David Banes and E.A Draffan

Global Inclusive Design for All, Beyond

Accessible Design – ATBar

Global Inclusive Design for All?

Beyond Accessible Design

http://www.ginacarson.com/gc/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/UD-Testing-Cartoon.jpg

The Journey

http://www-edc.eng.cam.ac.uk/betterdesign/process/

The Need• Qatar – Mada Center for Assistive

Technologies - 83% Arabic speakers - 7,643 disabled (2010)

• Wider community

Qatar

(wikipedia)Chinese English Hindi Spanish Arabic0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

million speakers

Discover

Overall Visually Disabled Hearing Disabled Physically Disabled

Learning Disabled

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

22

81

48 8

19

4

78

6

14

32

10

18

70

32

5 2 4 5 6

Unaided Awareness in Qatar : Assistive Equipments/Aids

Visual AidHearing AidAid for physical disabilityAid for Learning disability

Those with learning difficulties appeared to be those who were most unaware of how AT could help.

Base: 211 52 49 87 119

% figures

Discover

Mobile phone

Television

Fixed line phone

Internet (on Laptop/ Computer)

Radio

Laptop

Desktop Computer

Internet (on Mobile phone)

Digital music player / iPod

Tablet PC (iPad/Galaxy Tab)

Ebook reader

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

100

99

96

86

86

79

74

48

39

30

6

75

89

59

64

43

57

49

26

27

23

4

Use of ICT products in the household in Qatar

Ever Used by disabled person Present in household

Base: 211 % figures

Ecosystem – addressing needs

Base: 211 % figures

AssessmentTrainingSupportProvisionPolicyAccessible contentAwarenessPartnershipResearchNetworks

Translate

Starting on the path to more complex assistive technology and to provide ideas for innovation

Requirements• Free Arabic voice for text to speech and screen reading • Spell checking and word prediction corpus expansion• Accessible Arabic digital content needs to be increased

in amount available and quality.• Optical Character Recognition work to be done• Speech Recognition improvements• AAC symbol systems to fit the culture and the language• Community Support for translation• Dissemination of information and resources that come

out of research

Create

http://thamesvalley.edublogs.org/files/2012/09/student-ideas-photo-1srziz7-1olfmyh.jpg

MADA has built many links with companies and

organisations such as universities –

students have ideas

Concepts

Culture

Demographics

Environment

Ability/Skills

Language

Activity

Ability and SkillsCompetency in ICT often learnt out of school – impacts on use in education (Thorne, 2003a) - multiplicity of devices using digital multimedia

Internet-mediated communication

Lack clear visual cues

Reduced social context

Misinterpretation

Demographics“People don’t come preassembled but are glued together by life” (Le Doux, J. 2002)• Everyday experiences change the way we

interact – level of digital literacy expertise

• Specific to the community• Need skills to negotiate the pitfalls

LanguageInternet-mediated global English – Netspeak (Crystal, D. 2001)• Informal and friendly may suit individualistic cultures

but “prove disturbing for unprepared members of a collectivist culture” (O’Dowd, 2001) o salutations, o assertive rather than questioning, o aggressive but apologetic. (Marcoccia, 2012) but…

• “anonymity can play a positive role in intercultural communication.” (Marcoccia, 2012) those who hesitate in F2F may communicate more when online.

CultureCulture is “essentially elusive, abstract and invisible” (Furstenberg et al., 2001)• Low-context (text and speech) v. High-context cultures

(visual cues and silence) e.g. North European v. Far Eastern and Arab (Würtz, 2005).

• Just because you are connected it does not mean you necessarily communicate enough to learn about a culture (Marcoccia, 2012) however…

• Cyberspace shares its own cultural practices within a virtual community – use English and follow the rules of netiquette? (Ersoz, 2009) but may mean you reduce cultural understanding.

High Context Cultures

Japan Arab Countries

Greece Spain Italy

England France

North America Scandinavian Countries

German-speaking Countries

Low Context Cultures Source: Hall, E. and M. Hall (1990) Understanding Cultural Differences

Use of diverse coiour

and imagery

More text consistent

colour and

layout

Develop• Open Source – Free but must be licensed

appropriately• Main developer and small contributions from

others • Make it possible to add small amounts of code

to help a project e.g. ATbar plugins• Need to have agreement about the code that

will be accepted• Open, online communication

ATbar

www.atbar.org

Access Tools pendrivePortable Apps distributed on USB flash drives • On-Screen Keyboard Portable• DSpeech Text-to-Speach• NVDA Screenreader • PowerTalk PowerPoint speech• VirtualMagnifyingGlass• WebbIE USB Version Available from https://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk/projects/access-tools/download

Desktop ATbar for Windows• Text to Speech and Screen Reading • Coloured Overlay and Ruler• Onscreen Keyboard• Magnification

Available from https://ar.atbar.org/desktop-atbar/

Documentation

www.arbar.org

Distribute

Mada

Education

Qatar Foundation

NGO’s

Ministries

Gulf AT Network

Solutions• Collaborative working• Good code - it is open source!• Problems shared – bug tracking, issues raised,

comments made, new ideas.• Social media – wikis for documentation,

tweets and blogs for news• Multiple means of representation, expression

and engagement to accommodate individual differences.

References• Furstenberg et al., (2001). Giving a virtual voice to the silent language of culture:

The CULTURA project http://llt.msu.edu/vol5num1/furstenberg • LeDoux, J. (2002). Synaptic self: How our brains become who we are. New York:

Penguin.• Thorne, S.L., (2003a). Artefacts and cultures-of-use in intercultural communication

http://llt.msu.edu/vol7num2/thorne • Crystal, D. (2001) Language and the Internet (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press)• O’Dowd, R. (2001) In search of a truly global network: hhtp://callej.org/journal/3-

1/o_dowd.html• Marcoccia, M. (2012) The internet, intercultural communication and cultural

variation. Language and Intercultural Communication, 12:4, 353-36 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2012.722101

• Ersoz, S. (2009) Cultures in Cyberspace: Interpersonal communication in a computer-mediated environment http://maltepe.academia.edu/SelvaEesoz/Papers/563123/Cultures_in_cyberspace_interpersonal_communication_in_a_computer-mediated_Envrionment

• Würtz, E. (2005). A cross-cultural analysis of websites from high-context cultures and low-context cultures. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(1), article 13.http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/wuertz.html

Thank YouDavid BanesMada Centerhttp://mada.org.qa/en/

ECS Accessibility Team http://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk