Open Letter Initiative

From Blind Wiki

Mobile technology could be a revolutionary chance for the many blind and visually impaired people around the world but it must be accessible and affordable.

This open letter is addressed to companies from the mobile technologie sector, developers, research scientists, organisations, politicians and all kinds of disseminators as well. The open letter informs about the perfect mobile device for blind persons, screen reader software for mobile platforms, mobile internet access and commonalities of accessibility and the mobile web, satellite navigation for blind pedestrians, mobile access to specific map data, accuracy of GPS receivers, self-help, commonalities of blindness and dyslexia/illiteracy, corporate responsibility, proposals for Nokia's and Google's public relations and the importance of free software and affordable cell phones for the many blind people from developing or newly industrializing countries.

Unfortunately, the complexity of the whole issue and the, for most readers unknown, factor "blindness" is a huge problem. It's difficult to make non-disabled professionals interested. What about you? You could make a difference.

1 NEWS 2008
2 Mobile technology is a revolutionary chance for blind people
3 Android Accessibility
4 Loadstone-GPS
5 What Nokia could do for their blind customers?
6 Links
- 6.1 See also at Wikipedia
7 Questions? Suggestions? Comments?

NEWS 2008

Andy Rubin, Google's Senior Director of mobile platforms, demonstrated non-touchscreen versions of the Android platform to some reporters. He was showing off a browser designed entirely for button-based navigation. As it seems, he or another Google employee said at Google's I/O developers conference that Android is designed to work with a wide variety of form factors -- everything from touchscreens to QWERTY keypads to devices with no screen at all!
(via Engadged)
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) launched the Mobile Web for Social Development interest group. "This group is chartered to explore the potential of mobile technology to help bridge the digital divide. The MW4D Interest Group will study the issues that rural communities and underprivileged populations face in accessing information and communication technology. The MW4D IG provides an multidisciplinary forum for discussing these issues, and in doing so, contributes to the W3C mission of making the Web available to all." See also this entry at Iheni Blog.
On May, 14 Peter Korn from Sun Microsystems released the article Ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
"Article 9 of the Convention speaks to Accessibility, and I read several aspects of this as applying directly to technology accessibility work." Peter Korn is an active member of the OLPC accessibility project. Read also Peter's article about high prices of assestive technology for blind persons and the following article.
On April, 30 Henny Swan (UK) mentioned this open letter at Iheni blog. One day later, Lisa Herrod (Australia) added some interesting thoughts about the topic at Sitepoint blog. This was the first public feedback by professionals. Thank you.
On April, 21 Clayton Lewis from Boulder (USA) was a speaker at the ITU/G3ict Forum in Geneva. Together with a group of students he is working on first applications for Android. Yoshinobu Nakamura from NTT DoCoMo (OHA member) was another speaker. You can find biographies, abstracts and downloadable presentations on the ITU site. The meeting was recorded for a webcast in audio/video and in live. The archives are available through the ITU's Webcast Service. The ITU/G3ict Forum explored the likely impact of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on the evolution of ICT standards with the active participation of industry, Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), NGOs, and other interested parties.
On April, 21 the blind Google research scientist and open source developer T.V. Raman was a keynote speaker at the W4A conference in Beijing. As it seems, he hasn't announced first details about Google's accessibility plan for the Android platform. W4A is an international cross-disciplinary conference on web accessibility.
On March, 05 a visually impaired Nokia customer from Iran started an online petition and everyone can sign it. Nokia has launched a beta service which is called Open Signed Online but unfortunately it's inaccessible for a few groups of users.
The study "Accessibility and Business Value", sponsored by The Customer Respect Group, finds that companies strategically invested in removing barriers to customer interaction are deriving significant hard and soft benefits from accessibility initiatives.
On February, 11 Spice Corp Ltd, an Indian telecoms Corporation, launched the Braille Phone ^[1] for the revolutionary price of $20. The Braille Phone has basic phone call functionality, alphanumeric keys with Braille labels, speech feedback after every key stroke and no screen. Reduce to the max! Hopefully this device will be offered to poor blind people in developing countries by charitable or micro finance organisations.
On February, 11 the Nokia Beta Labs released a first version of Maps 2.0 Beta with the new walk feature for pedestrians.
On February, 6 the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released their annual study Information Economy Report 2007-2008 (PDF). Reuters: UNCTAD said mobile phone subscribers have almost tripled in developing countries over the last five years, and now make up some 58 percent of mobile subscribers worldwide. The report said mobile phones were the main communication tool for small businesses in developing countries, reducing costs and increasing the speed of transactions. "In Africa, where the increase in terms of the number of mobile phone subscribers and penetration has been greatest, this technology can improve the economic life of the population as a whole." The revolution in information and communication technology was spreading to the developing world - this should be a chance for the many disabled citizens in Asia, Africa and Latin America as well.
On January, 15 Forum Nokia released the first part of the Loadstone story (PDF). Forum Nokia is one of the largest mobile developer communities in the world. The term Forum Nokia collectively refers to both the support organization within Nokia Corporation and the individuals and companies supported by the organization.

Mobile technology is a revolutionary chance for blind people

The following could be interesting for the Corporate Responsibility programs and the Public Relations of mobile technology vendors, especially for members of the Open Handset Alliance or other open mobile initiatives with goodwill and power of imagination. Please excuse my English, it's not my mother tongue.

Currently a lot of blind persons around the world are using Nokia devices because for a few years there have been two professional - albeit expensive - screen reader software products for the S60 Symbian platform: Talks from Nuance Communications and Mobile Speak from Code Factory, which make these cell phones accessible by output of synthetic speech and also allow the use of third party software such as Loadstone-GPS, web browser, audio player or DAISY book reader. For a blind person an ICT device without a screen reader is like a device without display for a seeing person.

It would be desirable to have a screen reader software for Google's open Android platform too; the best solution would be an open source or non-profit development such that blind people from the developing and newly industrializing regions of our world will have access to it as well, perhaps including the offer of an affordable, accessible and optimized mobile hardware with components from mass market. This device would need to have good tactile keys and a high-quality loudspeaker and should be protected against moisture and dust. Although a display would not really be necessary, there should be a connection port for a screen. An optimized receiver of satellite signals for pedestrian use, an electronic compass and perhaps an accelerometer, pedometer or a gyroscope could be offered in a wearable Bluetooth box. Additional hardware like a PC keyboard, a headset, a small remote control, a portable Braille display, loudspeaker or a large display for people with low vision could also be connected via cable or Bluetooth. A built in camera would enable light detection, color recognition, optical character recognition (OCR) and is useful in situations when seeing help from distance is needed.^{[2] [3] [4] [5] [6]}

Though a camera might be too expensive for the basic device it could be offered as an accessory. Built-in RFID technology for several purposes is imaginable as well, but it's important to minimize the production costs of the main units to keep them affordable.

"Through Android, developers, wireless operators and handset manufacturers will be better positioned to bring to market innovative new products faster and at a much lower cost. The end result will be an unprecedented mobile platform that will enable wireless operators and manufacturers to give their customers better, more personal and more flexible mobile experiences." Source: Open Handset Alliance

Google's chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt: "Our vision is that the powerful platform we're unveiling will power thousands of different phone models."

Nokia, Google and other companies from the mobile tech sector could help to quicken the evolution of accessible satellite navigation and mobile internet access for the 37 million blind and 124 million visually impaired people around the world, especially for the 1.4 million blind children.

"Speaking" mobile technology is a great chance for them to obtain access to:

Navigation tools and map data
Communication (phone calls, sms, e-mail)
Information and M-learning
All kinds of helpful and accessible applications (device/web based)
Mobile Banking and Mobile Payments
Mobile Enterprise and Mobile Commerce
Health Services
Services for Safety and Disease Prevention
E-Government services
Location based services

This will open new opportunities for the job market and for participation in social networks and in society, especially for those from countries, where access to fixed phones or landline internet is rarely available but cellular radio networks are common.^[7] Talking technology could be helpful for persons with dyslexia and illiteracy limitations as well. ^{[8] [9]}

The intentions of the OLPC project (one laptop per child) could perhaps be a kind of model for this idea and Android could open the door for the blind & visually impaired people. Then they would be more independent of Terms, trading policies and the mostly expensive prices of the few global vendors of assistive technology. ^[10] Some of the members of the Open Handset Alliance perhaps have the knowledge and goodwill to program a free Android Screen Reader or providing support/resources for that. Google's $10 Million Android Developer Challenge could also be an incentive for other developing teams.

Android Accessibility

Android should have an Accessibility API ^[11] for assistive tools, thereby making applications accessible for all. As it seems, Google has currently no intentions to provide such an accessibility interface. Please see these postings at Google's Android discuss group. Android should have a free speech engine (tts) as well. Nuance as a member of the OHA could donate and port a simple multilingual speech synthesizer such as ETI-Eloquence to the Android platform; keeping their high-quality voices for sale. For a long time The ETI-Eloquence was and still is a very popular speech synthesis solution in the blind community.

It would be fantastic if some professionals with knowledge in international non-profit project management would start an initiative for a screen reader development, so that volunteers and sponsors could join them for collaboration. Good solutions could be submitted to challenges such as the R&D Award from ONCE or could be proposed for awards such as the Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration.

Other examples:

NVDA is an open source screen reader for Windows. The Mozilla Foundation supports this great project with a grant of US$80,000 which allow to hire a full-time professional developer.
Orca is an open source screen reader for Linux. It would be fine if this software would run on the XO from the OLPC project.^[12]
The GNOME Foundation is running an accessibility outreach program, offering US$50,000 to be split among individuals. This program will promote software accessibility awareness among the GNOME and broader Free Software communities, as well as harden and improve the overall quality of the GNOME accessibility offering. Sponsors are Mozilla Foundation, Canonical, Google and Novell as well. See also this article: GNOME focuses on accessibility.

Clayton Lewis is currently supervising a project course on cognitive assistive technology on the Android platform, in which students are creating a variety of applications that take advantage of the resources of that platform to increase the independence of users. They have a Inclusive Android mailing list and you can apply for group membership.

The open source project OpenIntents had shortly found interest in developing a screen reader for the Android platform. OpenIntents is a common effort to define and implement standard interfaces such that Android applications can work more closely together. Please ask Peli. L1GHTM4N already tries to port the FreeTTS Java code to Android.

Loadstone-GPS

The main programmer of the Loadstone project, Shawn Kirkpatrick, and all the members of the Loadstone-team are developers of a free and open source navigation software for blind pedestrians. At present, this program runs on Nokia S60 Symbian devices and is a great solution for increasing the mobility of blind persons, thereby making their lives easier and more independent. Since for large rural regions of our world nearly no exactly map data is available in common map databases, the Loadstone software provides users with the option to create, store, and share their own navigation waypoints with others. Although satellite navigation can not replace orientation & mobility training, a white cane or a guide dog, it complement perfectly.

There is a growing community of Loadstone users, testers and developers. This kind of self-help and collaboration on a global scale is a very new and unique approach - especially given the fact that the software is free and open source.

You can learn more about this fantastic project at the Loadstone page on this Wiki where you will find information how you could support this open source community and where you can read more about digital map data and accuracy of GPS receivers as well.

What Nokia could do for their blind customers?

Nokia could support the Loadstone project.
Nokia could improve the accessibility of their service software such as PC Suite or Software Updater.
Nokia could offer their manuals in several languages in alternative formats like HTML instead of only PDF.
Nokia could build an accessible version of Nokia Maps (almost free), add some features for blind users and offer it almost for free as well.
The Swedish company Wayfinder Systems did the same with their product Navigator (99 Euro) and created Wayfinder Access (400 Euro).
Satellite navigation and access to map data is a very important aid for blind customers and should not depend on their financial situation.
Nokia could join the European HAPTIMAP project or the Nav4blind Initiative (German site) in Soest. This city is near Bochum.
For a blind person a device without a screen reader software is like a device without display for a seeing person.
Nokia could develop a screen reader and offer it for free or they could try to buy a solution such as Talks from Nuance.
The two main developers of Talks probably live near Bochum.
Nokia could purchase other helpful solutions such as knfbReader ($1600) and offer it for less money.^[13]
The knfbReader OCR software could be very useful for seeing dyslexics and illiterates as well. ^{[14] [15]}
Nokia could collect used S60 cell phones and donate them to blind pupils in developing countries, e.g. in Kenya or Tibet/India. This cell phones can have broken or scratched displays. Nuance and Code Factory could donate licenses for their screen reader products. Blind children are also disseminators and could turn into customers of tomorrow.
Nokia could start a small temporary research project to improve the accessibility and usability of S60 applications and of a few hardware components; thereby they could collect interesting knowledge about the special needs of some groups of customers for future developments.
Nokia could join the AIA (Accessibility Interoperability Alliance) for collaboration as well. Please see also:

In May 2008 many qualified Nokia employees in Bochum (Germany) lost their jobs and need new tasks and employment now. Because of nonsensitive communication, Nokia currently have a image crisis in Germany. This facts could be a reason for the suggested research project. Some employees could get new jobs and Nokia would be able to show responsibility for society and goodwill to their many blind or otherwise handicapped customers. Bochum could become the worldwide first location with a research center for mobile accessibility.

As it seems, the Nokia Accessibility department in Dallas (USA) is not interested in the above mentioned topics as yet. Please have a look at the official Accessibility site. You won't find anything about satellite navigation solutions such as Loadstone-GPS or Wayfinder Access and of course nothing about accessibility problems of their service software and the Nokia.com site. Maybe this department just exists because of legal constraints by US law.

Nokia's President and Chief Executive Officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo: "We regard universal access as much more than an industry goal – for us it is a responsibility."^[16]

Common brands with lots of customers are vulnerable for sudden image problems such as Nokia has today in Germany, and probably they will have this risk tomorrow somewhere else as well. Future mobile devices and applications will provide companies such as Nokia or mobile network operators with masses of data about location, behaviour, interests and social networks of their customers. This will make the user privacy transparent for these companies and could be perceived as a risk for potential abuse. Microsoft and Google already have similar problems. The motto "Don't be evil, Don't be passive, be good" should be an imaginable part of Nokia's strategy for further PR-work. ^[17]

Don't be evil, don't be passive, be accessible!

Questions? Suggestions? Comments?

If you want more info, please contact me or the Loadstone team or community. My name is Per Busch, I am 39 years old. I live in Germany and since 15 years I am blind. If you are able to understand german you can find more info & links about sat nav solutions on my user page at Wikipedia.

You can comment or discuss this letter on it's Talk page. You can also contact me on my personal Talk page or via mail to Reisender at Online dot De.

This initiative started on November, 05, 2007 and changed it's URL for a few times within the Wikia site. The reason for this initiative was Google's announcement of the new and open mobile Android platform.

Retrieved from "http://blind.wikia.com/wiki/Open_Letter_Initiative"