The Designing for Disability
A recent blog post by Neil Witt on The VC’s New VLE inspired me to provide a new introduction to a talk I gave at the “Designing for Disability” seminar held on Friday 5th December 2008 at the British Museum.
I was an invited speaker at this event was organised by the Museums Association and the Jodi Awards. The title of my talk, the final talk of the day, was “Holistic Approaches To Web Accessibility“.
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Let me tell you the tale, I began, of the benevolent emperor. He was kind and wished to do his best for his subjects. So when he was told of a secret formulae produced by a wizard from a far-off land which would ensure that all of the subjects of his empire would be able to access all of his edicts, he wanted to know more. He was told that the secret formulae would ensure that the blind, the handicapped and the crippled of his land (this story, I should add, took place long ago, when,sadly, such politically incorrect words were the norm) were would all be able to read his edicts. “This sounds truly wonderful” the emperor announced (thinking that it would also be good if they could also read about the new taxes he intended to implement - for even in fairy tales, there is a need for financial prudence and long term sustainability).
And so the emperor announced that henceforth all official pronouncements, all new laws, all new taxes must comply with the WAI way (as the magic new approach became known. And so the lord chief justice issued the proclamation and the Knights of the Accessible Table rode through the kingdom to ensure that the magic was being used everywhere. “Anyone for fails to comply with the magic will be banished“, it was announced.
Life was good, in the land. And when one of the knights who was made blind in a battle complained that he could read the edicts but couldn’t understand them, he was ignored. And when rumours appeared that there were places in the far-flung regions of the empire where the magic wasn’t being used, but people could still read the emperor’s edicts, this was dismissed.
“But it’s true!” said a little boy. “There’s a new magic, that’s even better. It’s not the WAI way magic, it’s called ‘Inclusive design“.
And in my talk I described the story which the little boy told.
And this story is true, dear friends. For I was that little boy - and so, too, were David Sloan, Liddy Nevile, Jane Seale, EA Draffan, Helen Petrie, Caro Howell, Lawrie Phipps, Andy Heath, Hamilton Fraser, Elaine Swift and many others. For that little boy was a member of the Knights Who Gathered Evidence. And here is the tale I told, which is available on Google Video.
The Evidence From The Day
This tale introduced the talk I gave, in which I summarised the various peer0reviewed papers I’ve contributed to since 2004. I described the limitation of the WAI model and the WCAG guidelines, the evidence from a number of Web accessibility surveys which demonstrates that conforming with the guidelines does not necessarily provide accessible Web services and Web services which do not conform to the guidelines have been found to be very accessible. I went on to describe some of the challenges to be faced in understanding what accessibility means in the context of learning and cultural appreciation.
I was particularly pleased that the holistic approach to Web accessibility which I described seemed to apply so closely to the various case studies which were described during the day.This included:
- Andy Minnion’s talk on “New Media for Access and Participation by People with Learning Disabilities“. He concluded that universal access with a single interface and minor changes of style and appearance do not meet the needs of this group. Content itself needs to be adapted and technical compliance, while important for other groups, is not in itserlf and accessibility solution.
- Linda Ellis’s talk on the use of British Sign Language video guides to improve access for deaf visitors to Bantock House and Park. She argued that content aimed specifically for Deaf visitors was needed and that, as BSL is a language in its own right, information provided in BSL is needed, since Deaf visitors may find it difficult to understand information provided in English.
- Andrew Payne, The National Archives, on a project to maximise access to the Prisoner 4099 archives. Andrew mentioned how “Flash can be accessible, but you need to be careful”. Based on experiences such as this Andrew concluded by suggest that we “Don’t believe the box tickers”.
I very much agree with Andrew - don’t believe the box tickers. And don’t believe anyone who suggests there’s a simple solution to difficult and complex challenges - whether they be wicked elves or government policy makers!
Posted in Accessibility, EventsI introduced Pinky and Perky in a recent blog post and I used them when I presented my paper on “Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends” at the Bridging Worlds 2008 conference. And recently I used the dancing and singing pigs from the days of my youth when I gave the final invited plenary talk on “Realising The Potential of Web 2.0” at the “Nordlib 2.0 - Get Inspired by Web 2.0 for Libraries” conference held in Stockholm.
In Stockholm I used the video clip to illustrate how the dangers of an over-managed approach to popular culture wasn’t introduced in the Web era - Pinky and Perky were banned from the BBC in 1996: there was a general election about to be held and I assume the BBC were concerned about “pinko lefty” sentiments which they might try to influence young and impressionable minds (after all, where do you think the term pinko came from :-). This reference is available 47 minutes into the presentation (see Google Video or the Zentation link- where its synched to the slide on “Inappropriate Content“).
Now these two examples meant something to me and where likely to be new to the audience, thus avoiding reuse of cliched presentational devices. In the talk in Stockholm I also updated my slides a hour or so before delivering the talk, using a tweet and subsequent blog post from Karen Blakeman in which she commented that PageFlakes had added advertisments on its Web site overnight, without prior notice. “How would you respond if that happened to a Web 2.0 service you used in your organisation?” I asked the audience.
Non of these example made use of learning resources from a learning object repository. And for the objects I used (a YouTube video of Pinky and Perky, a photograph I had taken in a local museum and an interesting discussion point I’d came across a few hours previously) it would make little sense for me to deposit for reuse by others. Their value, I feel, comes from their relevance to me and my style of presentation, their (regional) links with the place I’m talking at and their timeliness. In fact I also made use of a Barack Obama image and the “Yes we can” slogan which again will time out very quickly.
Do we need repositories for learning objects, I might ask. Or are such repositories for the chore presentations (yet another talk on the same old subject to a large group of undergraduates), which won’t be used by speakers who want to provide fresh and relevant talks? On the other hand, perhaps this is mere indulgencies on the part of the speaker. After all, will a group of Nordic librarians ‘get’ Pinky and Perky? Mm, maybe I should have used the Swedish chef from the Muppets? or Abba, perhaps, if I want to go for the more popular British stereotypes of Swedish culture?
Posted in Events, Web2.0 Tagged: nordlib2008Earlier this year the JISC launched a debate of Libraries of the Future. UKOLN recently contributed to this debate by sponsoring the Mashed Library event which was facilitated by Owen Stephens, Imperial College. My contribution has been in exploring best practices for exploiting the potential of Library 2.0. I presented a paper on “Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends” at the Bridging Worlds 2008 conference on “Libraries in the 2.0 Age and Beyond” held at the National Library of Singapore and gave an updated version of the talk at the Nordlib 2.0 conference on “Nordlib 2.0 - Get Inspired by Web 2.0 for Libraries” held at Aula Magna, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden on 21st November 2008.
It was a privilege to be asked to give the final talk at the conference, and to have a full hour to describe my thoughts on how libraries should go about “Realising The Potential of Web 2.0“.
The conference blog provides more information about the conference and the talks which were given. The talks were streamed live and the videos are currently being edited and will be uploaded shortly. In addition I used a Flip camera to record my own talk and this is available on Google Video (and Blip.tv) and embedded below.
In addition I have used Zentation to synch the video with the PowerPoint slides, as illustrated below. The slides are also available on Slideshare.
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I hope these different versions of the talk are useful. But if I was to provide only one version of the talk what, I wonder, should it be. The PowerPoint file on the UKOLN Web site, the HTML equivalent, the Slideshare manifestation (with the ability to be embedded elsewhere), the original .AVI file (warning, large file), the Google Video or Blip.TV video of the talk or the synched version of the talk and the slides on Zentation? And is the provision of a variety of versions a sensible precaution at a time when the sustainability of Web 2.0 may be questionable or confusing to the end user?
Posted in Events, Web2.0 Tagged: nordlib2008It was last year on 5th December 2007 when I reported that I had been awarded the Information World Review’s Information Professional of the Year. With this year’s winner due to be announced at the Online Information 2008 conference in the next few days I thought it would be timely to summarise what I’ve been up to during my year as holder of the award (and also to update the portrait on the blog).
It’s been a very busy year for engaging with my user communities: I’ve given 32 presentations to date (with one more presentation to come) together with 2 online presentations. As can be seen from the accompanying map, talks have been given in Montreal (a half day blog workshop and a professional forum on openness at the Museums and the Web 2008 conference), Taiwan (an invited presentation on “Library 2.0: Opportunities and Challenges” at the NDAP 2008 conference), Singapore (an invited paper on “Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends” at the Bridging Worlds 2008 conference) and Stockholm (an invited presentation on “Realising The Potential of Web 2.0” at the Nordlib 2.0 conference), as well as many talks throughout the UK.
This year has also seen an increased amount of direct engagement with the cultural heritage sector. I’ve run a number of day-long workshops for MLA regional agencies, as well as additional events in Scotland and Wales. These have all gone done very well - one of the Sharing Made Simple workshops for example, was rated (on 1 score of 1 to 6) 5.91 for the facilitator’s knowledge of the subject, 5.82 for engagement with the participants and had an overall rating of 5.82.
The workshops have also provided an opportunity to gain a much better insight into the ways in which Web 2.0 can be used within the cultural heritage sector and also the barriers to its effective use. This information has being stored in a wiki (as opposed to the traditional approach of licking such potentially valuable information into the walled garden of flip charts!). A task on the new year will be to synthesise this information and to make the findings more widely available.
Reflections of my work activities have also been included in two books which I contributed to this year: “Web Accessibility: Practical Advice for the Library and Information Professional” by Jenny Craven (ed.) and “Information Literacy meets Library 2.0” by Peter Godwin and Jo Parker (eds).
This year has also seen me gaining more experiences in the support of Amplified Conferences and use of networked technologies to provide distance support, with a couple of examples of participation in online conferences.
In the past 12 months I have also published 190 blog posts on the UK Web Focus blog, with additional contributions made to the JISC PoWR blog.
It has been an enjoyable 12 months in my role as Information Professional of the Year, made particularly rewarding for seeing how the benefits of Web 2.0 are now becoming more widely accepted. As one person commented on one of the workshop I facilitated earlier this year “Brian in particular displayed a real knowledge and enthusiasm for the topic, which was infectious“. I’m looking forward to continue to inflect others with my experise and enthusiams for many year’s to come :-)
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