| 23 August |
ictQATAR interview with Harold Snider, National Federation of the Blind |
In the recent Gulf Disability Society Conference Dr. Harold Snider discussed the Legal, Psychological and social effects that may accompany the use of istive technology for people with disabilities . In an engaging presentation, the use of computers with istive technology by people with disabilities and the explosions of information contained in websites on the internet have revolutionized access to information.
However, this access to information has not been easy to achieve or maintain. A number of barriers exist to such access for people with disabilities .This presentation will examine some of those legal, psychological and social barriers and effects their solution.
Snider also elaborated on how the advent of modern istive technology for people with disabilities was seen as a major breakthrough in early 1980s, coming as it did shortly after the introduction of the personal computer. Screens readers, synthetic speech, mouth sticks, captioning and other solutions opened the world of computing for people with disabilities. However, istive technology has been unable to keep up with advances in technology for personal computers generally. At first, word processors and other office software were accessible. However, with the introduction of graphical user interface and the World Wide Web in the early 1990s,a gap in the accessibility of information begin to occur. This gap was and is discouraging for people with disabilities. Letters and words are printed to the screen as pixels, graphical images are unlabelled, and video images are uncaptioned and are not described. Such inaccessibility is a significant psychological and social disincentive for people with disabilities.
To mitigate this proliferation of inaccessible information, the recently adopted United Nations Conservation on the Rights of People with Disabilities mandates both general and specific accessibility. Countries which ratify the Conservation including its protocol are required to comply with the provisions of Article 9 Accessibility and Article 21 Access of Information. These articles mandate access to information including information provided by computer with istive technology. Therefore, countries signing the Convention have legal obligation to ensure that their websites are accessible to and usable by people with disabilities.
Duration : 0:11:57