Accessibility in mainstream digital technology

Transcript

1 June 2014

Roberta: I have in the studio with me Dr Scott Hollier – project manager and Western Australia manager of Media Access Australia. Welcome Scott.

Scott: Thanks Roberta. It’s wonderful to be in the studio.

Roberta: It is so great to have you here in person at last and I’m so glad that you could drop by during a visit to Melbourne, and haven’t we turned on the weather for you?

Scott: Oh, it is a glorious day outside at the moment and, yeah, I just love the chance to have lovely weather in May.

Roberta: We’re here to talk about accessibility, which is always up there, with changes made and changes needed. So let’s start with the changes that have been made by many of the major computer and mobile devices that we use. So what are the highlights?  We could begin with computers or other changes similar to those of the mobile devices, Scott.

Scott: Well, I think what’s really been exciting in recent times is that we’ve seen a gradual increase in the accessibility of mainstream devices across all the major platforms, really. So to see improvements in screen readers; to see more inclusion as new releases of different operating systems come out, and some really clever apps as well, to build on the accessibility features that are already present in devices, has really made a big difference for people who are blind or visually impaired.

Roberta: Can you tell us some of those apps?  What they are?

Scott: Sure. Well, one of the ones we’ve talked about in the past is – on the Android platform, for example, there’s apps like Point Finder and Stop Announcer and, basically, what these apps have done is allowed people who are blind or visually impaired to, for example, hop on the bus, select the route that they’re taking and then have the phone or tablet count down the number of stops until they got off on the stop of their choice and give you big alarms if you miss it. So to have features like that – audio compasses, so you can get an indication as to where you need to go, and, you know, mark a point and then use GPS to get you back to that point. And even things like there’s many many magnifier apps, so you can use your phone or tablet to, yeah, easily – if you’re vision impaired – pull up through the camera on the phone and make it bigger. You know, just to have things like that in your pocket have made a tremendous difference and, yeah, in relatively recent times.

Roberta: And does it have a calendar that can remind you of things that you need to know?

Scott: Yeah, well, all the other features that smart phones and tablets come with these days – so things like calendars and being able to hook in your email and have all these things read out to you; to use devices like Podcast access and audiobook access. One of the great things about these devices is that for people with disabilities and, you know, particularly people who are blind or visually impaired, they go beyond just being a device because they also become a bridge to independence, which is a great thing.

Roberta: And that’s the name of the game, isn’t it?

Scott: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, to get – if I think about my own situation a number of years ago, I needed a lot of help to try and get access to information. But now, you know, I can carry devices with me that can read things out to me, to help me understand the information I need to get hold of and that really does lead to an independent access of information.

Roberta: Scott, how is Windows accessibility going?

Scott: Well, Windows has progressed really well since Windows 8 and one of the criticisms of Windows was that when the narrator screen reader was first a part of Windows back in 2000, it really wasn’t that good and for people who were blind it didn’t help enough to be able to get hold of information. But with Windows 8 and as they moved into that idea of making Windows touch-enabled, the nice thing about narrator in there now is that with 8 and 8.1 you can use traditional keyboard commands but now you can also, on a tablet, move your finger around the screen and have things read out. Now, Narrator still probably wouldn’t be the screen reader of choice for people who are blind – there’s many better options in terms of keyboard functionality, like JAWS and NVDA – but it is encouraging that Narrator did go through a complete overhaul. It now can get access to most of the basic functions of Windows and read out things like in a web browser, and having that touch-enabled feature has improved it a lot. On the magnifier side, they’ve also done some great things in that, in Windows 7, they introduced the full screen zoom, which was a fantastic addition, but you couldn’t turn on high contrast at the same time. So the nice thing about Windows 8 and 8.1 is that Microsoft have fixed that issue, and so you can have a high contrast colour scheme and the full screen magnifier just built in out of the box. But one of the best features of Windows, in just very recent times, is that if you set up your cloud using their cloud features, what you can do is you can turn on your accessibility features and set up your high contrast scheme and get it just as you want it and then when you log on any other Windows computer running 8 or 8.1, your settings and preferences are automatically set up on that next computer. So by storing your preferences in the cloud, you can now just go up to a Windows machine, log on as you and your accessibility preferences follow you along, and that’s a tremendous breakthrough in recent times.

Roberta: It certainly is and I want to thank you for coming into the studio today, Scott. It has been an absolute joy and I’m so happy that after about, what, six years of talking on the phone from across the country, I’ve been at last able to talk to you in person.

Scott: And likewise, Roberta. It’s my absolute pleasure and great to meet you in person.

Roberta: I’ve been speaking with Dr Scott Hollier, project manager and Western Australia manager, Media Access Australia. And Media Access Australia is a supporter of this program.

Go back to Accessibility in mainstream digital technology page