[laptop-accessibility] Thinking outside the box

[Seth Woodworth]

>
> 1. Design a feature in the XO that makes it easy to "plug in" any required
> additional equipment (for example, suppose it were decided that adding a
> Braille interface to every XO were not desireable or feasible, for cost or
> other reasons.  That means you need a way to plug in a separate Braille
> interface so that deaf-blind children can still use the XO, or so hearing
> blind children can still use the XO to learn Braille and use Braille to
> read text in situations when they don't want to use sound--for example if
> they're studying at home after their younger siblings have gone to bed and
> don't want to disturb them).
>

We did.  They are three USB ports.


>
> 2. Of course, design the "plug in" feature so that it is cheap, sturdy,
> affordable, etc.
>

We have a peripherals mailing list and several pages on the wiki.  Maybe we
should find people to suggest more accessibility devices to construct.

Seth


On Jan 9, 2008 1:50 PM, <ashettle at patriot.net> wrote:

> Duane King (with a quote from Albert Calahan) said:
>
> "> Perhaps there is a need for both. Common stuff that gets
> > used every day could be written to be optimal for audio control.
> > Random seldom-used things could get the normal treatment.
> Exactly.  You really don not need to an image application for example to
> have accessibility controls, at least not for the fully blind.  The reason
> the partially sighted have more tools and greater ease of use on today's
> desktop  is because as much as the sighted developers may want to help,
> they still find comfort in the gui.. and this leads to the sighted who are
> working on  helping out blind accessibility to invariably start using or
> adapting GUI items, or wasting time trying to get GUI's to work with
> audio...  so the idea of not using the GUI available seems to be a strange
> and impossible one."
>
> I don't speak computerese so I don't understand this "GUI" stuff -- but I
> do understand the general point here.  I see a similar situation when
> talking with hearing people about accessibility for deaf people.  When I
> started my current job, I asked my employer for a TTY that plugs directly
> into the phone jack.  The guy who came to help hook me up so I could use
> the phone (via TTY) kept wanting to plug in both a phone AND the TTY and
> was rather perplexed when I said I didn't need the phone at all, just the
> TTY.
>
> This is one more reason why designers and developers (for ANY product, not
> just the XO) should always be consulting carefully and directly with
> people with disabilities when designing accessibility features.  They may
> need feedback directly from disabled consumers in order to "shake up"
> their old ways of thinking and understand what the REAL needs are, not
> their preconceptions of the needs.
>
> I think it can also help to bear in mind general principles of "universal
> design" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_design).  Universal design
> is partly about making things (building, technology, whatever) more
> accessible to people with disabilities -- but it's also a philosophy, a
> paradigm, a way of thinking.  In the old approach, companies usually
> design a product meant for "average people" -- moderately educated (high
> school graduate or higher) non-disabled people between the ages of 18 and
> 65 in the "average" weight range with no particular health conditions etc
> etc. -- and then "add on" features for anyone who doesn't fit those
> standards as an afterthought. (Oh, we forgot about children.  Oh, we
> forgot about elderly people with arthritis.  Oh, we forgot blind people,
> deaf people, people with cerebral palsy, people with intellectual
> disabilities, etc)
>
> With "universal design" you take a new idea in the conceptualization stage
> and think FROM THE BEGINNING how to make it as usable as possible by as
> wide a number of people as possible, including people who just don't have
> a standard body size and shape, or a standard pair of eyes and ears and
> legs and hips and arms and hands working to standardized standards as
> described in the Requistion Manual for Standard Homo Sapiens.  So instead
> of building one entrance for people with legs that work to standardized
> specifications and a separate (ramped) entrance for everyone else, a
> building might be designed in a way that everyone can use the same
> entrance, while also being attractive and friendly to use for everyone.
> Or instead of building a computer to be used by people with standard eyes
> and ears and then going, "Ooops, this feature and that one isn't
> accessible, we need a fix now," it would be designed with accessibility in
> mind from the start.  (The above wikipedia link gives a general intro to
> the idea of "universal design" for both buildings and technology; then
> there's also
>
> http://www.aarp.org/families/home_design/a2004-03-23-whatis_univdesign.html
> which is really about houses, not technology, but the general philosophy
> is still roughly applicable.)
>
> It's too late obviously to start the XO off on universal design principles
> (that should have started 5-plus years ago).  But we can certainly move
> forward on those principles from here on out.
>
> At the same time, "universal design" does have certain inherent
> limitations.  There will always be exceptions, and exceptions to the
> exceptions.  Sometimes people with different disabilities -- or even the
> same disability but with different needs -- will need directly conflicting
> accommodations.  Audio for hearing blind people and visuals for sighted
> deaf people, for example.  To some extent you can solve this by simply
> providing both: a visual equivalent for every auditory feature, and an
> auditory equivalent for every visual feature, as well as a tactile
> equivalent for both in order to accommodate people who are both deaf AND
> blind.  But in other cases, it may not be possible to design universal
> accessibility into the standard product.  In other words, the goal of the
> perfectly universally accessible XO for every child may not be fully
> achievable (though we SHOULD be aiming for something as close to it as
> possible).  In some cases we might need to resort to a few "add on"
> features.  In this case, we would need to:
>
> 1. Design a feature in the XO that makes it easy to "plug in" any required
> additional equipment (for example, suppose it were decided that adding a
> Braille interface to every XO were not desireable or feasible, for cost or
> other reasons.  That means you need a way to plug in a separate Braille
> interface so that deaf-blind children can still use the XO, or so hearing
> blind children can still use the XO to learn Braille and use Braille to
> read text in situations when they don't want to use sound--for example if
> they're studying at home after their younger siblings have gone to bed and
> don't want to disturb them).
>
> 2. Of course, design the "plug in" feature so that it is cheap, sturdy,
> affordable, etc.
>
> 3. Figure out a way to make it easy for individual children in individual
> schools to request these plug in features (for one thing, make sure ALL
> children and ALL schools and ALL governments are aware they exist in the
> first place), and make it easy for governments to figure out how many they
> need to order and how to identify where they need to be sent.  Kids who
> need the plug-in feature should not be left out simply because they (and
> their teachers or schools) don't realize that they even have the option of
> asking for one.
>
> One approach: have an announcement in the XO laptop itself that this
> feature is available; this announcement would instruct students to "ask
> their teacher" for this feature, and would instruct teachers to "consult
> the contact person at the school who orders these computers."
>
> Sorry for throwing so many different ideas into one email.  I hope it was
> still possible to follow the multiple threads.
>
> Andrea Shettle, MSW
> ashettle at patriot.net
> http://wecando.wordpress.com
>
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> accessibility at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/accessibility
>
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