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Disabilities Access Category

App Accessibility: Are We at a Tipping Point?

March 11th, 2011 by Pam Gregory

Everyone is always talking about some new app, and I simply can’t keep up!

Recently, I ran across something called the “iPhone App Directory.” The British magazine, now in its sixth issue, reviews, rates and lists download costs for apps.  I was curious to see how many of the 947 reviewed apps had potential for assisting with most disabilities, and I ended up very pleased and surprised.

Dare I say we might have reached the tipping point in technological universal design?  It seemed there were many apps that could be beneficial to people with cognitive disabilities, although interestingly, some of those were not user friendly and therefore not recommended.

It was refreshing to see the number of new educational apps that may help persons with learning disabilities.  Knowing that this magazine couldn’t cover all the new apps, I launched a search for similar magazines and found a good site that listed endless publications that also rate and compare new apps.

Here are some apps that I thought were particularly interesting.

  • D2u Transcriber provides dictation and transcription on a mobile phone.
  • SendStuffNow offers cloud-based storage.
  • Conf provides help for conference attendees by tracking each session, list speakers, lists panels/discussions, and even provides GPS to show how far away you are from each event (Note to self: Download for CSUN conference!).
  • ClearRecord Premium is an audio recording app that is able to suppress background noise.
  • Wallet Advanced manages your website logins, credit card info and other private information.  It has strong encryption so that this information is safe. 
  • Similarly, there is Password Keeper, which is a simple tool that stores your password and is also secure.
  • Flashcards App, teaches new vocabulary, then tests you, and even checks your daily progress.
  • Voice Cards are Not Flashcards!! allows you to create voice flash cards with an autoplay and shake option.
  • WordWarp (which I actually have) is a game where you create as many words as possible from a selection of letters.  If you’re stuck, just press the “warp” button and it will help you out. Also, a very useful game for persons with head injuries.
  • Pill Time reminds you to take your medications, and breaks up your medications by medication type, ailment concerned, dosage, frequency and the specific time of day.  It also provides a medication countdown, which counts what medicines you have taken, and what you have left to take in a day.
  • Living Well with Arthritis provides helpful tips to manage your arthritis.  This app was rated superior for usability.  It has many features, including routines, basic understanding of your type of arthritis and how it affects your body, and teaches how you can deal with your arthritis better.
  • iCanBass offers a guitar interface and allows you to pull strings.  This app made me think of Paul Schroeder of the American Foundation for the Blind, who is an avid guitar player.
  • Music For Users provides ambient music to affect your brainwaves.  This app has is programmed with certain tasks, which act as an “alarm” for project management.
  • LocateMeNow provides you with your location, and is user friendly and fast. If I had only had this when I first moved to DC!
  • MobileRSS gathers and manages your selected feeds and presents them in one place for easy monitoring.
  • Breaking News with Push delivers breaking news.  This reminds me of a story Al Sonnenstrahl, a life-long Deaf telecommunications advocate, told me of how, despite being in a car pool and working all morning  with colleagues, when RFK was shot after midnight in 1968, he had no idea. His deafness had pushed him out of the information loop..
  • PhotoDiary enables you to track your day with photographs, and allows you to add captions to the photos, and date and time-stamp the photo.  I would love to see user testing on how people with cognitive disabilities who need help with their daily routine could use this app!
  • PhotoMashup has great potential for people who are Deaf and to other visual learners by allowing you to arrange your photos, make montages, rotate, enlarge and move photos, and even provides the ability to include drop shadow and customize border colors.
  • iStuff is a highly visual method of managing tasks by providing 12 categories that are named based on time and function. It provides simple calendar views, an in-box for new tasks, tags to work on several tasks together, and overdue tasks, which require you to pay attention.  This task-management app is rich in features, and rated high on usability.  Another project management tool that is also highly rated is SideTacts, which integrates phone, e-mail and SMS into a single app.  It also provides audio, text and video notes, while continually synching with the basic apps on every off-the-shelf iPhone.
  • Easy Group Text allows you to group your contacts and text everyone in that group at the same time.  There is a similar app, GroupSMS!, which does the same for SMS.  Another app is FogHorn, which is a simple and user-friendly app that allows you to enter phone numbers for multiple people, and hold text chats where everyone sees all the messages.  FogHorn also allows you to store your chats, archive your chats online, and add extra information about the participants.
  • Today Screen can simplify your day by taking all of your appointments in the iPhone calendar, and putting them into a user-friendly view.  It even color codes past, present and future events;
  • 15,000 Useful Phrases is perfect for those whose English is a second language. It can provide assistance in the much needed gap between ESL and real English conversations--a great social skills app.
  • Lonely Planet San Francisco Guide is a one-stop resource for visiting a city. It is said to be even more helpful than a travel book and received rave reviews.  It includes detailed maps (online and offline). I personally love the Lonely Planet guides, and the San Francisco guide is just one of many cities offered.  Maptual allows you to view various points of interest on a map using the Open Street Map interface. Like Lonely Planet, Maptual provides information about cities all around the world.
  • Find A Pharmacy  will locate a pharmacy for you based on your geographic location, indicate how far the pharmacy is, and provides a Google Map to direct you to the pharmacy.
  • QuickPaste ranks very high on usability and allows you copy multiple records (the iPhone app limits you to one record at a time) for pasting into other apps. A good tool for everyone, especially for those with hand dexterity issues.
  • Pic-Z Tag is great for conference or meeting attendees, especially people with speech disabilities. It lets you design a name tag (templates provided).  When you meet someone new, you can just flash your iPhone to introduce yourself.
  • Ring Finger is a great speed dialing program that you can program time and automated calling.  For example, if you needed to call in to your job coach each day at 1:30 p.m., it will automatically connect you with your job coach at 1:30.


If you have used any of these apps and have found them to provide access, I would love to hear from you.  Also, I would love to hear from you about accessible apps that weren’t listed—it would be great to have one ongoing list of apps that have disability implications.

Are there any groups that are studying new apps for accessibility? If you’re an app developer, let me know if you are designing to include the 54 million Americans with disabilities.  My next step is to remember my password so I can download some new apps! Happy apping!

(Cross posted on the Official FCC Blog.)

Popular Science’s “100 Best Innovations of the Year”

November 22nd, 2010 by Pam Gregory

 

Geek Alert! Popular Science is out with its annual “100 Best Innovations of the Year.” Reliability cool any year, this year’s list is also notable for a number of innovations that stand to make technology more accessible and lives easier for the disabled.

A few of my personal favorites:

  • Prosthetic hands, by ProDigits, developed by roboticists that moved the electronics from the palm and put them into the fingers—such a leap forward that people can eventually type with their new hand.
  • Siri, a personal assistant app that uses natural-language speech recognition to carry out complex demands— “Make a reservation for four at Chef Geoff’s at 7pm Saturday night,” for example.
  • Google Goggles, an app that enables Web searches based on images captured by your smartphone.
  • The GE VSCAN, a mobile ultrasound machine about the size of a cell phone. Particularly interesting given that an estimated 500 million people will use mobile health apps by 2015.
  • The iPad (of course).
  • The ecoATM cell phone recycler, which lets you turn in your used handset and get paid for its value.
  • A wireless phone charging station — just place your phone on a pad!
  • Wikitude, an augmented reality browser that uses geo-location data to identify places, sites and buildings.
  • A telescope eye implant that can restore a “severe vision impairment” to a “moderate vision impairment.”
  • User-friendly crutches . Developed by Jeff Webber (who was on the team that designed Herman Millers Aeron chair), these fundamentally changing the shape of the crutch from a “T” to an “A” frame.
  • A Google search engine for television, which gathers metadata with keywords. It was developed on an open platform allowing developers to make more accessible television guides or even translate closed captioning, .
  • A crime-busting hardware attachment for the iPhone, which uses biometrics such as iris recognition, fingerprints, etc. Now police can take a photo of a suspect and use facial recognition software to match to those awful “WANTED” posters.
  • A wireless system for IPTV called WiDi, for wireless display.
  • A new diagnostic technology that allows Kenmore washer and dryers to send data to a technician over a phone line, and depending on the problem, the technician can talk you through the fix, or just send a repair person.
  • And finally, a new web language, HTML 5 that allows browsers to display video on a computer, phone, iPad, without having to install software such as Flash.

Alan Gregerman, author of Surrounded by Geniuses once said, “Like Benjamin Franklin, we have to stand in a storm to be truly inspired (or electrified)”. He could have been talking about just such a list. Onward and upward!

The Gold Rush in Kansas

November 22nd, 2010 by Pam Gregory

They’re going for the gold in Kansas, with plans to make broadband available to everyone in the Sunflower State.

I recently was fortunate enough to witness this gold rush first-hand by attending the Kansas Broadband Summit, where current state of broadband deployment was discussed, as well as the plans for future deployment of broadband services. Stanley Adams, the broadband planning manager for the state’s Department of Commerce reported that Kansas received over $250 million in broadband deployment grants and loans from the National Telecommunications and Infrastructure Administration (NTIA), which is part of the Department of Commerce and the Rural Utility Service (RUS), which is part of the Department of Agriculture. That’s a lot of amount of money for a smaller state, but Kansas has a significant rural population, and its leaders are aiming to make broadband available to all.

I learned a lot from the Kansan stakeholders who attended the conference. Their plan is comprehensive, covering everything from detailed mapping, to provider validation, and even adoption plans. And like any time you get a room of stakeholders engaged, new ideas were sparked on how to improve the plan. As an FCC staff person, it was a thrill for me to see and feel the excitement of a state actually implementing its broadband plan. And as with the beginnings of California’s gold rush in 1879, the new broadband gold rush in Kansas promises great benefits to the state citizenry . ,“From a business standpoint, it [broadband] means increased opportunities for entrepreneurship and new small-business development,” Kansas Lt. Governor Findley said. “How many entrepreneurs out there have the next big-idea, but have no way to share it?” Kansans know that broadband is just as valuable as gold, and know the wealth it can bring.

Stanley Adams and Duncan Friend, both Kansas employees leading their state’s broadband initiative, invited me to speak on a panel about disability access. They said that they wanted Kansas’ broadband to be accessible and usable to all of its citizens, especially Kansans with disabilities. The audience’s questions on accessible deployment were universally thoughtful and insightful—they all saw the importance of an accessible broadband plan and knew such a plan would collaterally help other populations, such as seniors, non-native English speakers, educational and medical institutions, and the business community. The panel was so popular that we gave a repeat presentation later that same day.

To implement its plan, Kansas has partnered with Connected Nation, a 501(c)(3) organization. Tom Feree, the chief operations officer of Connected Nation said, “We exist because we believe that states, communities, families and individuals can realize great economic and social advantages when we accelerate broadband availability in unserved areas and increase broadband use in all areas, rural and urban, alike.” His statement again reminded me of the promise of 1849 gold rush, which lead to the building of our nation’s railway system, which in some ways is being replaced by fiber optics today.

Kansas has prioritized Community Anchor Institutions (CAIs) such as K-12 schools, libraries, healthcare centers, public safety entities, colleges and universities and other government and non-governmental organizations. I can’t help but wonder how many of those “other” organizations are entities that serve people with disabilities. The chief technology officer of the Kansas School for the Deaf, Joe Oborny, attended knowing how much is at stake in Kansas’ broadband plan. The ability for students to use video for calls, video conferences with excellent teachers of the deaf, and to connect with the state and nation are critical to a successful educational institution.

As I look back on the conference, I am confident that the leadership will follow through with its commitment for an accessible broadband plan. The stakes are too high not to. Soon after my return to Washington, Kansas contacted me asking how to develop more partnerships with the disability community, which demonstrates to me that they mean what they say in Kansas: All Kansans will be able to access broadband. For that, I give them a gold medal.

Wrapping up Open Developer Day

November 12th, 2010 by Greg Elin - Chief Data Officer

 On Monday, November 11, the FCC successfully held (we think) a first-of-its-kind event in the U.S. federal government! 

FCC Open Developer Day attracted about 100 web developers and other technology professionals to our headquarters building in Washington. We spent a day learning about open data sets and APIs, brainstorming together about how they could be combined to benefit citizens with new apps, and starting coding projects toward those goals.

One focus of FCC Open Developer Day was accessible technology. By facilitating the use of fully-accessible technologies - in line with the FCC’s support for our Accessibility and Innovation Initiative - the FCC is promoting innovation and collaborative problem-solving in the field. One exciting fact: FCC Open Developer Day marked the first time many developers in attendance sat and chatted as a group with others using assistive technologies.

The most valuable take-away from this first foray was the opportunity to build the FCC developer community. The momentum from this event will hopefully help bring the popular activity of Developer Day and "hack-a-thons" to the a federal agency. We were grateful, and a bit surprised, at the number of people who came in from out of town to this event.  It was incredibly exciting to the see the Commission Meeting Room, usually set up for formal hearings and presentations, organized in tables for eight people and laptops plugged into power strips.

Here are some cool things we got from having the event:


One day is too short to get much hacking done, so we are planning to do more developer days to make them a regular activity at the FCC.

P.S. Eager to participate in a gov-related developer day? December 4 is International Open Data Hackathon. FCC will be there. Will you?

(This is cross-posted on The Official FCC Blog)

Seeking Nominations for the Chairman’s AAA

November 9th, 2010 by Pam Gregory

 At the July 19th event celebrating the anniversary of the ADA, Chairman Genachowski launched the Accessibility and Innovation Initiative and announced the establishment of the Chairman’s Awards for Advancement of Accessibility (or Chairman’s AAA).  The Chairman’s speech, "Empowering Americans with Disabilities Through Technology" was presented at the FCC’s Americans with Disabilities Act 20th Anniversary Celebration. The A&I Initiative and the Chairman’s AAA are based on recommendations in the National Broadband Plan.

The AAA Awards will be given to pioneers in accessibility and innovations.  Contenders could be individuals or organizations, public and/or private entities, academics, students, application developers, and represent mainstream or assistive technology industries.  In addition to recognizing the development of individual mainstream or assistive technologies introduced into the marketplace, the awards could also recognize other accessibility advancements, such as the development of standards or best practices that foster accessibility, or the development of a new consumer clearinghouse of disability-related products and services.  We also believe that teaching modules and tools that could help students learn universal design and other accessibility practices could be worthy of recognition.

The Chairman’s AAA is open to any individual or entity in the public or private sector.  This year, the product, service, technology, or practice must be available and promoted publicly until May 1, 2011.  In the future, we will consider available and publicly promoted advancements that occur during a 12 month period prior to the award’s announcement. 

We encourage individuals and entities to contact us with ideas and nominations, which can be self-nominations or for others.  We will be accepting guest blog posts and guest v-logs on this topic, and parties can also file nominations in CG Docket 10-100.  We will be forming an internal cross-bureau advisory group to review the nominations and advise the Chairman on the awards. Employees of the Commission and their families are not eligible for this competition.  For more information please contact me at AccessInfo [at] fcc [dot] gov.  The Chairman looks forward to hearing from you!

(This is cross-posted on The Official FCC Blog)

Generating Civic Capital: FCC’s Open Developer Day

November 5th, 2010 by Thomas Brown

The National Broadband Plan called on government to “leverage broadband to experiment with new ideas and technologies to extend opportunities for engagement.” In that spirit, we’re excited to highlight the FCC’s Open Developer Day, coming up this Monday, November 8.

All of us at the FCC, and especially our Chief Data Officer, Greg Elin, have been focused on the power and possibilities of making more data available to citizens, tinkerers and developers; Open Developer Day will be yet another demonstration of that focus. As Greg highlighted in a blog post last week, the event will bring together citizen developers and engineers from Yahoo! to develop a clearinghouse Web application intended to make it as easy as possible for people with disabilities, families, and support professionals to find information about accessible technologies. It will also support the Plan’s recommendation that the FCC “create an ongoing web presence to allow participants to share information about public and private accessibility efforts and discuss accessibility barriers and inaccessible products.”

(To RSVP for Open Developer Day, click here.)

We hope that Open Developer Day will inspire other federal agencies to hold their own Open Developer Days and apply similarly innovative approaches to tackling public challenges. Joshua Tauberer, who founded the congressional transparency website Govtrack.us in his spare time (!), has said that “open data is civic capital.” Platforms for effectively using open data are civic capital too, and we look forward to seeing what our participants on Monday generate.

Gearing Up for Open Developer Day

November 4th, 2010 by Greg Elin - Chief Data Officer

 This coming Monday the commission will play host to a one-of-a-kind event in federal government. We’re calling on coders, programmers and developers of all stripes to join us at FCC headquarters for our first ever Open Developer Day. This will be a rare opportunity for developers in the public and private sectors to join forces. Out of this gathering will come innovations, collaborations, and continued open government partnership.

Central to Monday’s event will be three tracks weaving their way through the day. Equipped with our laptops and the fellowship of sharp friends we’ll be working through accessibility solutions and open APIs; and we’ll host a Free Develop, an open-ended developer free-for-all. FCC tech minds and leadership will open the event, situating our Developer Day within the larger open government movement.

Programmers from the Yahoo! Developer Network will be on hand to demo their tools and provide guidance. They will give an overview of YQL, their query language which allows developers to “access and shape data across the Internet through one simple language, eliminating the need to learn how to call different APIs.” We will also see a demonstration of their YUI Library, a set of “utilities and controls … for building richly interactive web applications.”

An undertone, pervading a significant strand of the discussion, will be the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. In signing the act last month, President Obama said the act “will make it easier for people who are deaf, blind or live with a visual impairment to do what many of us take for granted…  It sets new standards so that Americans with disabilities can take advantage of the technology our economy depends on.”

The full day event will start at 9:00am and take place in Washington, DC at FCC headquarters. All developers are welcome free of charge. Bring a laptop and RSVP soon. If you’re not in the DC area and are unable to make it down here, we will be live streaming portions of the day. You can also join the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag #fccdevday. To email questions write to livequestions [at] fcc [dot] gov. You can participate by visiting Accessible Event, and entering the event code 005202376. For any TTY issues please contact Pam Gregory (pam.gregory [at] fcc [dot] gov).

Start getting excited for Monday. We’ll see you there.

Lifted By the Cloud

November 2nd, 2010 by Elizabeth Lyle - Special Counsel for Innovation, Wireless Telecommunications Bureau

By Elizabeth Lyle, Pam Gregory, and Jamal Mazrui

President Obama has repeatedly made clear his commitment to equal opportunity and full inclusion for people with disabilities in all aspects of life, including access to technology.  He most recently made this point when he signed into law the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, which provides access to advanced technologies for people with disabilities.

Chairman Genachowski has embraced this commitment wholeheartedly.  In addition to leading the charge on implementing the recently passed legislation, in July he established of the Accessibility and Innovation Initiative, as recommended in the FCC's National Broadband Plan.  The A&I Initiative promotes collaborative problem solving and uses the tools of public and private sector innovation to address accessibility barriers.

As part of this initiative, on October 21 the FCC partnered with the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities at the University of Colorado and Raising the Floor, an international coalition of individuals and organizations who promote internet accessibility for people with disabilities, to launch "Lifted by the Cloud:  Visions of Cloud-Enhanced Accessibility" on GSA's new challenge.gov platform.  The challenge solicits short multimedia presentations from the public on their visions of how cloud computing can create new opportunities for people with disabilities.  Find out more information about this challenge, which will run until May 1, 2011.

To understand what an opportunity cloud computing can be for people with disabilities, you first have to understand the barriers that people with disabilities currently face to communications technology.  The National Broadband Plan found that only 42 percent of people with disabilities use broadband at home, compared to 65 percent nationwide.  A remarkable 39% of all non-adopters have a disability.

There are many reasons for this disparity.  Among them is the fact that devices, services, software, and content are often not accessible to people with disabilities.  Furthermore, assistive technologies used by people with disabilities - such as Braille displays, augmentative and alternative communication devices, and screen readers --  are often very expensive, not interoperable with the latest technologies, and are difficult to find and repair.

So how can cloud computing help? Cloud computing and other platforms can allow people to access the assistive technologies they need anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

Imagine the cloud knowing and storing your personal preferences (in a secure way) so that any material on the web that you wanted to access would be accessible to you.  If you are blind, you could pull down an audio version of any document on the web; and if you are deaf, any video you would access would be captioned.   For others, information could be simplified, highlighted, or translated into other languages, including sign language.   The cloud could allow consumers to choose from an ever expanding choice of third-party open source and commercial software applications that can provide access in new and innovative ways.  In short, the cloud will allow innovation and competition to address the access needs of people with disabilities and ensure that they share fully in the benefits of the broadband age.

To make this vision a reality, industry, developers, innovators, technologists, and researchers must understand the needs of people with disabilities.  Government can help by facilitating collaborations and participating in interdisciplinary conferences and workshops, such as those sponsored last month by the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities and Silicon Flatirons at the University of Colorado and sponsored in September by the Interagency Committee on Disability Research, overseen by the Department of Education.

We also need to make cloud computing and its implications for people with disabilities understandable to a broader range of policymakers and the public.  The challenge that the FCC, the Coleman Institute, and Raising the Floor just launched is an effort to tap into the imagination and ingenuity of students, filmmakers, developers, and others to help make manifest the benefits of the cloud for people with disabilities and to chart a path for moving forward.

We need your help to ensure that all Americans, including people with disabilities, have full access to technology and are truly lifted by the cloud.  We urge anyone who might be interested in participating in this challenge or encouraging others to participate to go to challenge.gov or contact us directly.

(This is cross-posted on the Official FCC Blog)

The Power of Partnerships

October 29th, 2010 by Pam Gregory

We had an inspiring couple of days in Colorado last week.  On October 21 in Westminister, we participated in the 10th Annual Coleman Institute Conference, entitled “All Together Now:  The Power of Partnerships in Cognitive Disability & Technology.” 

While at the conference, Pam announced that the FCC was partnering with the Coleman Institute and Raising the Floor, an international coalition of individuals and organizations who promote internet accessibility for people with disabilities, to launch a challenge to the public to submit short multimedia presentations on their visions of how cloud computing can create new opportunities.  The challenge, titled "Lifted by the Cloud: Visions of Cloud-Enhanced Accessibility" is the Commission’s first challenge using GSA’s new challenge.gov platform.  More information can be found here.  Preceding Pam’s announcement of the challenge, Elizabeth Lyle, Special Counsel for Innovation in the Wireless Bureau, gave remarks on “The National Broadband Plan and Access for People with Cognitive Disabilities.”

We also participated in a pre-conference workshop in Boulder on October 20, entitled “Implications of Cloud Computing for People with Cognitive Disabilities,” which was sponsored by the Coleman Institute and Silicon Flatirons.  Jamal participated on a panel on “Technical Opportunities and Commercial Infrastructure, including the Farther Future” and Elizabeth participated on a panel entitled “Legal and Regulatory Barriers to Accessibility Technology in the Cloud.”

The Power of Partnerships was truly an apt title – for both days.  The Coleman Institute and Silicon Flatirons created a powerful learning environment by bringing together people with disabilities, advocates, families, researchers, academics, developers, technologists, and policymakers – and we are happy that the Accessibility and Innovation Initiative could be a part of it!

The National Broadband Plan and Access for People with Cognitive Disabilities

October 22nd, 2010 by Elizabeth Lyle - Special Counsel for Innovation, Wireless Telecommunications Bureau

Elizabeth Lyle delivered these remarks to the Tenth Annual Coleman Institute Conference in Westminister, Colorado.

I recently had the chance to work on the accessibility recommendations in the National Broadband Plan that the Federal Communications Commission released in March of this year.

Last year in the Recovery Act, Congress and the President charged the Commission with writing a plan to bring high-speed Internet and its benefits to all Americans.

As FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski would say, broadband is our generation’s major infrastructure challenge. It’s like roads, canals, railroads and telephones for previous generations.

Historically, it has taken years – even decades – for people with disabilities to have anything close to equal access to communications. Designers of equipment, services, and networks have often failed to consider accessibility issues in the design and development stage – and retrofit solutions are expensive.

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Capture The Phone Numbers Using Your Camera Phone

If you have a camera and a 2D matrix code reader on your mobile phone, you can capture the FCC Phone numbers right to your phone by following these three easy steps:
Step 1: Take a photograph of one of the codes below using the camera on your mobile phone.
Step 2: Use your phone's Datamatrix or QR Code reader to decode the information on the photograph. Please note, these code readers are device specific and are available to download on the internet.
Step 3: Store the decoded address information to your phone's address book and use it with your Maps or GPS application.

Datamatrix and QR FCC Phones