex Corp., based in an airy loft in an out-of-the-way dock district on Boston Harbor. Defense-thriller author Tom Clancy is an investor.
Privately held Tenebraex (pronounced "TEN-uh-bray-ex"; the name is derived from the Latin for "shadow") specializes in optics technologies for the military. Its main breakthrough was a honeycombed covering that prevents binoculars, gun sights and other lenses from giving off reflections that can reveal a soldier's location.
More recently, CEO Peter Jones and senior scientist Dennis Purcell have been exploring a filtering method that lets night-vision goggles operate in color rather than their familiar monochrome green. As Jones puts it, imagine what that could mean for the soldier on night patrol who hears, "The bad guy is driving a green car," or "Cut the red wire!"
Tenebraex is working on selling the product to the military. But Jones and Purcell, who met in the 1970s when Purcell was a Polaroid Corp. manager and Jones was a contractor, decided to see if their ideas about color and filtering could have other uses.
EyePilot was born.
In a world where more and more work is conducted online, Jones stresses that the color blind might not be alone in benefiting from the way EyePilot lets users pinpoint particular shades on a screen or shift hues to bring out easier-to-detect contrasts.
He points to a government weather map at http://www.nws.noaa.gov 
- a thickly populated menagerie of color-denoted information.
"It's a set of tools," Jones said of eyePilot. "It's a Swiss Army knife. You can use it yourself to decode color."
But some people with color blindness who weren't part of Tenebraex's test marketing questioned whether the software would encounter an enthusiastic batch of buyers.
Quil Lawrence, a radio journalist based in Washington, D.C., said that some graphics online are difficult if, say, one area is shaded in light gray and another one is light blue. Still, "It's never struck me as a horrible inconvenience," he said.
Of eyePilot, he said, "It's fascinating; I don't know how often I would use it."
But Jason Bishop, a financial analyst in Richmond, Va., said he would find it extremely helpful in creating charts for his work. Often what he produces provokes playful ribbing from colleagues "that my charts look like something out of a circus."
He added that color blindness makes some kinds of occupations off-limits, citing electricians and pilots as examples. For those and other jobs that might require use of color computer screens, eyePilot "could open up some opportunity," he said.
"It's a great idea."
On the Net:
*** RELATED NEWSLETTER ITEMS ***
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The most recent CQCAPD Quarterly Report to the Governor can be found at the following link: http://www.cqcapd.state.ny.us/legisquarterly/legisquarterlyseptdec2005.htm
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The following three items were originally published in the Northeast ADA & IT Center/Cornell April 2006 newsletter ....
- Section 508 Update
- The Access Board plans to initiate steps this summer to review and update its access standards for electronic and information technology covered by section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. These standards cover products and technologies procured by the Federal government, including computer hardware and software, websites, phone systems, fax machines, and copiers, among others.
- The constantly changing nature of the technologies covered necessitates periodic reviews of these standards. This effort, which will be the first update of the standards since their publication in late 2000, will address new or convergent types of technologies and other areas where the standards need to be revisited. The Board considers it important that this work be coordinated on an international scale.
- Read more about the 508 Update and how you can contribute comments at http://www.access-board.gov/news/508update.htm .
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- The Importance of Human Evaluation by WebAIM
- This new article by WebAIM points out the strengths and weaknesses of various methods of evaluating web content for accessibility. The two basic approaches to accessibility evaluation are: 1. Use a software tool, and 2. Use a human evaluator.
- Usually the best approach is to use both a software tool and a human evaluator. Each approach has strengths and weaknesses which complement the others and form a more complete approach to web accessibility evaluation. People with disabilities can be especially valuable as accessibility evaluators.
- Read the full article: The Importance of Human Evaluation
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- Tips for Creating Accessible Microsoft Word Documents By NCDAE (National Center for Disability and Access to Education)
- Microsoft Word is currently the most common word processor on the market. Because it is so common, the .doc format has become the de facto standard for text documents. Word files can also be the starting point for other files, such as PDF and HTML.
- There are at least two things you can do to increase the accessibility of Word documents:
- Improve the native accessibility of the original Word file.
- If you export the Word document to another format, ensure it is accessible as well.
- This article, Tips and Tools: Microsoft Word ( http://ncdae.org/tools/factsheets/word.cfm ), addresses each of the two points.
*** TOOLS and TRAINING ***
DTF Offers Braille Conversion Service
The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, Office of Affirmative Action will provide Braille output for up to 500 transcribed braille printed pages 8 and a half by 11 inch, double-sided, text only (no tables, charts, graphs, graphics). All requestors need to do is to eliminate white space except lines separating paragraphs or numbered items.
For further information or consultation, call 518-485-5627 or e-mail Michael_Duroche@tax.state.ny.us. The DTF service offers quick turn-around for small documents, one week; medium documents, 2 weeks; large documents, 4 weeks. Multiple copies are available as required, within reason.
*** UPCOMING EVENTS ***
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Webmasters' Guild April Meeting - April 7, 2006
Location: Empire State Plaza Meeting Rooms 2 and 3
Topic: NYS Accessibility Standards and Validation -- The Forum IT Accessibility Committee will be explaining New York State's Mandatory Technology Standards for accessible web sites, and will demonstrate the validation and testing program used to evaluate sites submitted for the Forum's Best of the Web award. Free, No registration required.
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Search Engine Optimization Workshop - Wednesday/Thursday, April 26-27
Location: Hampton Inn, Wolf Rd., Albany.
This workshop, co-sponsored by the Forum and WOW, covers everything you need to know in order to improve your organization's search results and attract more visitors. The session will be led by Professor Bebo White, one of this country's first web professionals and an engaging presenter.
Cost: $150 for Forum members, $495 for the general public, Register at http://www.joinwow.org/albanyworkshop . This session is reimbursable for PEF members under the VALT program.
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The Governor's AT Expo: Technology Opens Doors - May 11, 2006
The 2006 Assistive Technology (AT) Expo is scheduled for May 11, 2006. Attendees will be able to see a wide variety of assistive technology demonstrations, attend educational seminars and talk with experts in the field of assistive technology. To find out more about the Expo, see a full list of scheduled exhibitors, or register for the Expo, see http://www.atexpo2006.com . Advance registration is $3.00, and includes free parking for the first 200 registrants.
If you've ever wondered how people with disabilities might access your web site, or how a screen reader works, this is an excellent -- and reasonably-priced -- way to see these products and talk with representatives from the companies that developed the technology.
The NYS Forum IT Accessibility Committee, with guests from HiSoftware, will be presenting a full day of sessions on web accessibility. In addition, we will also be debuting the companion video to the Successful Web Communications training series, "Curb Cuts and Web Sites." Sponsored by the NYS/PEF Professional Development Committee, this original script was written by Marilyn Cordell of OFT and Jim Costello of CTG and features some folks you may recognize!