# E-Access Bulletin – Issue 197, February 2018

Access to technology for all, regardless of ability.

For HTML and text versions of all previous issues, please [visit the
e-Access Bulletin Archive](http://headstar.com/eab/archive.html).

Thanks to Dr. Nick Freear for maintaining the Bulletin Archive.

E-Access Bulletin is produced with the support of [Thomas Pocklington
Trust](http://www.pocklington-trust.org.uk/).

To forward this free publication to others, use our forward link underneath
the end of the bulletin instead of your email application’s ‘forward’
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Please email questions, comments, article ideas and news leads to:

[eaccessbulletin@gmail.com](mailto:eaccessbulletin@gmail.com) .

## Issue 197 contents.

Section One: News.

01: Government asks the experts for guidance in assistive technology
inquiry.

- Assistive technology in the spotlight to help close disability employment
gap.

02: “Born accessible” e-books is the grand plan for new e-publishing
tool.

- DAISY Consortium’s new system tests for accessibility errors.

03: Apps combine forces to give visually impaired passengers a smoother
ride.
- Transit data service teams up with sighted video service app.

News in Brief:

04: Tech Support – Google Disability Support Team; 05: Virtual World –
VR cane developed; 06: Coding By Voice – Hands-free video game developed.

Section Two: Research.

07: Inclusive fitness equipment – an exercise in missed opportunity.

A new report from Thomas Pocklington Trust and Rica has uncovered a vast
lack of accessible fitness equipment that can be used by people with sight
loss. Gyms, leisure centres and machines available for home purchase were
all found to be lacking, signalling a continued problem across the fitness
industry. E-Access Bulletin spoke to Thomas Pocklington Trust and Rica about
the report to find out what can be done.

[Contents ends].

## Section One: News.


### 01: Government asks the experts for guidance in assistive technology
inquiry.

Accessibility professionals and assistive technology users have given the UK
Government recommendations in an inquiry organised by the government’s
Work and Pensions Select Committee.

The inquiry looked at how technology can help improve employment rates among
those with disabilities, as part of the government’s response to a report
on the disability employment gap.

During the inquiry, held at the House of Commons, assistive technology users
were asked how technology supports them in the workplace, and two other
‘witnesses’ – Robin Christopherson, Head of Digital Inclusion at
technology charity AbilityNet, and Hector Minto, Senior Accessibility
Evangelist at Microsoft – were called on to answer questions from a panel
of MPs.

Christopherson talked about the usefulness of mainstream technology in
providing assistive functions, explaining that mobile phone apps now allow
him to do what used to require thousands of pounds’ of specialist
assistive technology.

He told the Committee, “We have really moved away from the idea of
‘specialist’ being what disabled people need, to having to get the right
advice, the right recommendations, to help people customise what they have
on their desk in front of them or in their pocket”.

Responding to a question from Alex Burghart MP, on how government and
employers can keep up-to-date with evolving assistive technologies, Minto
said: “I don’t think you can claim to be disability confident, both in
terms of accessing customers with disabilities or employing people with
disabilities, if you don’t have basic technological experience.”

Minto also urged the need not to overlook users of older assistive
technologies. He said: “There is a huge base of people using legacy
software and legacy AT. So, we must make sure we’re not saying,
‘Everyone move across to the built-in mainstream solutions’. People are
still using JAWS, NVDA and Dragon Dictate, and our systems must still
support those people rather than forcing them to use modern technology.”

In the first part of the inquiry, a cross-sector group of assistive
technology users and trainers spoke about their experiences. Asked how she
uses assistive technology in the workplace, senior civil servant Jo-Ann
Moran said: “It is my equivalent of free access into a building …
Effectively, assistive technology is my enabler to maintain full-time
employment.”

However, Moran also said that assistive technology systems used in some
parts of government are not reliable enough, explaining that this
unreliability has held her back in her job: “My problem now is I will not
go for promotion because of my IT. I am a top performer in my grade and I
keep getting told, ‘Come on, go for it,’ but I cannot, because I am just
not going to be reliable. If I go for a job working for a minister, a
minister is not going to accommodate me when I say, ‘Sorry, my computer is
not working today.’ That is where my barrier is at the moment.”

E-Access Bulletin asked Christopherson the inquiry signalled a step forward
for awareness of assistive technology. He said: “It is encouraging to see
accessibility, assistive technology and the importance of digital inclusion
being highlighted in this inquiry. For far too long (nearly two decades now)
we have had legislation without action or impact. The result, we hope, will
be more enforcement, more proactivity in applying adjustments to assist
applicants and employees to perform at their best, and more business
benefits for companies everywhere as they embrace inclusion and diversity in
their products and processes.”

In a written response provided as part of the inquiry, AbilityNet CEO Nigel
Lewis also explained the assistive benefits of mainstream technology,
stressing the need for personalised recommendations in the workplace. Lewis
wrote: “Giving disabled people access to the correct assistive technology
means they will succeed in their role, which in turn raises awareness,
challenges prejudices, promotes inclusion and encourages diversity in the
workplace.”

[Read the full transcript of the inquiry at the parliament.uk
website](https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/work-and-pensions-committee/inquiries/parliament-2017/assistive-technology-17-19/).

[Watch a video extract of the inquiry at
parliamentlive.tv](http://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/1f0c6ad9-db0e-436d-856f-70bb2f65e561?in=10:24:00&out=00:00:00).

[Find out more about the inquiry at AbilityNet’s
website](https://www.abilitynet.org.uk/news-blogs/inaccessible-websites-keep-disabled-people-out-work-abilitynet-tells-government-taskforce).

[Comment on the ‘government technology inquiry’ story now at e-Access
Bulletin Live](http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=1463).

### 02: “Born accessible” e-books is the grand plan for new e-publishing
tool.

A free tool to test e-book content for accessibility errors has been
launched.

The ‘Ace’ tool has been developed by the DAISY Consortium, a global
organisation working to improve and promote accessible publishing and
reading. The aim is to improve e-book usability for a wider audience and
eliminate the barriers to reading e-books encountered by people with
disabilities.

Ace works by assessing the content of e-books published in the widely used
EPUB format. Automated checks are performed and accessibility issues are
flagged-up in a report generated by the tool.

The hope is that the tool will assist the publishing industry and authors in
creating e-books that conform to the EPUB Accessibility specification.
Speaking to e-Access Bulletin, DAISY Consortium’s Chief Operating Officer
Avneesh Singh said: “We expect the publishing industry to use Ace widely,
integrate it in their production workflows and improve accessibility of all
their publications over time, leading to ‘born accessible’
publications.”

However, Ace’s developers are keen to stress the tool’s limitations as
well as its benefits. They point out that Ace performs only automated checks
and does not provide a complete picture of all possible accessibility
violations, and should therefore be used alongside other forms of testing
and evaluation.

Singh said: “Automated tools like Ace can help in identifying the
accessibility issues and greatly help in reducing human labour involved in
manual accessibility testing, but it cannot completely replace the human
intervention and judgement. We have provided this statement to make it clear
that one cannot claim conformance to standards like WCAG by just using Ace.
Ace will definitely provide great help in accessibility inspection, but it
will not replace human driven checks and human judgement.”

An additional manual inspection tool is also being developed by DAISY
Consortium, Singh said. This tool uses the accessibility reports generated
by Ace and guides the user through the manual inspection process.

Grant money from the Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities project helped to
fund the development of the Ace tool. DAISY was selected as one of the
winners of the project, which awarded $20 million to 29 non-profits
developing accessible technology.

[Find more information about Ace at the Inclusive Publishing
website](https://inclusivepublishing.org/toolbox/accessibility-checker/getting-started/).

[Find out more at the DAISY Consortium website](http://www.daisy.org/).

[Comment on the ‘Ace e-book tool’ story now at e-Access Bulletin
Live](http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=1461).

### 03: Apps combine forces to give visually impaired passengers a smoother
ride.

Popular global transportation app Moovit has partnered with Be My Eyes, an
app service providing sighted assistance to visually impaired people, aiming
to make transit easier for users with sight loss

Moovit, which is used by over 120 million people in 80 countries and claims
to be ‘the world’s number one transit app’, helps people move around
cities by providing users with transport information, such as bus and train
trackers and real-time updates. Be My Eyes connects visually impaired users
with sighted volunteers to answer queries through a video call– for
example, checking the sell-by date on food packaging. The service is used by
over 60,000 people with sight loss and has over 876,000 sighted volunteers.

The partnership means that anyone using Moovit can now navigate to Be My
Eyes through a new menu command, so that users can combine the two services.
For example, someone with sight loss who is using Moovit to find out bus
arrival times can then switch to Be My Eyes to help them get on the correct
bus and find a seat once on-board.

After working with a blind developer, Adi Kushnir, to make the service more
accessible for visually impaired users, all Moovit screens were made
compatible with Apple’s VoiceOver and Android’s TalkBack features in
2016.

In a separate collaboration, Be My Eyes has also teamed up with Microsoft,
to offer users access to the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk for
technology-related queries. The latest update of the app features an
additional ‘Specialized Help’ menu that takes users directly to the
Disability Answer Desk, where they can ask a dedicated team for assistance
with Microsoft services and products.

[Find out more about at the Be My Eyes website](https://www.bemyeyes.com/).

[Read more about Moovit at the app’s website](https://moovitapp.com/).

[Comment on the ‘Moovit and Be My Eyes’ story at e-Access Bulletin
Live](http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=1459).

## News in Brief:

04: Tech Support: Google has launched a disability support team to answer
accessibility queries from users. The team will answer questions about using
separate assistive technology with Google products, as well as Google’s
own accessibility features, such as ChromeVox or TalkBack. The support team
will answer questions by email and are available Monday-Friday, working on
Pacific Standard Time. To contact the team, email:
[disability-support-external@google.com](mailto:disability-support-external@google.com).

[Read more about the support team at the Google Accessibility
Blog](https://www.google.com/accessibility/blog/).

05: Virtual World: A cane that lets people with sight loss experience
virtual reality has been developed by Microsoft. Named the Canetroller, the
system features a ‘haptic cane controller’, which generates sounds,
physical resistance and vibrations when it encounters objects in a virtual
landscape, simulating how a cane behaves in the real world. One aim of the
project is to help people with sight loss practice navigation skills in a
controlled environment.

[Read more about the Canetroller at the Microsoft Research
portal](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/enabling-people-visual-impairments-navigate-virtual-reality-haptic-auditory-cane-simulation-2/).

06: Coding By Voice: A developer has coded a video game without using his
hands, instead using only his voice, through a customised version of
speech-recognition software. In an interview with technology news website
Ars Technica, Rusty Moyher explained how he was unable to use his hands to
code after severe repetitive strain injury (RSI), but discovered a system
from developer Travis Rudd, who converted Dragon NaturallySpeaking to write
code using just his voice. Moyher’s resulting game was ‘Dig Dog’,
where players control a dog hunting for treasure.

[Read more about Rusty Moyher’s hands-free coding at Ars
Technica](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/02/coding-without-a-keystroke-the-hands-free-creation-of-a-full-video-game/).

[Section One ends].

## Notice: Thomas Pocklington Trust.

E-Access Bulletin is brought to you with the kind support of Thomas
Pocklington Trust, a national charity delivering positive change for people
with sight loss. Find out more about the charity’s work by visiting the
[Thomas Pocklington Trust website](http://www.pocklington-trust.org.uk/).

[Notice ends].

## Notice: RNIB Connect Radio and e-Access Bulletin.

e-Access Bulletin will be appearing on RNIB Connect Radio each month on The
Early Edition programme. Hear more about the bulletin and upcoming content
appearing in each issue, as we discuss the latest accessible technology news
and readers’ questions with Allan Russell.

Episodes will be available after broadcast as podcasts from the RNIB Connect
Radio site. Listen to RNIB Connect Radio online, or via television,
smartphone or radio. Find out more at the [RNIB Connect Radio
website](http://www.insightradio.co.uk/).

[Notice ends].

## Section Two: Research.


### 07: Inclusive fitness equipment – an exercise in missed opportunity.

Going to the gym or using exercise equipment at home is simply part of a
daily routine for many, but locking-in this routine isn’t as easy for some
people. A huge amount of modern fitness equipment just isn’t accessible
for those with a visual impairment, as a new report has demonstrated.

The study, ‘Inclusive fitness equipment for people with a visual
impairment’, was commissioned by sight loss charity Thomas Pocklington
Trust and carried out by Rica (the Research Institute for Consumer Affairs).
It showed the prevalence of console systems that are partially or entirely
unusable to people with a visual impairment, despite a widespread desire
among this group stay physically active.

e-Access Bulletin found out more about the study from Lynn Watson, Head of
Research at Thomas Pocklington Trust, and Chris Lofthouse, Outreach Manager
at Rica.

- E-Access Bulletin: Does the topic of fitness for people with a visual
impairment get overlooked?

Lynn Watson: “Research from RNIB showed that 64% of visually impaired
people would like to be more physically active and that many feel held back
by various barriers. These include persistent social attitudes and the
slowness of many designers and manufacturers to embrace inclusive
design.”

Chris Lofthouse: “Our research with gym managers and equipment
manufacturers showed a low level of awareness of the needs of visually
impaired people. Until they become aware, inclusive gym equipment is likely
to be a low priority for them. We hope that our research will help to raise
awareness of visually impaired people’s enthusiasm for getting and staying
healthy, as well as the barriers that stop them taking part.”

- What did the study find to be the biggest issues faced by visually
impaired users?

Chris: “Participants found that consoles with tactile buttons, audio
output, colour contrast and block colours were more accessible. Our testers
unanimously agreed that there was a need for voice-over on all console
types.

“In terms of environment, use of cardiovascular fitness equipment had a
substantial impact upon users’ lives, including improvements in everyday
fitness and mental health. However, our testers found accessing fitness
equipment and facilities challenging because of drawbacks in the built
environment and customer service.”

- How important is audio output on fitness machines to make them inclusive
for a visually impaired audience?

Lynn: “Very important. Voice-over technology was seen by participants as
an urgent requirement. From interviews with industry representatives, the
barriers to progress were: cost, industry culture, lack of awareness and
over-reliance on formal standards, which have not kept pace with advances in
technology.”

Chis: “There are limited options available, because there is no
discernible trend within the fitness sector toward audio output. Some said
that the way ahead would be to integrate gym equipment controls with
smartphone technology.”

- Were there any pieces of equipment that stood out as being particularly
inclusive for visually impaired users?

Lynn: “This doesn’t come through in the research. The study indicates
that LED consoles are moderately more accessible than touchscreen consoles,
but neither type performed very well.”

Chris “None stood out. A rowing machine manufacturer, Concept2, has
introduced ErgChatter, a free software tool which provides audio output, but
there is little else on offer.”

- What were participants’ key recommendations from the study?

Chris: “Wider use of audio output and voice-over technology; use of
wireless technology; ability to increase font size on screens; tactile
buttons and high-contrast colours on LED consoles; improved layout, colour
use, signage and lighting in leisure centres; trained staff to assist VI
people in using equipment.

“People in focus groups argued that VI-friendly adaptations would also
improve going to the gym for other users, such as people with learning
disabilities and people with different motor or sensory skills.”

- What can gyms and leisure centres do to become more inclusive for
customers with a visual impairment?

Chris: “1. Develop a best-practice guide for manufacturers, outlining
design features most appropriate for visually impaired users.

2. Support an update to the Inclusive Fitness Initiative (IFI) standards set
by the English Federation of Disability Sport, reinforcing the case for
inclusive design.

3. Product design teams to make better use of guidelines and best practice
from other industries, independent organisations and governmental bodies.

4. Improve staff training and communication procedures across the fitness
sector, using the NHS Accessible Information Standard.

<a name="_GoBack"></a> 5. Implement a voluntary ‘buddy scheme’ at all
public sector leisure centres to assist visually impaired users and other
disabled users.”

[Read the inclusive fitness guide in full, in Word or PDF, at the Thomas
Pocklington Trust
website](http://www.pocklington-trust.org.uk/project/inclusive-fitness-equipment-people-visual-impairment/).

[Find out more about the study at Rica’s
website](http://www.rica.org.uk/).

[Comment on the ‘inclusive fitness equipment’ story at e-Access Bulletin
Live](http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=1457).

[Section Two ends]

## End Notes.


### How to receive E-Access Bulletin.

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To forward this free publication to others, use our forward link underneath
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### Staff:

Editor: Tristan Parker

Technical Director: Jake Jellinek

Accessibility Advisor: Dr. Nick Freear

ISSN 1476-6337.

[Issue 197 ends.]