There is a fresh discussion on ATM access in this paper. It is buried
inside, so to reach it search on the term "atm." There are a few links to
documents with which I was not familiar, for those groups pursuing the atm
issue.
kelly
>From the web page
http://www.softspeak.com.au/ecrep10.htm
ACCESSIBLE E-COMMERCE IN AUSTRALIA:
A DISCUSSION PAPER ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF ELECTRONIC
COMMERCE DEVELOPMENTS ON PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
Prepared By
Tim Noonan
SoftSpeak Computer Services
On Behalf of
Blind Citizens Australia
With Funding from
The Commonwealth Government's
'AccessAbility Grants Program'
Now part of
'Networking the Nation'
Version 1.0, last updated: September 1999
Copyright c 1999
SoftSpeak Computer Services &
Blind Citizens Australia
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW ... iv
PREFACE .. v
Accessible E-Commerce Workshops . v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .. vi
1 INTRODUCTION .. 1
1.1 Some Key Accessible E-Commerce Developments and
Papers 2
1.2 Project Background 3
1.3 What is the Problem? . 4
1.4 What is Electronic Commerce? 5
1.5 Project Scope =96 People with Disabilities . 7
2 SHOPPING 9
2.1 Modes of Shopping . 9
2.2 Catalogues and Packaging . 11
2.3 Barcodes 11
2.4 Paying for Goods 12
3 BANKING AND FINANCE .. 15
3.1 Selecting a Banking Institution . 15
3.2 Telephone Banking . 15
3.3 Self-service Banking (ATMs) 16
3.4 Internet Banking . 19
3.5 Accessing Financial Information, Statements Etc.
21
4 USING THE INTERNET TO GO ONLINE .. 23
4.1 Internet Usage Statistics . 24
4.2 Getting Connected . 25
4.3 Selecting a browser 27
4.4 Learning to Use Windows and the Web 28
4.5 Accessing Websites . 29
4.6 Making Purchases on the Web . 31
4.7 Internet Shopping Resources . 33
4.8 Emerging Internet Developments 33
4.9 Security of Information on the Net 35
5 INFORMATION &TRANSACTIONS OVER THE TELEPHONE 36
6 VERIFICATION OF IDENTITY .. 37
6.1 Drivers licence . 38
6.2 Retinal Scans . 38
6.3 Facial recognition . 38
6.4 Voice Print verification . 39
6.5 Optional PIN Entry for People with Disabilities .
39
7 SOME EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES 40
7.1 Information Kiosks (Information and Transaction
Machines) 40
7.2 Screen and Web Phones 42
7.3 Smart Appliances . 42
7.4 JAVA 43
7.5 Windows CE .. 45
8 AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT INFORMATION AND TRANSACTIONS 46
8.1 Stated Government Commitments 47
8.2 Stated Government Strategic Directions . 48
8.3 Recent Developments and Documents . 50
8.4 Telstra and the Government 50
8.5 Centrelink Developments 51
8.6 Government Transactions and Completing Forms 52
9 DISABILITY RIGHTS LEGISLATION 54
10 PARTICIPATION IN EMPLOYMENT 55
11 BARRIERS AND OPPORTUNITIES OFFERED BY ELECTRONIC
PUBLISHING 56
11.1 Copyright Law and Standards Efforts 58
11.2 Australian Copyright Law Reform 59
11.3 Portable Document Format (PDF) 61
11.4 XML 63
12 CONCLUSION .. 65
13 PRELIMINARY RECOMMENDATIONS .. 66
13.1 General Recommendations 66
13.2 Identified Areas for Future Accessible
E-Commerce Work 67
13.3 UK Thinktank Disability-Related Recommendations 68
14 SOME USEFUL RESOURCES 69
15 TERMINOLOGY, ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS 70
EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW
This discussion paper is one of a series of reports being
produced as part of a project funded by the Commonwealth
Government's 'AccessAbility Grants Program'.
This research project is investigating the impact of electronic
commerce on people in Australia with disabilities - particularly
people who are blind or vision impaired.
The most up-to-date version of this document can be accessed
online at http://www.bca.org.au/ecrep.htm
The report serves various purposes including: introducing the
reader to E-Commerce concepts and developments; serving as a
discussion starter about current and potential barriers that
these technologies may present for people with disabilities in
Australia; as well as providing pointers to products, services,
research, guidelines and standards that are all working to
improve access in the area.
The project is also producing a related report discussing the
impacts of smartcards and new electronic payment systems on
people with disabilities in Australia. When completed, this
smartcard report will be available online at
http://www.bca.org.au/smartcard.htm
The present report is aimed at E-Commerce professionals,
Government, hardware and software developers, disability
professionals, as well as people with disabilities.
To date, the research has shown up two very major barriers to
accessible E-Commerce in Australia. While these findings
weren't a total surprise, the severity of the problem was
certainly underestimated. These two barriers are:
=A7 The huge lack of disability research in the
E-Commerce area; and
=A7 An unexpected general lack of awareness by the
E-Commerce industry regarding disability and accessibility
issues and research.
A variety of day-to-day activities are examined from an
E-Commerce and accessibility perspective including:
=A7 Shopping, including selecting goods, accessing
catalogues, paying for goods, barcodes, home delivery options
etc;
=A7 Banking and Finance, including selecting a bank, ATM
issues, telephone and Internet banking, access to brochures and
statements;
=A7 Internet access, including getting online, selecting a
browser, training issues, web design issues, buying on the
Internet etc;
=A7 Government information and transactions, including
stated Information Economy priorities, Government E-Commerce
developments, Telstra and the Government, Centrelink
developments etc;
=A7 Participation in employment;
=A7 Implications of electronic publishing; and
=A7 Emerging technologies including Java, Windows CE,
Information Kiosks, screen and web phones, smart appliances, XML
etc.
PREFACE
This document was last updated in September 1999. This
discussion paper is a 'live' document and the online version is
expected to be updated on a regular basis. Your feedback and
suggestions for additions and improvements are sought by the
Author. If you have any comments please send them to
[log in to unmask]
Many URIs (URLs) are included in this report. Please notify the
author if any of these URLs have become outdated, at
[log in to unmask]
This document has been prepared using styles in Microsoft Word 9
(part of Office 2000). Every effort has been made to produce a
document that presents well on paper, while also being a highly
accessible online HTML document. In most cases alternative text
has been included for web references, but the actual URLs are
also provided in the document, for the benefit of readers of the
print edition and those reading the report off-line.
The HTML version of this document was produced with the recently
released Word 9 HTML export filter, which is designed to produce
a webpage with as close a "look" as possible to the paper and
on-screen word version, but while producing a smaller HTML file.
This HTML version should be accessible by all browsers.
If you encounter any difficulties accessing any versions of this
document, please contact the Author by eR09;mail at
[log in to unmask]
Accessible E-Commerce Workshops
We will be holding two 'Accessible E-Commerce' workshops during
November 1999. These sessions are targeted at all stake-holders
with an interest in E-Commerce accessibility in Australia,
including people working in the disability field, E-Commerce
developers and implementers, representatives from Government,
and people with disabilities.
The first workshop will be held in Melbourne on Sunday 21
November 1999, and the second will be held in Sydney on Saturday
27 November 1999.
In addition to these two major workshops, an 'Accessible
E-Commerce' presentation and mini-workshop will also be
conducted during the 1999 Blind Citizens Australia Convention,
being held in Brisbane, from the 15th to the 17th of October
1999.
For information about the Convention, or the Melbourne or Sydney
Workshops, please contact Blind Citizens Australia Head Office
on 1 800 033 660. Or alternatively, for seminar registration
details send e-mail to [log in to unmask]
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I'd like to thank the many people who have helped me in
preparing this report and throughout the course of the
'accessible E-Commerce' project. In particular I'm indebted to
Margaret Noonan, Susan Thompson, Geoff Hitchon, Bill Jolley,
Michael Simpson and Karen Groeneveld =96 for proofing, feedback
and suggestions about the report and for their support and
encouragement during the project;
John Gill, Greg Vanderheiden, Al Gillman, Cynthia Waddell, David
Mason, Ian Donald, Gunela Astbrink and Ray Ingram all provided
me with input, ideas and assistance. The report has benefited
greatly from the knowledge, pointers, references and ideas I
gleaned from their excellent online resources in the areas of
disability technology and electronic commerce.
I'd like to particularly thank Roger Clarke. His outstanding
webpages on E-Commerce were an excellent introduction to the
diversity and richness of the E-Commerce field, and strongly
influenced the structure and scope of this report. Roger Clarke
also provided me with some excellent leads and input during the
course of the project.
1 INTRODUCTION
This report has been prepared as part of a project funded by the
'AccessAbility Grants Program'. AccessAbility is a grants
program administered by the Department of Communications,
Information Technology and the Arts, initiated in 1997, pursuant
to the Investing for Growth statement and aimed at making online
services more accessible for people with disabilities.
The work has predominantly been carried out by Tim Noonan on
behalf of Blind Citizens Australia =96 Australia's national
organization of people who are blind and vision impaired
The most recent version of this report can be found on the Blind
Citizens Australia website at http://www.bca.org.au/ecrep.htm
Statistics from the ABS and a variety of other sources are
demonstrating the momentum with which electronic commerce is
taking hold in our society. More people are now using the
Internet (at home, work and elsewhere) than ever before, more
people are buying goods over the Internet, the banks are having
increasing success with electronic banking (particularly
Internet banking) and the Australian Government has the stated
objective of implementing a world class model for delivery of
all appropriate government services online by 2001, as well as
an intention to eliminate the majority of paper-based
requirements for the majority of financial transactions.
Keith Hazelton, IT Architect at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, says the following about E-Commerce:
"It is now possible to conduct virtually any traditional
business function electronically, from marketing to sales to
delivery to post-sales support to accounting, customer service
and business-to-business links."
Unfortunately, many of these exciting possibilities promised by
E-Commerce may be denied to a significant number of Australians
due to the lack of planning for and appropriate consideration of
the particular needs of people with disabilities. Although the
Government states that it wants the Information Economy to be
accessible to all, until very recently, there is little evidence
that it has yet put in place many mechanisms at all to actually
achieve this goal.
One of the primary purposes of this report is to clearly
articulate the issues, the barriers, and the potential
opportunities presented by this new era of technology and social
change.
As will be strongly emphasised in the subsequent sections of
this document, this problem of E-Commerce inaccessibility is not
a small one =96 in fact, if not adequately addressed, it may have
one of the most significant negative social impacts on people
with disabilities than have any other social changes in the last
30 years.
1.1 Some Key Accessible E-Commerce Developments and
Papers
This project, as well as the recently announced Australian Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's inquiry into the
impacts of E-Commerce and new technologies on people who are
older or who have a disability (which is discussed further in
section 8.3 below) are two positive Australian endeavours
working to minimise these access restrictions.
Earlier this year, the area of accessible E-Commerce was
examined from a social and US legislative perspective in an
excellent paper by Cynthia Waddell titled 'The Growing Digital
Divide in Access for People with Disabilities: Overcoming
Barriers to Participation' which is online at
http://www.aasa.dshs.wa.gov/access/waddell.htm
In that paper Cynthia Waddell makes the following two
statements, which fully apply to the Australian situation:
"Unless the civil rights of America's 54 Million people with
disabilities are addressed during this period of rapid
technological development, the community will be locked out from
participation on the basis of disability and the technological
world will not be enriched by their diverse contributions. =85
Because the benefits for overcoming these barriers extend beyond
the community of people with disabilities, there are practical
and significant business reasons for addressing this issue.
Rather than creating a growing digital divide, emerging
technology can enable full participation in the digital economy
for everyone, regardless of age, disability or the limitations
of the technology available."
"Whether the digital barrier is the inaccessible design of
Internet/intranet websites, Internet service provider "portals",
incompatible browsers, or inaccessible webR09;based platforms
for online business, the trend is growing and must be addressed
at the infancy of the digital economy. Already, exciting
electronic and information technology features are emerging in
the areas of information appliances, real-time conference
participation, audiostreaming telephone voice browsers, search
engines, news groups, chat rooms and 3D imaging. Unless
functionality solutions for accessibility are addressed today,
the state of the digital divide tomorrow may be impossible to
overcome."
The recently released Issues paper prepared by David Mason of
the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission titled '
Issues Paper: Accessibility of electronic commerce and other new
service delivery technologies for older Australians and people
with a disability' online at
www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/current_inquiries/ecom/
ecommerce_issues_paper.htm is another excellent reference on the
state of Accessibility of E-Commerce in Australia. That report
strongly complements the content of this paper. Information
about The HREOC E-Commerce Reference that issues paper was
prepared for can be found at
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/current_inquiries/ecom/
ecom.html
A variety of other initiatives are described throughout this
report, which are all working to increase accessibility of
information, services and technologies.
1.2 Project Background
During 1999, with funding from the Commonwealth Government's
'AccessAbility Grants Program', Blind Citizens Australia has
been investigating the impacts of Electronic Commerce on people
with disabilities in Australia, and in particular people who are
blind or vision impaired. This work has lead to this issues
paper.
AccessAbility is a grants program administered by the Department
of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts,
initiated in 1997, pursuant to the Investing for Growth
statement and aimed at making online services more accessible
for people with disabilities. In 1998, $1.5 million was provided
for projects covering a range of disability groups. A second
and final round of funding for this Grants program was held in
1999, and the outcomes are expected to be announced during
November 1999.
This Accessible E-Commerce project has the following aims:
=A7 To investigate the positive and negative impacts of
E-Commerce on people with disabilities;
=A7 To produce two discussion papers which explain the
field and provide information about the current state-of-play in
Australia and abroad;
=A7 To conduct one or more 'Accessible E-Commerce'
seminars for stake-holders including people with disabilities,
people working in the disability field, Government and those
working in the E-Commerce industry; and
=A7 To develop recommendations for further research
required in the field, in order to maximise the accessibility of
future and developing online Australian E-Commerce services and
products.
During the progress of the research, it has become evident that
the most vital requirements for positive change will involve the
activities listed below. Funding is being sought to further
pursue these important areas of work during the year 2000.
=A7 Educate and raise awareness within the E-Commerce
industry of - A. the need for accessible design and B. practical
and achievable approaches which can lead to accessible
E-Commerce products and services. In particular, online and self
service banking, internet-based grocery shopping, and
accessibility of Government services were identified as priority
areas;
=A7 Inform Government about the barriers being presented
by E-Commerce, and influence future policy and priorities to
maximise the accessibility of Government and non-Government
E-Commerce facilities;
=A7 Educate and inform people with disabilities, as well
as people working in the disability industry about the possible
barriers being created by E-Commerce developments, so that both
these groups can bring pressure to bear on developers and
policy-makers.
=A7 Become involved in national and international
E-Commerce-related standards efforts to both educate, and to
influence E-Commerce efforts;
=A7 Prepare a list of recommendations for Government and
Industry which will lead to practices and activities that will
maximise the accessibility of current and future E-Commerce
services and facilities.
Publication by this 'Accessible E-Commerce' project of
discussion papers (such as this one) is a strong first step
towards achieving some of these goals. This project is also
providing substantial input to HREOC's recently announced
inquiry into E-Commerce accessibility for people who are older
and who have a disability.
Blind Citizens Australia is actively seeking partnerships and
strategic alliances to further these goals. If you are
interested in working with Blind Citizens Australia to improve
the accessibility of E-Commerce facilities, please contact the
author at [log in to unmask]
1.3 What is the Problem?
New technology has often been described as a double-edged sword
=96 on one edge, having the potential to give incredible
independence and participation on all levels =96 but on the other
also having the potential to further deny access, close doors,
and severely isolate people with disabilities from full
participation in education, employment, recreation and social
interaction.
But the problem isn't really with the technology per se; for it
is just a malleable tool which can be used to create the myriad
equipment and services that are desired.
More specifically the problem is
=A7 with the individuals, corporations and governments who
develop and commission new technologies;
=A7 with the almost exclusively visual-centric design
metaphors being increasingly proposed and adopted in software
development;
=A7 with the quite artificial notion of the stereotypical
end user of technology i.e. a person with five fully-functioning
senses, four functioning limbs, functional speaking anatomy, an
average or above average IQ score, and of course the education
and finances with which to access and use the hardware and
software which has been custom-designed - primarily for them.
In short, it can be argued that the problem is a problem of
awareness in the wider community of the needs and wide-ranging
requirements of people with a range of disabilities, both here
and abroad. The problem is (in Dr. John Gill's words) "The
Forgotten Millions".
The solution is often termed Universal Design. This is based on
the architectural principles now employed to make buildings
accessible to the widest possible range of people. This design
philosophy endeavours to design software and equipment in such a
way that it can be used by a wide range of users with different
skills, abilities and handicaps. For example, equipment and
software supporting universal design could use both visual and
audio means for presenting information. It would be physically
configured so people with limited reach could access the
keyboard, it might also have a simplified user interface for
people unfamiliar with computers or for people with a learning
or an intellectual disability. Technologies incorporating these
concepts will be demonstrated widely throughout this report.
Universal design has been defined by the Center for Universal
Design as
"the design of different products and environments to be usable
by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need
for adaptation or specialised design. The intent of the
universal design concept is to simplify life for everyone by
making products, communications, and the built environment
usable by more people at little or no extra cost. The universal
design concept targets all people of all ages, sizes and
abilities".
Just as adding elevators and ramps in building design at the
outset minimises costs - compared with major design
modifications after the building has been built - so too,
designing software and information to accommodate a wider range
of users is relatively inexpensive at the outset, compared to
the potentially huge expense involved in post-production
software redevelopment, or extensive reformatting or re-keying
of information.
In relation to the Launch of AusInfo's guidelines for online
information (and which equally applies to software development)
Commission President Alice Tay, in a letter to Senator Ellison,
in March 1999 said:
"Many barriers to equitable and dignified access for people with
disabilities are made of bricks and mortar and steel. These
change more slowly than anyone could wish. With the arrival of
the information age we have the opportunity to avoid erecting
barriers right from the start and in adopting the Guidelines the
Commonwealth has made a very good beginning"
AusInfo's Guidelines for Commonwealth Information in Electronic
Formats can be found online at
http://www.ausinfo.gov.au/guidelines/index.html
It would be fair to say that, to date, principles of universal
design aren't a major priority for the majority of Government
and non-government E-Commerce developments =96 and it seems that
the awareness of the need for accessibility just isn't present
in the minds of many of the specialists and policy-makers
involved in E-Commerce developments.
1.4 What is Electronic Commerce?
Definitions of E-Commerce are many and varied and no one
definition really gives an adequate perspective on the area.
Roger Clarke (a leading Australian Authority on E-Commerce)
defines E-Commerce as:
"The conduct of commerce in goods and services, with the
assistance of telecommunications and telecommunications-based
tools."
Mary-Anne Goldsworthy (an Executive Officer of the Centre for
Electronic Commerce, Monash University) says the following about
the subject:
"Electronic Commerce is fast becoming the catch-all phrase for
electronic means of communicating information and business
transactions. The fastest growing area of electronic commerce
in Australia and the rest of the world is the use of the
Internet and online services for exchanging knowledge, for
advertising and marketing, for selling and buying, for banking,
and for the emergence of entirely new ways of doing business and
communicating with individuals and organizations.
Electronic commerce is levelling the playing field for small
companies to trade as if they were much larger corporations in a
global marketplace, and for regional businesses and communities
to participate in cultural, social and commercial networks in a
seamless and borderless way."
About E-Commerce, Keith Hazelton, IT Architect at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison, says:
"E-Commerce (or electronic commerce) is much more than buying
and selling over the Internet. Some authors prefer the term
"e-business" because it calls to mind more of the ways that
information technology (IT) can serve an institution's mission."
He goes on to say
"It is now possible to conduct virtually any traditional
business function electronically, from marketing to sales to
delivery to post-sales support to accounting, customer service
and business-to-business links."
However, as this report explains, many of these new ways of
doing things may not be accessible to many people with
disabilities.
Most of the Government's strategies focus on the 'Information
Economy' rather than just on E-Commerce. The Information
Economy can be interpreted quite broadly, and incorporates
online access to information and services, online interaction
for commercial or social/cultural purposes. The Information
Economy considers participation in society as well as the
economy.
For practical purposes in this research, we are concerned with
all aspects of technology which directly or indirectly impact on
people with disabilities and their participation in the economy
(and to a lesser extent) society in general. For that reason
this project doesn't significantly concern itself with behind
the scenes machine-to-machine protocols such as EDI (Electronic
Data Interchange) and the like, because these don't tend to have
a differential effect on people with disabilities versus people
who are not disabled.
While the focus is E-Commerce, attention is also given to the
accessibility of online information, and the ability for
Australians to access new modes of Government service delivery.
1.5 Project Scope =96 People with Disabilities
This project addresses people with disabilities, who include a
variety of disability groups and people with combinations of
disabilities.
However the technology access barriers encountered by people who
are either blind or vision impaired are the primary focus of
this work.
The US Access Board identified the following groups of people
with disabilities as requiring particular attention as affecting
equal access to information technologies:
=A7 visual disabilities (e.g., blindness, low vision and
lack of color perception)
=A7 hearing disabilities (e.g., hard of hearing, deafness)
=A7 people with physical disabilities (e.g., limited
strength, reach or manipulation, tremor, lack of sensation)
=A7 people with speech disabilities
=A7 people with language, learning or cognitive
disabilities (e.g., reading disabilities, thinking, remembering,
sequencing disabilities)
=A7 other disabilities (e.g., epilepsy, short stature),
and
=A7 individuals with any combination of these disabling
conditions (e.g., deafR09;blindness)
( Electronic and Information Technology Access Advisory
Committee Final Report to U.S. Access Board, May 12 1999,
http://www.access-board.gov/pubs/eitaacrpt.htm
It needs to also be recognised that while most people generally
focus on people with permanent disabilities, throughout their
lives many people may temporarily have a variety of disabilities
including reduced vision due to surgery or infection, a mobility
impairment due to a broken leg, inability to use a hand, or type
due to a broken arm, a hearing impairment due to an ear
infection, and so on.
Although the perceived overall percentage of people with
disabilities in our society may not seem that high, this is
clearly not the case when we consider specific cross-sections of
the population, such as people over 55. As we get older, our
bodies are more likely to start exhibiting reduction in function
in the senses, memory and comprehension, and of course physical
agility and energy levels.
The most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics study
(Disability, Ageing and Carers 1998, ABS, April 1999) indicates
that 19% of the Australian community overall, or 3.6 million
people have a disability, but this rises to approximately 35%
for people aged 55 to 59; 44% for people aged 65 to 69; 60% for
people aged 75 to 79; and 84% for people aged 85 and over.
It is widely recognised that we as a group live longer, and that
the average age of the population is continuing to increase. It
is estimated that by the year 2020 the number of people over 65
will have doubled from the numbers in that group in 1996. This
means that over time there will increasingly be more people with
disabilities, and that they will have those disabilities for
longer.
A good summary of statistics relating to vision impairment in
Australia is found in 'Everybody's Business' (a Blind Citizens
Australia report prepared by Gunela Astbrink). Some of these
figures include:
=A7 1.5% of people in Australia are estimated to have a
vision impairment which cannot be corrected by glasses.
=A7 The ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) estimated
that 13.6% of the population aged 75 or over had a vision
impairment. Gunela Astbrink notes that this figure could be on
the 'low' side due to the self-reporting approach the ABS took
in this study.
=A7 Research in the UK found that 35% of people with a
vision impairment also had a hearing impairment, and excluding
hearing impairments, 67% of people with a vision impairment also
had another disability such as arthritis.
=A7 Research carried out by the RNIB (Royal National
Institute for the Blind) in the UK found that 59% of people with
a vision impairment needed assistance in dealing with mail,
leaflets and paying bills.
A document summarising the numbers of people in Europe with
different disabilities can be found at
http://www.eyecue.co.uk/eyecue/pats/text/6a.html
2 SHOPPING
This section examines different kinds of shopping and explores
how new approaches to shopping provide opportunities and some
major barriers for people with disabilities. Internet shopping
is discussed in more detail in sections 4.6 and 4.7 below.
Shopping is something which everyone in our community needs to
be able to do. Often, for people with disabilities, this basic
task is quite difficult and cannot be conducted with
independence or any degree of privacy.
Like the freedom of being able to drive a car, or receiving a
key to the front door, the right to select and buy goods is
central to democratic capitalist society. Daily, people with
disabilities have rights and freedoms denied to them, which are
taken for granted by most Australians. It is critical that the
basic freedom of shopping remains available to all Australians,
and that all people are able to shop with independence and also
with the right to privacy.
Simple tasks like walking from store to store, browsing a
supermarket shelf or reading through a department store
catalogue, can be very difficult for many people with
disabilities. E-Commerce developments have the potential to
make some of these tasks easier, but aren't likely to do so in
the near future for all disabled groups.
Some cannot reach or carry goods, others can't see the products
in order to know what is available, or where to go to find what
they require, others may need assistance in selecting the right
kinds of products for their needs.
Some supermarkets offer a free service where a staff member
assists the person with his or her shopping needs, but this
varies from location to location, and more particularly is
limited by available staffing resources at the store. As shops
become larger and less personalised, as employee time needs to
be accounted for more precisely, and as staffing numbers are cut
through increased efficiencies and new technology, this kind of
one-on-one service is at serious risk of being unavailable, or
only being provided at a significant cost to the individual.
For these reasons, home-delivery shopping services have a lot of
appeal for people with disabilities, so long as the catalogues
of goods can be accessed, and so long as the extra cost of this
style of shopping isn't prohibitive.
2.1 Modes of Shopping
2.1.1 Conventional Shopping
We are all familiar with traditional shopping where we
physically travel to a shop, walk through the aisles and select
our goods.
In such cases both physical disabilities and sensory
disabilities can make this task difficult.
2.1.2 Telephone Shopping
Based on advertising, we can call and purchase goods over the
phone e.g. DemTel, TVSN pizzas etc.
Such approaches can be very friendly to people with
disabilities, because products are often both verbally and
visually described and demonstrated. People don't need to
concern themselves with travel to and from a shop.
2.1.3 Internet Shopping
Internet shopping is becoming more popular where products are
selected, a form is completed and the goods are shipped.
If the Internet shopping site is designed in accordance with the
' Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0' found at
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505
which are published by the Web Access Initiative (WAI), then
there is a good chance that most people with disabilities (who
have Internet access) will be able to benefit from the service.
Internet usage for shopping and other activities is discussed in
more detail in sections 4.6 and 4.7 below.
2.1.4 Interactive TV and Appliance-Based Shopping
Soon to be available in Australia are set-top-box-based shopping
services, where the TV and cable service are used to provide
product information and ordering facilities.
At present none of these set-top-box products are accessible to
people who are blind or vision impaired, and a variety of
different and often proprietary operating systems are used in
such devices.
It is hoped that Windows CE will evolve to incorporate more
Active Accessibility functionality, but some companies have
already had success producing voice access to specific Windows
CE applications =96 e.g. The Productivity Works
Many newer devices are being based on the JAVA language. This
also has strong potential for accessibility in the future.
Discussed further in section 7.3 below are smart appliances
which in the future are expected to automate re-stocking the
kitchen and bathroom, by reading product barcodes as discarded
items are thrown into the 'smart' bin. You might be able to ask
your microwave oven or refrigerator to order some ingredients,
find the best price from online shopping sites and have them
delivered that evening. However, this level of functionality is
not present yet.
But because current set-top-boxes and early smart appliances are
inexpensively made, and because they aren't fully-fledged
multi-function computers, they tend to have more limited input
and output options. This could mean that people with various
physical disabilities will also have difficulty gaining access
to such services.
Depending on the disability and the technology, some of these
newer forms of shopping have the potential to provide major
advantages over more traditional shopping methods; however,
those approaches that rely heavily on visual presentation, or
which require use of inaccessible devices or software, will
cause major problems for people who are blind or vision
impaired. Those approaches which don't provide alternative
input options may present barriers for people with physical
disabilities.
The Trace Center explores a variety of possible approaches to
accessing home-based appliances and public services at
http://www.trace.wisc.edu/world/irstds.html
2.2 Catalogues and Packaging
With the expanding use of XML for marking up digital data (such
as store catalogues etc) it may be feasible for people who are
blind or vision impaired to browse an online electronic
catalogue on the web with textual product descriptions and a
high degree of accessibility, even though sighted shoppers might
be able to visually browse the catalogue in a visual format e.g.
virtually walking down shop aisles - looking at pictures of the
products as they move by.
For people who are blind or vision impaired, the glossy
catalogues that appear in our letterboxes cannot usually be read
using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) scanning technology,
due to the complex layout and reliance on pictures and the like.
This problem of catalogue access is also a problem for home
shopping services selling groceries etc, where one is often
required to identify the goods required, based on catalogue item
numbers.
The Royal National Institute for the Blind is currently
researching the area of packaging and labelling for goods in
supermarkets. Its research has found that many disabled and
elderly people have extreme problems just opening many goods,
due to packaging. This work also includes recommendations on
labelling, and colour-contrast for packaging, in order for
people to more easily identify and differentiate one product
from another.
For more information on this project see ' The Forgotten
Customers: One in Ten', at
http://www.rnib.org.uk/wedo/research/sru/packag.htm
2.3 Barcodes
All major products now available for purchase contain a unique
barcode which identifies them to the store's computers for
check-out, stock control and the like. Some stores in the
United States (and on trial in Australia) now offer their
sighted shoppers a hand-held barcode reader which the shopper
can use to scan the goods on the shelf, get pricing information,
keep a tally of goods added to the trolley etc. At present, no
stores are offering such a service which is accessible to people
who are unable to read the visual display on these readers.
Technically, the task of adding a speech chip and storage onto a
barcode reading device isn't that big a problem. In fact,
several such products do exist. These work by storing a
locally-built database on a personal computer, so that barcodes
can be associated with a spoken message, or with a text
description.
There are a few different kinds of barcode scanners, however,
and those that can scan a product from all perspectives (such as
the ones used at the check-out) are quite expensive. Cheaper
barcode scanners - which require accurate alignment of the
scanner over the product barcode - are readily available, but
very difficult for blind or vision impaired people to reliably
use.
Three examples of PC-based personal barcode reading systems the
author is aware of are: An Australian barcode product sold by
Dunbar Computers 08 82777190; a German barcode package sold by
PC-Software-Developments, details at
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jewish_software/
quikinfo.htm and a US barcode product from Ann Morris
Enterprises in the United States. Ann Morris Enterprises
website is at http://www.annmorris.com
There are several barriers to accessing product barcode
information for people who can't see product labelling, such as
=A7 There are literally millions of products which have a
unique barcode. It's neither feasible nor possible to store all
the particulars of these products in a hand-held device.
=A7 The product's price isn't an inherent part of the
product's identification =96 this value is stored in the store's
computer, and can vary from store chain to store chain and even
stores within a chain. So, any barcode reading system for use
by people who can't read the visual display, needs to obtain the
current pricing for the product being scanned, in addition to
the product description.
=A7 Barcodes aren't usually printed in standard or readily
identifiable locations on a product. Thus for a person who is
blind, the task of even finding the barcode is a major
challenge. Unless some kind of tactual clue were embossed near
the barcode, a hand-held reader would still present difficulties
to the shopper.
=A7 The audio output from a barcode reader would need a
volume control to accommodate ambient noise and to provide a
degree of privacy for the customer. Perhaps a socket for an
ear-phone could also be added. An extreme example of this need
might be a shopper who intentionally (or inadvertently) scanned
a box of condoms, and the reader telling the whole aisle what
the person had scanned.
2.4 Paying for Goods
Whether its trying to identify what notes one is holding,
confirming that the right change has been issued, inserting a
credit card correctly into the card reader, entering a PIN on an
EFTPOS terminal, or checking the particulars of a shopping
docket, any or all of these tasks can present major challenges
for people with disabilities.
In the supermarket or other shop-fronts, goods are commonly paid
for in any of the following ways, with the following potential
difficulties:
2.4.1 Cash
=A7 People with intellectual disabilities may have
difficulty counting cash and change;
=A7 People with physical disabilities might encounter
difficulties handling coins and notes;
=A7 People who are blind or vision impaired may have
difficulty denominating notes they hold and change received;
=A7 Elderly people may be confused with change and
handling coins.
Thus these cash transactions can be time-consuming and
frustrating for a wide range of parties, and require a
significant level of trust between the parties.
2.4.2 Credit Card
=A7 Writing a signature is difficult for some people, or
may not be very legible, causing lack of validation;
=A7 Because some transactions are instantaneous and others
delayed, and because banks "hold" funds aside until all
transaction processes have been completed, it can be confusing
for some elderly or intellectually disabled people about the
true status of their credit at a particular time;
=A7 People who have difficulties travelling independently
from their home or place of work are more likely to use their
credit card over the telephone, potentially exposing them to a
greater risk of credit card fraud.
2.4.3 EFTPOS (debit card)
Very common today, this system directly debits the amount of
funds being paid from a bank account which is linked to the
holder's mag-stripe card.
In the three months leading up to February 1999, the ABS found
that 64% of people used EFTPOS to pay for goods, compared to 58%
in the previous year.
=A7 For people who are blind or vision impaired, entry of
the required PIN for EFTPOS transactions is often difficult or
impossible, due to the card reader design. Some units are
touch-sensitive, accepting digits when any of the buttons are
slightly touched for orientation. A good example of this is the
intellect keypad reader, which is in common use in many banks
and shop-fronts. Coles supermarkets used to exclusively use
this reader but more recently have changed over to a unit which
can reliably be accessed by touch;
=A7 People with severe motor disabilities may not be able
to enter their PIN at all. For EFTPOS and ATM transactions,
this inability may require them to reveal this to a friend, or
even the shop assistant. Such a revelation of the PIN is in
contravention of the banking conditions-of-use for the account
and the PIN could be overheard by another shopper or passer-by.
Trust is critical in such situations;
=A7 People with memory impairments, or who have dyslexia,
may have difficulty recalling or reliably entering their PIN;
=A7 For people who are blind, it may be unclear which
orientation to use when inserting a card into a card access
device;
=A7 For people with physical disabilities, it may not be
possible to reach the card reader, or the person may not have
the fine motor control required to insert the card or easily
enter their PIN.
The TRACE Center has developed a conceptual prototype of an
accessible EFTPOS terminal device. This unit would be portable,
would have easily accessed buttons, a headphone jack and volume
control and could read magnetic stripe cards and read/write
smart cards. A description of the TRACE EFTPOS terminal can be
found at
http://trace.wisc.edu/world/kiosks/itms/prototypes/pos.html
3 BANKING AND FINANCE
This section explores the area of banking, and a range of
financial activities that people with disabilities might wish to
perform. Issues of selecting a bank and branch, ATM
accessibility issues, internet banking, and accessing financial
and promotional information are discussed.
3.1 Selecting a Banking Institution
For people with disabilities, selecting a bank is far more
involved than just choosing the bank with the cheapest fees.
The glossy printed brochures are difficult or impossible for
blind and vision impaired people to access. They also don't
tend to scan well using optical character recognition software.
Pricing and features are intentionally complex so as to make
direct comparison of institutions difficult. Obviously, this is
an added problem for people with mild intellectual disabilities.
Also see section 3.5 below.
Many people with disabilities don't independently drive or are
unable to walk even short distances =96 so finding branches and
ATMs nearby is a major necessity. With the closure of branches,
this problem is compounded.
Depending on the bank, and depending on the branch, ATM
(Automatic Teller Machine) facilities are either impossible, or
difficult for people who are blind or vision impaired to access.
Some employ touch screen technology (Westpac is a case in
point) and virtually none provide any audible feedback to the
user regarding the next step of the transaction or the results
of actions. People with physical disabilities may not be able
to access the ATM keypad, card reader or cash dispenser, due to
its height from the ground, steps leading to the machine, or due
to other physical barriers.
One alternative is to find ATMs that are nearby which are more
accessible to the person, however, customers are usually
financially penalised if they opt to use an ATM which isn't
owned by the establishment they bank with =96 even though this
alternative machine might be more accessible and nearby. Also
see section 3.3 below for a comprehensive coverage of ATM issues.
People who are blind or vision impaired may also need to select
a bank which offers accessible Internet banking facilities.
Usually this reduces the range of suitable banks to just one or
two. Also see section 3.4 below for further discussion of
internet banking.
3.2 Telephone Banking
In the three months leading up to February 1999, the ABS found
that 39% of people used the telephone to pay bills or transfer
funds, compared to only 29% in the previous year.
For people who are blind or vision impaired, telephone banking
offers many benefits and increased independence.
However for people who are both deaf and blind (deaf-blind)
audio-based telephone services present obvious problems, due to
their auditory mode of output. The United States Federal
Communications Commission recently found that many people with
hearing impairments encountered major problems when attempting
to use automated telephone services through a relay service. In
particular they encountered difficulties getting connected with
a human, and with the short time allowed for responses to
questions.
St. George Bank was the first bank in Australia to provide a TTY
based telephone banking service for its deaf and hard-of-hearing
customers. This service offers text-based alternatives for all
the spoken prompts presented through its telephone banking
service, meaning that people using a TTY (also called a TDD or
text telephone) can independently gain access to these services.
There are also various interactive voice response (IVR) services
in the United States which provide a TTY service which
corresponds to the audio service used by hearing callers.
Furthermore, the recently announced updates to US FCC
legislation relating to accessibility of telecommunications
technologies makes specific mention of voicemail and other
telephone-based services as an area where increased
accessibility will be required. For more information see
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/News_Releases/1999/
nrcc9048.txt
For people who are blind or vision impaired, as well as for the
huge number of Australians who don't have a computer with
Internet connectivity, telephone-based information services such
as phone banking have clear advantages for timely and
independent access to information and for carrying out simple
transactions.
All automated telephone services in Australia should be
compliant with the Australian and New Zealand standard (AS/NZS
4263) which deals with user interface requirements for
interactive voice response services. In preparing this standard,
consideration was given to the needs of elderly and users with
physical disabilities, including allowing longer waiting times
for responses to questions, consistency of frequently used
commands etc. Tim Noonan is a member of the Standards Committee
(IT/22) responsible for this standard. Unfortunately the
standard isn't accessible on the web, but an article discussing
the Australian and New Zealand IVR standard and good IVR design
can be found at www.softspeak.com.au/ivrpap98.htm
A good report titled ' Telephones: what Features do Disabled
People need' covers the kinds of features required on telephones
by different groups of people with disabilities. It also has a
good statistical break-down of various disabled groups in the
European Union. This report can be found at
http://www.tiresias.org/phoneability/telephones/
3.3 Self-service Banking (ATMs)
Over the years ATM usage has increased markedly. In the three
months leading up to February 1999, the ABS found that 71% of
people used ATMs compared to 66% in the previous year.
More recently, ATM manufacturers see their products as
self-service machines, with the capability of providing other
banking or generic services. These might include providing
on-line access to information on banking services, ticket
issuing etc. In the future, ATMs may be used to transfer value
to a smart card-based electronic purse, instead of issuing
physical cash. The distinction between ATM's and Information
kiosks will continue to blur over time.
Until very recently, there were no banks in Australia providing
ATMs which are accessible to people who are blind or vision
impaired. Some machines contain a raised dot on the 5 key,
others have Braille numbers on the numeric keypad, and others
still, have no tactile indicators whatsoever. Token Braille on
key-tops is the extent to which the majority of banks in
Australia have gone to, in order to make ATMs easier to use -
and that was predominantly in response to the threat of a DDA
action.
Although Braille symbols on ten or twelve of the ATM keys may
seem like a good start, the reality is that such adaptations are
almost insignificant. This is for several reasons, the least of
which is that all the function keys on ATMs are not brailled,
and the screen output on the ATM is obviously not accessible.
Touch-screen-based ATMs don't even have physical function keys =96
the screen is touched where the function is displayed.
In addition, the number of blind and vision impaired people who
know Braille is a small proportion of the total number of blind
and vision impaired people. Also, most modern ATMs use metal
keys which can be very cold to the touch at various times of the
year, further impeding their readability.
The real challenge for a blind person in using an ATM is being
able to "read" what the screen displays, and to be able to
identify which of the multi-function buttons is associated with
which function.
Even when a sequence of button-presses is memorised by a blind
user, this approach falls down when the person needs to perform
an infrequently used task, when they move to another model of
machine, when they use an ATM from another bank, and when
software upgrades are carried out by the bank to add new
services or functionality.
ATM accessibility in Australia needs to go a lot further before
the machines can be used with independence and confidence by
anyone who has difficulty reading the ATM screen.
Recently the Bank of Queensland has installed some ATM units
which provide a level of voice output for customers. At the
time of writing it is not known whether these machines are
specifically to assist blind and vision impaired customers, or
just a feature aimed at the general public. Early feedback
suggested that the screen position made it difficult for many
people to read, making the voice messages of additional
assistance to sighted members of the public also.
Interbold (manufacturers of IBM ATMs) and NCR have both
developed voice output technology for ATM use, but it is only
very recently that any of these more accessible technologies
have been deployed.
In September 1999 NCR issued an announcement about their
philosophy of ATM design and their new range of 'Access for All'
ATM machines. NCR state in this announcement that their
approach to accessible ATMs and self-service machines goes "far
beyond" the legislative requirements of the ADA, and emphasises
their commitment to an inclusive ATM design philosophy. Some of
the interesting features in this product range include
consistent location of the keypad, card access device, cash
dispenser and screen; voice guidance available through an
ear-phone jack; automatic brightness adjusting screen to provide
optimal viewing in bright sunlight and darkness; redesigned
keypad with clearly delineated keys, reduced resistance,
increased key travel etc; and the ability to use the physical
keypad as an alternative to on-screen function buttons. The NCR
'Access for All' announcement is online at
http://www3.ncr.com/product/financial/product/sss/access.htm
Wells Fargo in the United States recently announced a trial of
talking ATM machines for their blind and vision impaired
customers. Wells Fargo's response was probably due to the
threat of a class-action lawsuit by a chapter of the National
Federation of the Blind (NFB) and others regarding the bank's
lack of accessible ATM services.
A week later, CitiBank followed with similar announcements,
which were assisted through collaboration between them and the
American Council of the Blind (ACB).
NCR - a major ATM manufacturer - (as part of a research
consortium known as the SATURN Project (Smart card And Terminal
Usability Requirements and Needs) coordinated by the European
Union) was involved in developing an accessible prototype ATM.
Attention was given to clear screen layouts for low vision
users, voice output via a headphone jack for blind users, use of
both contacted and contact less smart cards for machine
transactions and use of the customer's smart card to store the
user interface preferences of the user, e.g. voice output, large
screen display etc.
An informative report on the findings of the Saturn project and
guidelines for good ATM design can be found at
http://www.stakes.fi/include/cases.html
Another document by John Gill which discusses accessibility of
ATMs is titled ' Making Cash Dispensors Easier to Use' which is
online at http://www.rnib.org.uk/wedo/research/sru/mcdeu.htm
The TRACE Center has also prepared a description (including
detailed diagrams) of an on-paper prototype of an accessible ATM
which can be found at
http://trace.wisc.edu/world/kiosks/itms/prototypes/tsn_atm.html
A list of four standards documents relating to ATM accessibility
can be found on the Trace Center cite at
http://trace.wisc.edu/world/kiosks/itms/atm_stds.html.
Australia, Canada, the US and the UK all have standards, drafts
or guidelines which address this topic to some degree.
To demonstrate the potential of Java for accessibility, Sun have
been demonstrating an ATM that operates on the Java language,
and which adjusts its user interface features according to the
preferences stored on a Java ring (an alternative to a smart
card). For more information on the Java language, see section
7.3 below.
A very interesting futuristic ATM prototype is being trialled by
NCR in Canada. Named Stella, this ATM has no screen, no card
reader and uses voice synthesis to present information to the
customer and voice recognition to process the user's spoken
requests. According to the Stella news release found at
http://www.atmmagazine.com/news.html?article=3D1304 Stella uses
the customer's Iris to recognise the person, then retrieves
previous transaction details making commonly conducted
transactions very rapid. It was unclear from the article
whether this Stella prototype could deal with a person with no
visible iris, such as a person with artificial eyes.
3.4 Internet Banking
>From the banks' perspective, Internet banking is clearly the way
of the future. Whereas it might cost an average of $3 for an
over-the-counter transaction, $1 to $1.50 for ATM transactions,
$1.50 for a telephone banking transaction (accounting for
non-local calls), it costs an average of 12 cents for an
Internet banking transaction.
The ABS found that in the three months leading up to February
1999, 2% of adults use the Internet to pay bills or transfer
funds, as opposed to less than 1% the previous year.
In April this year, research firm www.consult found that the
number of Australians using online banking services had tripled
since June 1998, and more than 145,000 Australians now regularly
use such facilities.
Most respondents used Commonwealth Bank's Internet services but
the number using Westpac's online services grew at the fastest
rate over the year.
The research found that although users prefer the browser-based
approach to online banking, that they also like some of the
additional features often offered by online services which
require special client-side software to be downloaded. From an
accessibility perspective, this preference for browser-based
access will hopefully mean that this is the direction to be
taken by most banks over time. This is demonstrated by
St.George and Advance bank now using browsers.
Because many people like to do their banking from the office,
browser-based approaches have the big advantage of not being
potentially locked out by company firewalls, another driver
towards browser-only solutions.
Internet banking (if accessible) offers many advantages to some
groups of people with disabilities, but in some of its present
forms it isn't accessible to a large number of people in this
group.
Many Internet banking services are very visual and aesthetic in
design. This can hinder accessibility, particularly for people
who are using voice output for their computer.
A secure Internet connection is required in order to bank
on-line. Some of the browsers commonly used by people who are
blind or vision impaired (e.g. most versions of Lynx) don't
support secure (SSL) transactions. For an explanation of SSL,
see section 4.9 below.
Some banks require special programs to be installed on the
customer's computer, (sometimes termed client-side software) but
in many cases such programs aren't accessible to voice output
software. The Commonwealth Bank is a case in point. Some
Internet banking services also require the user to be using one
of the two popular browsers in order to access their service.
Whether this is because of specific functionality of their site,
or just lack of awareness of other browsers varies from
organization to organization. Whatever the reason, if you don't
use Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, then such sites
won't let you proceed past the opening screen.
This means that pwWebSpeak and Lynx can't be used for these
applications, even though they are commonly utilised by blind
and vision impaired customers. St.George Bank's Internet banking
service is one example of a service that discriminates based on
browser used. This site is extremely visual in format and
cannot be accessed using screenreading technology.
Both the Commonwealth Bank and St.George Bank require the user
to enter his/her password on a virtual keypad. This keypad
appears at different locations on the screen, and cannot be
accessed by people using screenreader technology. Furthermore,
although ATMs and telephones use the telephone keypad layout the
St.George Bank virtual keypad adopts the adding machine keypad
layout =96 unfamiliar and confusing to many users, whether
disabled or not.
The potential benefits of Internet banking services include:
=A7 Brochures, advertising and pricing information can
often be accessed online;
=A7 Recent transactions and past statements may be
accessible, in an accessible form. Generally, because of the
layout of printed statements, they can be difficult to scan with
optical character recognition software.
=A7 People who are deaf-blind and who also have the
required equipment and computer skills could independently
undertake banking tasks and access their transaction records.
=A7 People who are home-bound can conduct banking without
the need of physically getting to the branch
=A7 When and if digital cash technologies increase in wide
use, it will be possible to use Internet banking as a home-based
ATM, adding value to a smart card or to a virtual wallet stored
on your PC, which can then be used for day-to-day or Internet
purchases.
For all these benefits to be made available to people with
disabilities, it will be necessary that banks adopt the
recommendations for accessible web design as proposed by the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C. These recommendations have been
formulated by experts working within the Web Access Initiative
(WAI) a domain of the W3C.
Unfortunately, this group has not yet had an opportunity to do
significant work specifically relating to Internet-based
E-Commerce, though in principle, its recommendations can be
applied to E-Commerce applications.
A particular challenge to banking and finance websites for
people with disabilities, is the tendency to represent data
visually and in tabular form. For example lists of account
balances, banking statements, stock listings etc. Over time,
browsers and screenreaders are expected to communicate more
closely in order to offer improved access to tabular information
of this kind. Statements are an example of tabular data which
is regularly displayed on an Internet banking site.
Some banks allow the user to download statements in a
machine-readable format which can be examined in more detail
off-line using a financial/accounting package or using a
spreadsheet program such as Excel. This facility is of
substantial benefit to blind and vision impaired customers
because the information is much more accessible and manageable
using such applications software than it is in its paper form or
online. St.George Bank is one example of a bank that offers
statements in downloadable formats, but the site itself is
inaccessible.
In the United States, Henter-Joyce has worked with CitiBank to
(in their words) offer "unparalleled access" to CitiBank's
Internet banking product for users of Henter-Joyce's Jaws for
Windows and Magic screenreader and screen enlargement software.
CitiBank in the United States now offers an 'accessibility'
option from its opening web-page screen, and has also simplified
the user interface for that section of the site. Henter-Joyce
has assisted by adding extra pronunciation rules to its JAWS
exceptions dictionary, for improved speech output, and has been
providing technical and user guidance to CitiBank as to the best
ways to make the site more accessible.
The researcher attended a presentation by both organizations on
this modified service, but unfortunately both the presentation
and the summary paper were primarily aimed at cross promoting
both companies products, more than offering information and
incites into the modifications that were made to the site.
As of March 1999, CitiBank was only offering this service in the
United States, but stated that it may be offered in other
countries in time.
A brief description of this venture can be read at:
http://www.dinf.org/csun_99/session0246.html, titled ' Banking
on the Internet: Utilizing JAWS For Windows and MAGic With
Citibank On-line Banking'
This site could be a good starting point on which to base
accessible banking locally.
The Bank of Brazil has also done some work with Microsoft and
another developer of adaptive technology to make their Internet
banking service available to people who are blind or vision
impaired. This is the first service to make use of newly
developed synthetic speech equipment which can speak Portuguese.
3.5 Accessing Financial Information, Statements Etc.
As has been discussed elsewhere in this document, paper-based
documents including brochures and statements are difficult to
read and difficult to access using optical character recognition
software.
When this information is made available online, it can offer
opportunities for efficient access to the information. However,
as explained in Section 11.2 below, documents made available
only in this format can be cumbersome to access for people with
disabilities and the accessibility of the documents can be quite
variable, depending on the approach adopted to produce the PDF
document.
Whenever PDF files are made available, the same information
should be available in other more accessible formats such as
HTML, XML, RTF and ASCII.
Recently the Australian Federal Reserve Board voted to issue for
comment proposals that would permit financial institutions and
others to use electronic communication to provide federally
mandated disclosures to consumers. Thus the proposals would
allow banks to provide pricing schedules online, and (after
receiving consent from customers) financial institutions would
be able to make available other disclosures in an online format
(either via email or via a website).
The Board also voted to issue for comment an interim rule for
Regulation DD that would permit depository institutions to
provide disclosures electronically on periodic statements of
account activity.
The press release from the Federal Reserve Board can be found at
www.bog.frb.fed.us/BoardDocs/Press/BoardActs/1999/19990818/
DEFAULT.HTM
4 USING THE INTERNET TO GO ONLINE
Most modern discussions of E-Commerce only focus on the Internet
aspects of the technology. Although E-Commerce exists outside
the Internet domain, it is clear that the ubiquitous nature of
the Internet has become the ideal and logical environment for
the majority of electronic business interactions, particularly
when these involve the public.
Until recently, the lack of security on the Internet, the
diversity of browsers in use, limited up-take by the community
and the speed of communications from point to point (available
band with) all discouraged viable electronic business over the
Internet - but this is now changing rapidly.
In this section the role of the Internet will be examined from a
variety of perspectives; but its implications for people with
disabilities will be covered in particular.
Australia ranks third (behind Finland and the US) in per capita
up-take of the Internet. For this reason, and as the ABS
statistics summarised below demonstrate, the Internet is fast
becoming a vital way of life for many Australians.
It is therefore important to ensure that the Internet that is
being developed is an inclusive environment, rather than one
which locks out a significant proportion of Australians =96 people
with disabilities.
The following potential access benefits of provision of
information and services through the internet are listed in the
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) paper
titled ' Issues Paper: Accessibility of electronic commerce and
other new service delivery technologies for older Australians
and people with a disability
=A7 "The internet can provide an effective means of access
for people whose disability or age makes it difficult for them
to get to premises where services or information are provided
=A7 Many people whose disability makes it difficult to
handle or read paper pages can use a computer, for example with
a modified keyboard or with voice control
=A7 People who are blind or have vision impairments can
use appropriate equipment and software to gain access to
documents in electronic form and read them in Braille, audio or
large print form
=A7 Deaf people or people with hearing impairments can be
provided with ready access to captioning or transcription of
sound material.
=A7 Deaf people and people with hearing or speech
impairments can use e-mail, including recently emerged instant
messaging e-mail services, to avoid barriers in communicating by
phone or telephone typewriter (TTY). ARPANET, the first
Internet, in fact came into being in the United States with the
help of Vinton Cerf, who is hard of hearing. Reportedly, his
hearing impairment and the fact that his wife is deaf were
factors in his role in creating e-mail.
=A7 Internet based video conferencing technology could be
used to provide more convenient and economical access to sign
language interpreting services for Deaf people in a manner
similar to the Telephone Interpreter Service for spoken
languages, as well as access to direct and/or relayed sign
language communication in other contexts.
=A7 Emerging web-based technologies (such as the
"babelfish" translation service available from the search site
AltaVista) offer the prospect of greater equality and
convenience of access and participation for people who are not
fluent in English.
By itself, however, provision of a service or a document through
the World Wide Web, or other internet facilities including
e-mail, does not guarantee accessibility."
4.1 Internet Usage Statistics
Content in this section was taken from a summary press release
published on June 30 1999 by the Australian Bureau of
Statistics. This information is updated quarterly.
Full Details are in Use of Internet by Householders, Australia,
February 1999 (Cat. No. 81 47.0) (available from ABS Bookshops.
The main features and the full press release are online at
http://www.abs.gov.au )
In February 1999, nearly 1.3 million households (18% of all
households) had access to the Internet from home. This is an
increase of 50% (423,000) over February 1998.
Nearly 3.2 million households with a home computer at February
1999, an increase of 10% (287,000) over the February 1998
estimate of 2.9 million households.
Almost 90% of Internet households accessed the Internet
frequently from home (once a week or more);
=A7 40% accessed the Internet daily,
=A7 38% two to six times a week, and
=A7 10% once a week.
In the 12 months to February 1999, nearly 5 million adults (37%
of Australia's total adult population) accessed the Internet
compared to 3 million (23% of all adults) in the 12 months to
February 1998.
In February 1999 the most frequently reported sites for
Internet access were
=A7 Work (2.5 million people),
=A7 Home (1.7 million),
=A7 A neighbour's or friend's house (1.5 million), and
=A7 TAFE or tertiary institutions (1 million).
Of adults who accessed the Internet at home 86% did so
frequently, compared with 68% of adults accessing the Internet
at work and only 26% at sites other than home or work.
Proportionally, in February 1999
=A7 18-24 year olds still had the highest level of
Internet use (65% compared to 42% for February 1998),
=A7 Males still accessed the Internet more than females
(39% and 35'% respectively compared to 26% and 19% for February
1998), and
=A7 More adults in capital cities accessed the Internet
than in other areas (42% and 27% respectively compared to 28%
and 14% for February 1998).
E-Commerce findings included:
480,000 adults used the Internet in the 12 months to February
1999 to make an estimated 1.9 million purchases.
The types of goods purchased via the Internet included
=A7 Books/ magazines (41% of Internet shoppers),
=A7 Computer software/ equipment (40%),
=A7 Music (20%),
=A7 Clothing and shoes (11%),
=A7 Holidays (8%),
=A7 Tickets to entertainment events (6%) and
=A7 Sporting equipment (2%).
By comparison, in the 12 months to February 1998,207,000 adults
used the Internet for shopping.
The survey showed that in the three months to February 1999 -
=A7 2% of adults used the Internet to pay bills or
transfer funds,
=A7 2% used an electronic information kiosk to pay bills,
=A7 39% used the telephone to pay bills or transfer funds,
=A7 64% used EFTPOS, and
=A7 71% used an ATM.
In comparison, in the three months to February 1998,
=A7 Less than 1% of adults used the Internet to pay bills
or transfer funds,
=A7 29% used a telephone to pay bills or transfer funds,
=A7 58% used EFTPOS and
=A7 66% used an ATM.
In February 1999, 556,000 adults (7% of all employed adults)
were able to access an employer's computer from home through a
modem. An estimated 444,000 of these (80%) had an agreement with
their employer to work from home compared with 137,000 in
February 1998.
4.2 Getting Connected
There aren't really any statistics of how many blind, vision
impaired and other disabled people have Internet access. And
even if there were, these statistics wouldn't tell us how many
people with disabilities would wish to access the Internet if it
were more accessible to them, and if it was easier to learn and
use. Although those people with disabilities who do use the
internet, probably do so extensively, there are a large
proportion of people with disabilities who don't have the
finances, technology, skills, training or confidence to do so.
For a good coverage of groups of people who experience barriers
to internet access, see a summary of the "Access Issues" section
and full transcripts from the "Access Issues" section of the
recent UK online thinktank titled 'Boosting the digital Economy
=96 a Thinktank'. The full thinktank report is available online
from http://www.iib.com/reports/iib-vtt.htm the Access Issues
summary is at http://www.iib.com/reports/iib-vtt-page3.htm and
the full transcripts are at
http://www.iib.com/reports/iib-vtt-page7.htm
In the past, blind and vision impaired Internet users had a
choice of two connection methods =96 Shell account access
(historically preferred) and PPP accounts which required windows
skills and windows-based adaptive technology.
Historically, Shell accounts were the only means of Internet
access, predominantly before the Internet became popular to the
masses. Because Shell accounts were entirely based on text
output (they couldn't display graphics) they lent themselves
extremely well to people who were using text-oriented
screen-reading technology.
Today, the number of available shell accounts continues to
dwindle and the support for Shell accounts is almost impossible
to obtain from any Internet service providers (ISPs). Remaining
Shell account users are generally die-hard technical users who
still predominantly use MSDOS or who have migrated to the Unix
variant known as Linux.
Another group of people who still need to use shell accounts for
basic e-mail and Internet access are those people who have
adaptive technology which is not Windows-based. Users of
Braille Lites, Braille 'n Speaks, Keynote Companion and similar
products are presently unable to access the internet in any
other way than through a shell account. A significant number of
these people have information access needs that are met quite
adequately by their portable device, and also want to make use
of e-mail and the internet. For the reasons explained in this
section, this is becoming more difficult.
Newer generations of devices such as these will definitely move
to PPP-based internet access, but existing customers are not
likely to be able to move over to PPP unless they expend
significant funds on product upgrades.
Internet services from America Online (AOL) and CompuServe are
alternatives to the shell and PPP-based services offered by
conventional ISPs. Because of the very visual and graphic
nature of AOL, it is not very accessible to people who are blind
or vision impaired. Although many CompuServe features are
accessible, users do experience problems with online discussions
and other facilities of the service. For this reason, blind and
vision impaired Internet users tend to prefer PPP-based or
shell-based Internet access services.
A very concerning Internet service provider development in the
US was recently reported on the net. In order to ensure that no
unauthorised access could be made to accounts, all customers of
the ISP were issued with a hand-held screen-only device which
displayed a unique number every minute. When the user logged
into the ISP, they would be prompted to enter this unique
number. If the number didn't match, the login wasn't authorised.
Obviously, for customers who cannot read this device, access to
the site would be impossible.
This is a good example of how, what may seem to be a simple and
harmless security measure, could have profound effects on a user
with a disability. If the device manufacturer had been
considering access, they could have also inexpensively
manufactured a reduced number of the units which could
optionally speak the number in a digitised (recorded) voice.
4.3 Selecting a browser
4.3.1 Lynx
The Lynx program (a text-based browser) and Pine (a text-based
eR09;mail program) are tools commonly employed by Shell account
users. Lynx in particular offers excellent access to many
websites, but most versions don't incorporate SSL Internet
security which is required for almost all Internet E-Commerce
transactions including online banking.
Lynx is generally made available without SSL support for people
outside the United States, due to the restrictive encryption
export laws imposed by the US government. Versions of Lynx
containing SSL support are available from Europe, but
compilation and installation of Lynx can be a somewhat involved
process.
Lynx, because it is a free program which is developed and
supported only by voluntary programmers on the Internet, lacks
many of the latest facilities and protocols supported by the
major windows-based Internet browsers. Additionally, many
Internet service providers don't install SSL-based versions of
Lynx on their systems, and don't have the most up-to-date
version of Lynx, Elm and other popular programs available,
making it difficult to benefit from the most up-to-date
facilities on the web and, particularly E-Commerce facilities.
4.3.2 Internet Explorer and Netscape
The way of the future is clearly PPP-based Internet access =96
which lends itself well to the graphical 'look & feel' the web
is now characterised by.
Until recently, there wasn't really any high quality speech
access to Windows-based browsers such as Microsoft's Internet
Explorer and Netscape's Netscape Navigator, but recent efforts
by Microsoft and screenreader developers have lead to
high-quality browsing with speech and Braille output under
Windows.
4.3.3 pwWebSpeak
Another browser with considerable uptake by people who are blind
or vision impaired is pwWebSpeak, a self-voicing browser
developed by The Productivity Works. Unlike Internet Explorer
and Netscape Navigator, this browser does not require
installation of a Windows screenreader, and it has been designed
specifically to allow non-visual users to navigate and listen to
webpages in a very accessible and intuitive manner.
The most recent release of pwWebSpeak includes SSL E-Commerce
support, allowing secure Internet connections to be established
when using this browser.
One of the activities of this E-Commerce project is to work with
The Productivity Works to beta test their latest browser
releases which contain SSL technology for Internet E-Commerce
sites such as Internet banking, online purchasing and the like.
Future revisions of this document will report on the results of
this testing and collaboration.
The Productivity Works have also developed a product called
pwPhone. This product enables webpages to be browsed using
nothing more than a touchtone telephone.
4.4 Learning to Use Windows and the Web
In this section access to the Windows environment is discussed
as well as web access under windows. Understanding of the
Windows operating system is usually necessary, prior to going
online, because it is difficult for a blind person to learn web
access via the leading browsers without a sound understanding of
using a Windows-based computer. PwWebSpeak (described in the
previous section) is a web browser alternative which doesn't
require intensive knowledge of how Windows works.
Just as computing metaphors moved from text-based operating
systems such as MSDOS and Unix, so too webpage design has moved
from predominantly textual access to a visual centric
environment for visual presentation of information. Recent
research has found that whereas most Internet activity was
historically text-based, now, more than 60% of net traffic is
now to and from websites, and that of this, nearly three
quarters is graphic images.
There has also been a shift away from the focus of accessibility
predominantly being centred around adding special hardware and
software to a computer workstation, to accessibility now being
measured by the ways in which information (such as webpages and
online documents) being in formats which are clear and
accessible.
Historically, It was generally recognised that as computing
became ever more visual that the ease of learning and access for
a person who isn't visual (for example a person who is blind)
became correspondingly more difficult to conceptualise and
learn. This was in part due to the way in which the visual
systems originally abandoned keyboard access, relied on the
mouse, and had little correspondence with text-based models of
computer user interaction. Because the screenreading software
wasn't very mature, and because Windows and applications offered
very few clues about why they were doing various things on the
screen, a very good understanding was required by the blind user
of the visual layout and underlying philosophy of windows
programs.
Fortunately, this trend is slowly changing, and the operating
system and the applications are more frequently exposing the
intent of their visual presentation in ways that can be
understood by screenreader software and better understood by
blind users. The problem is still a long way from ideal, but
improvement is gradual and steady.
One of the significant advantages of a visual environment like
windows (both for sighted and non visual users) is that once the
initial principles of operation and navigation have been
mastered, subsequent applications are much easier to learn, due
to sharing of code and user interface concepts.
4.5 Accessing Websites
An increasing proportion of web-posted material is either
impossible to access, or is very difficult to access for people
with disabilities. In her recent paper Cynthia Waddell
summarises this problem as follows:
"The problem for screen readers is that inaccessible webpage
design either hides the text within images, frames, applets or
animated GIFs or renders the text unintelligently in table,
columnar or Portable Document Format (PDF). Even online forms
are [can be] inaccessible especially when designed to prevent
keyboard navigation and input. Whether the form is posted for
school or event registration or online banking or shopping
transactions, people with visual and/or mobility disabilities
are [often] faced with a significant barrier to participation."
Unfortunately, both for native Windows applications, and for
Internet websites, it tends to be the most innovative,
leading-edge and creative applications that are the most
difficult to learn and use for people who are blind or vision
impaired. This is because many of these programs break with
some of the established conventions, in order to present
information in a more visually appealing, effective or
impressive visual format. It therefore also follows that since
E-Commerce applications and webpages are some of the most
leading-edge and innovative services, that these are often some
of the most difficult or impossible applications and sites for a
blind person to access or use.
At present, the consistency of design and user interface now
regularly found in Windows applications, doesn't currently exist
in the world of the Web. Industry Standards efforts by the W3C
(http://www.w3.org), accessibility recommendations from the WAI
(http://www.w3.org/wai), HREOC's Advisory Note on web
accessibility
(http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/www_3/
www_3.html), AusInfo's online document guidelines (
http://www.ausinfo.gov.au/guidelines/index.html ), and input
from sighted and non-visual users alike, will all create push
for increased consistency and accessibility.
There are corresponding factors, though, which are resisting and
working against consistency of the 'look and feel' of websites.
These include: marketing departments that require their products
and services to be differentiated from the competition, artists
and designers who want to add aesthetics to their sites, and
leading-edge developers who want to explore new (and potentially
more efficient) approaches to user interaction.
In principle, if all features of a webpage are designed using
the recommendations published by the Web Access Initiative in
May 1999, then all the features of the site should be useable by
people with disabilities.
The reality, though, is a little different. For one thing, the
WAI guidelines focus on what functionality is needed in a site
for it to be accessible, but presently there is less hard
information on how to achieve that functionality in some areas.
This is because different technologies are at different levels
of development, and the current WAI recommendations are working
to support the lowest common denominators. Although the WAI is
working with web authoring tool developers, most developers to
day don't offer tools to assist the web author to make a page or
a site accessible, and often make it cumbersome to make changes
where problems are identified. Of the vast array of authoring
tools that do exist, most can't be used effectively by people
with a variety of disabilities including people who are blind,
vision impaired or who have difficulties using the keyboard or
mouse.
In September 1999, the Web Access Initiative published a working
draft of guidelines for web authoring tools. Following the
guidelines in that document (when formalised) should ensure the
following:
1. The authoring tool is accessible;
2. The authoring tool generates accessible content by default;
and
3. The authoring tool encourages the creation of accessible
content.
All these goals are critical for the future of E-Commerce
participation by people with disabilities, since E-Commerce
sites are some of the most complex and leading-edge developments
on the web.
The W3C Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (working
draft) produced by the WAI can be found at:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-AUTOOLS
And it isn't only blind and vision impaired Internet users who
are experiencing difficulties with developments on the web.
Cynthia Waddell reports that people with specific learning
disabilities are also finding that they can no longer access
webpages audibly with screen readers, people with cognitive
disabilities are becoming lost due to the absence of navigation
elements at websites, and people with hearing disabilities
cannot access the content of audiostreaming and video clips
posted on the Internet (due to the absence of captioning).
The problem is a huge one, and one which all of us - Government,
industry and individuals - need to work on together to ensure an
inclusive future for all Australians and others. Cynthia
Waddell eloquently sums up both the problem and the urgency with
which action is needed, before its too late.
"Whether the digital barrier is the inaccessible design of
Internet/intranet websites, Internet service provider "portals",
incompatible browsers, or inaccessible webR09;based platforms
for online business, the trend is growing and must be addressed
at the infancy of the digital economy. Already, exciting
electronic and information technology features are emerging in
the areas of information appliances, realtime conference
participation, audiostreaming telephone voice browsers, search
engines, news groups, chat rooms and 3D imaging. Unless
functionality solutions for accessibility are addressed today,
the state of the digital divide tomorrow may be impossible to
overcome".
As already stated, many Australian websites (both Government and
non Government) are inaccessible either in terms of the site
structure or the information provided by the site. In its
recently released issues paper on Accessibility of electronic
commerce and other new service delivery technologies for older
Australians and people with a disability, the Commission notes
that
"it would be fair to say that many areas of Commonwealth
activity are vulnerable to complaints under the Disability
Discrimination Act because basic information is not available in
accessible formats".
The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has
developed an informative Advisory Note on web accessibility,
which can be found online at
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/www_3/
www_3.html
Another excellent resource for testing the potential
accessibility of webpages is "Bobby" available on line at
http://www.cast.org/bobby Bobby is a program developed by CAST
(Center on Applied Special Technology) designed to check
Webpages for accessibility, report on problem areas and suggest
possible improvements. Bobby is available online, or it can be
downloaded, which can be useful for testing large numbers of
pages off-line. Bobby is updated to keep in line with the
latest recommendations of the WAI, and in its more recent
versions requires the developer or tester to answer questions
before reporting a page as accessible.
Another set of Australian guidelines which make some reference
to accessibility and useability of webpages are the ' Draft Best
Practice Guidelines for Legal Web Sites' prepared by the Law
Foundation of New South Wales and the Legal Standards
Information Council. At present these guidelines primarily focus
on content and attribution issues, more than accessibility from
a disability perspective, but are a good starting point. These
guidelines are online at
http://www.lawfoundation.net.au/lisc/recommend/bpguide.html
4.6 Making Purchases on the Web
There are several factors which determine whether a person with
disabilities will be able to purchase goods on the web, based on
their skills, and their combination of screenreader and browser.
If the Internet shopping site is accessible, then Internet
shopping offers an excellent service to people with
disabilities, particularly in view of the difficulties many
people with disabilities have in getting to physical shops or
carrying goods.
When the site isn't accessible, some of the problem areas can
include:
=A7 Does the site require specific browsers to function?
=A7 Is its visual layout too complex to easily understand
and navigate?
=A7 Does it provide text descriptions of graphics and
products, or just pictures?
=A7 Can the catalogue of goods available for purchase be
accessed easily and efficiently?
=A7 Can goods easily be added to a shopping cart, and can
the contents of the cart be reviewed?
=A7 Can order forms including those requesting credit card
details be entered with confidence and accuracy?
=A7 Does the person's browser support SSL security for
safe transmission of credit card and other personal data?
=A7 Can the user carry-out all the stages of the process,
or will they find that after spending significant time and
energy putting an order together, that they can't complete the
transaction?
=E0 If the person can't be assured that they are ordering
what they intended to buy, and if they can't be assured that
they are paying what they think the goods cost, then it would be
unwise to proceed with the transaction.
=E0 The ordering stage of the process may just be
inaccessible, requiring the user to abort the transaction after
having spent significant time and effort identifying and
selecting goods for purchase.
=E0 Alternatively, some websites may decide that the
browser in use is not appropriate for secure data transmission,
and may therefore halt the ordering process prior to
transmission of credit card details.
An important factor for E-Commerce accessibility relates to the
way that an E-Commerce site is developed. While the core site
might be developed in-house, or by a contractor, it is usual
that a third-party E-Commerce module will be employed for all
the E-Commerce-specific features of the site. These might
include credit card verification, virtual shopping cart
facilities, product catalogue modules etc.
Even if a company genuinely wishes to make its site fully
accessible, if it is reliant on third-party software for
E-Commerce that is not inherently accessible in design, then the
E-Commerce components of a website will not be available to
people with disabilities. Regrettably, this means that the
ability to make a site suitably accessible may be predicated on
the E-Commerce strategy and existing contracts which the site
owner has with other third-party companies.
An important area for future work is to identify some of the
leading online E-Commerce solutions developers, and encourage
them to consider accessibility in their design. Unfortunately,
E-Commerce is one of the largest growth areas on the web, so
this task would be quite substantial indeed.
4.7 Internet Shopping Resources
To better inform Internet shoppers in Australia about their
rights and the risks of online shopping, the Department of
Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (with the
Commonwealth Treasury) has produced a series of fact sheets on
consumer issues about electronic commerce (available in print,
or on line through an index page at
http://www.dcita.gov.au/cgi-bin/graphics.pl?path=3D3815 )
including:
1: What are the benefits and risks of shopping online?
2: What type of information should I look for in a Website?
3: How safe is it to use my credit card?
4: Do I have to pay sales tax or duties on imported goods?
5: What happens to my personal information?
6: What if something goes wrong with my purchase?
7: Banking on the Internet (published 20 August 1999).
Two other Braille resources which have just been released by
National Braille Press in the United States at
http://www.nbp.org are a book titled 'Shop Online the Lazy Way'
by Richard Seltzer (a well-known Internet speaker/evangelist),
and a companion volume "Musings of an Addicted Internet Shopper"
by Barry Scheur and Judy Dixon. The first book is aimed at the
general public and is a comprehensive resource for Internet
shopping sites, issues and possibilities. The second, briefer
volume is a blind person's perspective on Internet shopping,
focusing on a few excellent and accessible shopping sites. As
these products have just come to market, their applicability to
the Australian context is unknown, but it is likely that much of
the material will be applicable globally.
4.8 Emerging Internet Developments
In this section a few emerging internet trends are discussed
because they have significant implications for people with
disabilities and E-Commerce. This section is general in nature
and is not meant to be comprehensive.
A variety of new E-Commerce-related activities can now be
undertaken via the web including online voting, buying, selling
and reviewing stocks and shares, online auctions, planning and
purchasing travel, comparing banking and home loan rates &
features, software which finds the best price for goods, and
more.
Two interesting and potentially very promising areas of
development in relation to the web and consistency/accessibility
of information are intelligent agents and front-end web services
which perform online actions on the user's behalf. Examples
include a service in the US which allows a person to integrate
all his or her banking, even when its across different banking
institutions. Using a consistent interface, funds can be
transferred, bills paid, loan interest rates compared =96
essentially a service which integrates all of a person's
finances into one consistent interface.
There are now Internet sites which will search the web for the
best prices for products one wishes to purchase, and soon there
will be agents that help the user choose where to purchase from,
based on price, place of manufacture, environmental and social
justice preferences, while also maximising the buyer's points
for buyer loyalty schemes etc. Of course for such intelligent
software to do its job well, the web itself will need to be more
consistent, both in terms of entering the site and finding
information, through to the actual means used to mark-up site
and product data.
As is discussed further in sections 7.2 and 7.3 below, many
devices other than the PC will be connecting to the web and
automatically carrying out financial and shopping tasks.
At present, some online CD, grocery and book stores go out of
their way to be inconsistent, to avoid price comparison software
from determining their pricing. These kinds of efforts will
also result in the user being required to accordingly jump
through more hoops, in order to directly access the site and its
information. It is hoops such as these that often present
access barriers and added confusion for people with
disabilities. Over time, market pressure is likely to result in
these kinds of anti-competitive approaches losing favour, and
shoppers and price comparison software will end up discarding
sites which won't allow their prices to be compared.
Already, internet search engines provide a consistent front end
to the web, and products such as Web Ferret provide an
accessible, consistent and efficient front end to multiple
search engines - avoiding the need for a user to learn complex,
inconsistent and potentially inaccessible web-based software
user interfaces, as well as saving them time.
Over time it is expected that these front ends will become more
intelligent, and will work on behalf of the user, not on behalf
of the seller, leading to a more simple, more effective and
potentially very accessible set of interfaces to the web,
tailored to each person's preferences and abilities. Often
termed intelligent agents, such software would be available with
a variety of user interface options for the user, including a
comprehensive 'voice in, voice out' interface, and could be
accessible using nothing more than a standard landline or mobile
telephone.
As the web becomes more crowded, as advertising and promotions
continue to take more and more of online browsing time, as the
number of online sellers continues to multiply, the need for
intelligent agents =96 able to select the useful from the
irrelevant, the good value from the bad, the quality product
evaluation from the marketing hype =96 will become an essential
aspect of internet access. Obviously, any software, person or
broker who works on another person's behalf, is going to put
some kind of bias on the information that is accepted and that
which is thrown away. Already, search engines are frequently
accused of falsely directing people to commercial sites who pay
for advertising on the search engine, and of course a vast
quantity of supposed information on the web is really just
disguised advertising. In the future, it will be the products
which genuinely look after the end user's individual interests
that will win out, but these types of products could still be
some time in coming.
Generally speaking, people with disabilities are less anonymous
than their non-disabled counterparts. For this reason, the
considerable privacy implications of web access, online shopping
habits, the topics of online searches and the like are
particularly relevant. For more information about privacy, and
internet issues in general, see Roger Clarke's excellent online
E-Commerce resources at
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/EC/
As with any PC-based or Internet services, accessible design is
the key to these and other emerging web-based services being
accessible to people with disabilities.
4.9 Security of Information on the Net
Standard Internet information exchange is very insecure. This
means that eR09;mail and any details that a person transmits to
another user or company could be read from one or more points
during its travel to the intended destination. This applies
both to data sent to and received from standard webpages and
electronic mail messages.
Because of fraud and unauthorised credit card use, as well as
other personal information that may need to be transacted over
the net for E-Commerce purposes, it is important to have secure
methods for sending information over the net that can't easily
be read or tampered with by unintended parties. Encryption is
the term used to describe technologies which scramble data in
ways that stop unauthorised persons from reading that data.
The most widely used technology on the Web for this purpose is
commonly known as SSL (Secure Socket Layer). New versions of
SSL are now being developed to provide enhanced security
facilities. A more recent version of SSL is now called
TLS(Transport Layer Security) but SSL is the main protocol and
name that netscape originally used for its proprietary
implementation, and the SSL term has stuck.
If people with disabilities are using text-only browsers such as
Lynx, then they may not have access to SSL security, and thus
may not be able to access online E-Commerce sites and services.
For several years MasterCard, Visa, IBM and others have been
developing and promoting the SET (Secure Electronic Transaction)
protocol which was a response to Internet security concerns.
More recently, though, its becoming clear that SSL-based
solutions are being adopted by most Internet E-Commerce sites
and the majority of banks both in Australia and abroad. At
present, SET implementations are few and far between.
Credit card security concerns were fuelled by a variety of
security breaches involving crackers gaining access to credit
card details held online by Internet service providers and other
businesses. Recent information published by credit card
companies shows that although Internet-based credit card
transactions only make up 20% of all transactions, over 50% of
complaints about unauthorised use pertained to Internet-based
card usage.
For more information about SSL and SET, see ' E-Commerce: A
White Paper' at
http://www.wisc.edu/arch/teams/ecommerce/white_paper.html
5 INFORMATION &TRANSACTIONS OVER THE TELEPHONE
For people who are blind or vision impaired, as well as for the
huge number of Australians who don't have a computer with
Internet connectivity, telephone-based information services such
as phone banking have clear advantages for timely and
independent access to information and for carrying out simple
transactions.
However for people who are both deaf and blind (deaf-blind)
audio-based telephone services present obvious problems, due to
their auditory mode of output. The United States Federal
Communications Commission recently found that many people with
hearing impairments encountered major problems when attempting
to use automated telephone services through a relay service. In
particular they encountered difficulties getting connected with
a human, and with the short time allowed for responses to
questions.
There are various interactive voice response (IVR) services in
the United States which provide an equivalent TTY service which
corresponds to the audio service used by hearing callers. In
Australia, St.George Bank was the first to introduce such a
service for deaf and hard of hearing customers. Furthermore, the
recently announced updates to US FCC legislation relating to
accessibility of telecommunications technologies makes specific
mention of voicemail and other telephone-based services as an
area where increased accessibility will be required. For more
information see
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/News_Releases/1999/
nrcc9048.txt
For more information on telephone banking see section 3.2 above.
All automated telephone services in Australia should be
compliant with the Australian and New Zealand standard (AS/NZS
4263) which deals with user interface requirements for
interactive voice response services. In preparing this standard,
consideration was given to the needs of people who are elderly
and users with physical disabilities, including allowing longer
waiting times for responses to questions, consistency of
frequently used commands etc. Tim Noonan is a member of the
Standards Committee (IT/22) responsible for this standard.
Unfortunately the standard isn't accessible on the web, but an
article discussing the Australian and New Zealand IVR standard
and good IVR design can be found at
www.softspeak.com.au/ivrpap98.htm
A good report titled ' Telephones: what Features do Disabled
People need' covers the kinds of features required on telephones
by different groups of people with disabilities. It also has a
good statistical break-down of various disabled groups in the
European Union. This report can be found at
http://www.tiresias.org/phoneability/telephones/
A newer development in some countries is the use of
screen-phones for finance/banking transactions and web-phones
for e-mail and web access. These are discussed in more detail
in section.7.2 below
6 VERIFICATION OF IDENTITY
This subject is very involved and only a relatively superficial
examination of issues has been addressed in this document.
Nevertheless, the coverage should be adequate to raise awareness
of some key issues relating to people with disabilities.
A variety of methods can be used to verify that a person is who
they claim to be. These include:
=A7 Something the person possesses (such as a key, card,
security pass, driver's licence or passport);
=A7 Something the person can do that represents them (such
as writing a signature);
=A7 Something the person knows (such as a PIN, password or
pre-arranged answers to questions);
=A7 Biometric methods i.e. Something anatomical uniquely
defining the person (such as DNA, a retinal or thumb print, hand
geometry, voice print or facial characteristics).
Until recently, signatures, possession of a card and PIN entry
have been the main means by which identification has been
achieved for banking and financial transactions. As biometric
technology becomes less expensive and more reliable, there is a
move towards substituting a biometric measure in place of a PIN.
Not only will this increase the certainty that the person is who
they claim to be, but it will also assist governments to obtain
increased distinguishing data on their citizens (and
non-citizens).
For more information on use of biometric methods of
identification, see ' Roger Clarke's Promises and threats in
E-Commerce' at
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/EC/Quantum.html
As we continue to move away from paper-based financial
transactions, where the signature was the main means of
verification of identity, long-distance electronic transactions
open the risk to fraud, misrepresentation and the like. It is
these changes which are leading to an increased reliance on
reliable methods of verification of identity, such as
biometrics.
However, no one or two single methods of verification will be
applicable to all of the diverse range of people who are
disabled or elderly in our society, but if there is some
flexibility of methods used, then almost all people should be
able to be identified with confidence and convenience.
A variety of scenarios can be proposed where one or more methods
will fall down for certain members of the population, just a few
examples might include:
=A7 Signatures may be difficult to obtain and Thumb prints
won't work if a person has no hands, or if a blind person
doesn't know exactly where to place a hand or thumb for geometry
or finger/thumb print recognition;
=A7 Retinal scans may not work if the person has
artificial eyes, or if they can't look into the camera;
=A7 People with severe dyslexia, memory problems or
physical disabilities may not be able to reliably enter their
PIN;
=A7 People who don't drive clearly can't produce a
driver's licence.
=A7 Voice Prints may be identical for people who use
speech synthesisers to speak;
=A7 People who can't visually read wouldn't be able to
speak a random phrase for voice-print analysis.
It is strongly recommended that if a biometric measure is used,
that more than one option be provided, and in particular that
(if required) individuals can retain PIN entry to identify
themselves. This is a key recommendation from researchers in
the European Union.
Such a flexible approach should accommodate for all the
individual variations found in our population.
6.1 Drivers licence
In Australia the driver's licence has a special significance and
is linked sociologically with maturity and adult rights. Not
having this document is considered the exception, not the norm.
People who are legally blind and many people with other medical
conditions such as Epilepsy are unable to obtain a drivers
licence. It is interesting to note that in Sweden (and several
other countries) many people don't have a driver's licence and
each citizen holds a Government-issued Identity card which
contains a self-photo and contains the person's date of birth.
In response to this problem, In May 1999, Blind Citizens
Australia began issuing its Identity Card for people who don't
have or can't obtain a drivers licence. This card contains the
person's photograph, their signature and their date of birth.
The card was recently accepted towards the '100 points' system
by the Australian Banking Association.
6.2 Retinal Scans
These are a common means of verification of identity in building
security systems. Obviously if a person has trouble looking
into a camera, or if they wear darkened glasses or if they have
prosthetic eyes, then this method of identification will be
inappropriate.
The article on Stella at
http://www.atmmagazine.com/news.html?article=3D1304 describes a
prototype futuristic ATM which uses the customer's iris for
identification.
6.3 Facial recognition
The CSIRO has been undertaking research into intelligent face
recognition technology. At present, this technology requires
the person to look into a security camera when requested, so
that the software can compare his or her facial characteristics
with records in its database, or from data stored on the
person's identity card.
6.4 Voice Print verification
In order to overcome the obvious security problems of a person
employing a recording of someone's voice to "fool" a voice
verification system, such systems usually prompt the person to
speak one of several specific phrases, or to answer a question
from a pre-agreed set of questions. If this prompting is not in
an audio format, then it would not be possible for a person who
could not see or read the prompts to respond appropriately or in
a timely manner. Similarly, if the information was not displayed
visually, then a person who was deaf would encounter similar
problems.
6.5 Optional PIN Entry for People with Disabilities
The best way to keep implementation problems such as these to a
minimum is to offer PIN entry as an available option for certain
people who have disabilities which might make the use of more
modern verification methods problematic.
7 SOME EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
Future versions of this report are likely to provide expanded
information in this section.
7.1 Information Kiosks (Information and Transaction
Machines)
An Information Kiosk is a public terminal which contains a
multimedia computer and usually employs a touch-screen for user
interaction.
Store directories, product catalogues, ticket selling,
information provision, online forms completion, job searching,
phone number look-up and a wide variety of other activities can
be offered by such devices.
In the three months leading to February 1999, The ABS found that
2% of Australians used an information kiosk to pay bills or
transfer funds.
The problem of accessibility for information kiosks is
widespread, both in Australia and in other countries. For people
who are blind or vision impaired, accessibility of public
information kiosks is a particular issue due to the highly
visual nature of both the information presented, and the visual
feedback methods required to select and enter information e.g.
the heavy reliance on touch-screens and the absence of a
keyboard or keypad device.
Activities such as voting, looking up a name or information in a
building or store directory, or finding out tourist information
may need to be performed using information kiosks, since this
information either isn't readily available in other ways, or it
may need to be obtained immediately.
Over time, the distinction between an Automatic Teller Machine
and an information kiosk will continue to blur, making access to
cash and financial services potentially more complex.
Currently, it is due to the relatively limited range of services
and options offered by current ATM units that allows some people
with disabilities to perform some ATM transactions with
reasonable levels of success. Of course, as discussed in
section 3.3 above, this access is still difficult, may result in
additional expense, and usually relies heavily on the person's
memory.
It has been argued that much of the information and services
offered by current information kiosks either can or will be
available from other sources, e.g. the internet and over the
telephone. This may well be the case, but nevertheless, the
whole purpose of information kiosks is their convenient
location, easy access and the provision of information that is
relevant to the location and situation at hand. Relevance,
convenience, location and ease of use are the goals of most
information kiosks; their role is to provide information and
services, without relying on the user to have specialist
knowledge, experience or internet access.
The Trace Center which is based at the University of Wisconsin
has been working for several years now on methods of making
information kiosks accessible and effective for most groups of
people with disabilities. For example, it has developed a
variety of user interface approaches designed to provide
information, and accept input from different groups of people
with disabilities including people who are blind, people who
have reduced vision, people who are deaf, people who are hard of
hearing, people who are deaf-blind and people with physical
disabilities.
The US Access Board has sponsored the Trace Center to develop a
report on the accessibility of information kiosks, which can be
found on the Access Board website at http://www.access-board.gov
The Trace Center website at www.trace.wisc.edu contains a wide
range of information on accessible design and information kiosk
research being conducted by that team and others. Kiosk specific
Trace Center information is at
http://trace.wisc.edu/world/kiosks/
Dr. John Gill and other European researchers have written
several documents discussing accessibility requirements of
publicly accessible terminals (such as information kiosks).
Their latest report on this subject is titled 'Access
Prohibited? Information for Designers of Public Terminals' which
covers the following topics:
Public access terminals, Design-for-All policy, The numbers of
people with disabilities, The problems with public access
terminals, Locating and accessing a terminal, Card systems,
External features, labels and instructions, Screens and
interaction, Operating instructions, Keypads, Touch-screens,
Retrieving money, cards and receipts, Typefaces and legibility,
Checklist, Publications, Websites, Standards, Pan-European
disability organizations and other sources of information.
This comprehensive document is online at
http://www.eyecue.co.uk/eyecue/pats/
In 1999 The Productivity Works announced its commercial solution
to information kiosk accessibility, for kiosks based on HTML.
Working with Quad Media The Productivity Works can now provide
cost-effective accessible kiosk solutions which incorporate
synthetic speech, recorded speech, large print, touch-screens
and which fully implement the Trace Center's kiosk user
interface recommendations. The package allows access by people
who are blind, vision impaired, and people with restricted
mobility. More information on The Productivity Works kiosk
products can be found at
http://www.prodworks.com/kiosk/kiosk.html
An alternative approach to information kiosk access for people
with disabilities is the use of a personal hand-held device
which is optimised for the individual's particular situation.
This one device would be the eyes and ears of the person, when
interacting with ATMs, information kiosks, ticketing machines,
video machines, set-top-boxes and the like.
Standards and protocols being investigated for access to devices
are discussed on the Trace Center web site at
http://www.trace.wisc.edu/world/irstds.html
An excellent recent Trace Center document titled ' EZ Access
Strategies for Cross-Disability Access to Kiosks, Telephones,
and VCRs' is online at
http://www.trace.wisc.edu/docs/tide98_keynote_ez/keynote.html
7.2 Screen and Web Phones
A newer development in some countries is the use of
screen-phones for financial and banking transactions. In
addition to audio, such telephones also have a visual display,
which is able to present information such as account balances,
menus etc. Various trials have been conducted using such phones
in Australia, but their uptake is not high at present. With the
likely increase in smart card usage, such telephones are
expected to become more commonplace. The most common variety of
screen phones use the ADSI protocol (Analogue Display Services
Interface) which was developed by Bellcore in the United States.
Most of the work carried out thus far on making screen phones
more accessible relates to this ADSI protocol.
More recently, the once humble telephone has also been extended
to a web-browsing and eR09;mail access device. Instead of
setting up a computer =96 with all its requisite software and
potentially conflicting hardware =96 a web phone only needs to be
connected to the telephone line, and is usually ready to go. Of
course, if the user has a visual disability, the chances are
that today the device won't be accessible to him/her.
A recent publication from the Royal National Institute for the
Blind (UK) on the design of accessible Screen and Web phones is
at http://www.rnib.org.uk/wedo/research/sru/phones.htm
7.3 Smart Appliances
The telephone is just one example of a new generation of 'smart'
appliances. It is expected that a wide range of what used to
just be humble domestic appliances will soon get a lot smarter.
Smart refrigerators, smart microwaves, smart toasters, smart
televisions, and even smart garbage bins are just a few of the
prototypes being trialled by enterprising companies. These
appliances might contain touch screens, local area network
communications, bar-code readers, voice output and even voice
recognition.
Several protocols, compact operating systems, and
industry-driven standards are vying for a role in this new
generation of smart appliances, but at present these are largely
incompatible with one-another, not fully developed, and the
accessibility options presently don't look very promising.
Some of the principles central to smart appliances are:
intercommunication between smart appliances, a user interface
that is focused on the actual tasks which need to be carried
out, a move away from multi-function "do everything" computers
to simple and easy-to-use appliances, as well as optional online
access to the internet for ordering and price comparison.
A press release discussing NCR's Microwave Bank, a smart
microwave oven is online at
http://www3.ncr.com/press_release/pr091098b.html This prototype
product developed by NCR's Knowledge Lab, based in London,
England, - NCR's facility for developing the future of banking
and electronic commerce - incorporates a computer touch-screen
in its door, a barcode scanner, voice recognition and voice
verification, finger print identification, iris scanning,
password protection and internet connectivity, as well as an
intelligent agent that learns your cooking, shopping and banking
habits.
Some of the main uses of the Microwave Bank include the
following, taken from the press release cited above:
"Need to check your bank balance or pay your bills? By touching
a simple symbol on the screen you can find out if you're in the
red or black. The NCR Microwave Bank will also let you transfer
money from another account, to ensure your balance is healthy. =85
You can also pay bills, set up direct debits, check credit card
balances and access your account 24 hours a day - all from the
hub of your home.
Don't have the right ingredients? The NCR Microwave Bank has a
bar code reader allowing you to keep track of items that need to
be replaced. Just swipe your empty bottle of ketchup across the
reader and it will register that you need to buy a new one. Once
your 'shopping list' is completed, you can send your Microwave
Bank shopping to any of the major supermarkets offering an
on-line service. The device will arrange for your shopping to be
delivered to your door and it will also find you the best deal
amongst all the supermarkets, taking into account discounted
products and loyalty reward programs.
Decided to go on a diet? The Microwave Bank will get to know
more about your preferences and lifestyle each time you use it,
thanks to an intelligent agent which stores and processes all
the requests you make. If you've started to buy reduced fat
yogurt, the Microwave Bank can suggest that you try skimmed milk
too; or, when it knows your holiday is approaching, it can
remind you to invest in some sun block - even flagging up
reduced rates on particular Web sites."
But to date, the majority of accessibility efforts by computer
and software manufacturers have been directed to PC
accessibility. Microsoft, with its huge share of the PC market,
has been pressured to ensure that accessibility is part of its
strategic product development processes. Java (from Sun Micro
Systems), similarly, is an emerging technology for which
accessibility has become a major priority. Java is discussed
further in the next section. With the development of competing
operating systems and protocols for use in smart appliances,
accessibility isn't guaranteed, and the competition between
venders may work against accessible design at the outset.
7.4 JAVA
Java is a computer language developed by Sun Micro Systems. Its
achieved extraordinary support by the computing industry due to
its ability to run on a vast array of computing platforms, from
Unix machines to PCs, Macintosh's, IBM mainframes, hand-held
personal organisers, public terminals such as ATMs and even
household appliances such as cable TV set-top boxes, microwave
ovens etc.
In the world of the web, Java can be in the form of Java Applets
(discussed shortly) and Java Script. Java script is common on
websites, and doesn't always pose accessibility problems,
depending on what the commands in the Java Script are trying to
do. Java script can be run on the user's computer (client-side)
or on the website proper (server-side). For more information
about Java Script, see the WAI guidelines and techniques
documents.
Of great importance in the medium to long term is the
accessibility prospects for the Java language. Because Java can
run on a wide range of machines, and because many of these
platforms won't even have accessibility facilities installed on
them, it has the potential to create a range of access barriers.
Fortunately, a variety of efforts both within Sun, and within
IBM are working to ensure that Java (from the outset) is an
environment oriented towards accessibility, so long as Java
developers follow some commonsense guidelines, and so long as
they use the standard Java tools which are available from Sun
and/or IBM. If companies use other custom application
development tools, then it is quite possible that their
applications will not be accessible.
IBM has developed a product it calls the Java Self Voicing Kit.
This is essentially a screen-reader environment which is written
in native Java, which can run on a variety of computer
platforms. It offers additional features for the user to
customise how applications operate =96 similar to scripts or
profiles used in other screen-reading applications. These
user-scripts are called Perks in the IBM Self Voicing Kit, and
are also written in Java.
Another approach to accessing java for users of PCs is to
develop a bridge between the Java environment to the screen
reader environment. Demonstrations of a simple bridge being
used by both Henter Joyce's Jaws for Windows and Synthavoice's
Slimware Windows Bridge were demonstrated in March 1999.
Up-coming versions of these and other screen readers are
expected to provide a bridge to the input and output from a Java
Virtual Machine running on the computer.
To demonstrate the potential of Java for accessibility, Sun have
been demonstrating an ATM that operates on the Java language,
and which adjusts its user interface features according to the
preferences stored on a Java ring (an alternative to a smart
card.
A full explanation of the Java language and how accessibility is
implemented is beyond the scope of this discussion paper, but
for readers wishing to read more on this topic, the following
three documents contain excellent information on the subject.
A paper by Sun about Java, what it is, how it works, and how
accessibility can be implemented - Java Accessibility : A Primer
on the Java Platform and Java Accessibility at
http://www.dinf.org/csun_99/session0002.html
A paper by IBM describing their Java Self Voicing Kit and Java
accessibility approaches - Open Door to Accessibility: IBM's
Self Voicing Kit Technology for Java at
http://www.dinf.org/csun_99/session0098.html
The most current version of IBM's Accessible Java guidelines for
Java developers are maintained at:
http://www.austin.ibm.com/sns/access.html
7.5 Windows CE
Windows CE is an operating system for hand-held computers which
was developed by Microsoft. CE stands for Compact Edition =96
because Windows CE is a cut down version of Windows 95.
A large number of portable computing devices are based on
windows CE, and it is fast becoming the default operating system
for any portable computer that needs to interact with mainstream
windows software.
There are a variety of other operating systems which are vying
for market share, but WindowsCE and Java-based platforms seem to
be in the majority for now.
Several adaptive technology developers are working on Windows
CE-based accessible systems, but these are still in development.
Compaq (the second most recent owner of the DECTalk synthetic
speech product, has now ported the DECTalk to Windows CE
offering some interesting possibilities.
8 AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT INFORMATION AND TRANSACTIONS
This section focuses on those aspects of access to Government
services that have an E-Commerce component. It should be noted,
however, that the Government's approach to this area is in the
wider context of the 'Information Economy' not just E-Commerce
specifically.
For a comprehensive coverage of the broader topic of information
access in Australia, the reader is encouraged to consult a
separate Blind Citizens Australia project report ' Everybody's
Business' which was prepared by Gunela Astbrink of GSA and
Associates. This report can be found at:
http://www.bca.org.au/ebdybus.htm
In the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC)
paper titled ' Issues Paper: Accessibility of electronic
commerce and other new service delivery technologies for older
Australians and people with a disability' at
www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/current_inquiries/ecom/
ecommerce_issues_paper.htm David Mason discusses the vital need
for Government information to be accessible to all Australians
(including people with disabilities) as follows:
"The philosophy underlying the Disability Discrimination Act is
that people with disabilities have the same rights to
participate as does the whole of the community. As many people
with disabilities point out, this entails responsibility to be
an effective citizen. Access to Commonwealth information is
vital to the exercise of those rights and responsibilities.
The Disability Discrimination Act provides at section 29 that
there shall be no discrimination on the grounds of disability in
the administration of Commonwealth laws and programs. One of the
most important ways to eliminate discrimination is to provide
accessible information. Although efforts are being made in many
quarters it would be fair to say that many areas of Commonwealth
activity are vulnerable to complaints under the Disability
Discrimination Act because basic information is not available in
accessible formats.
The development of electronic formats is not the only way to
improve accessibility of Commonwealth information but it is an
important opportunity. Many barriers to access are entrenched in
physical infrastructure that is the legacy of history and
expensive and slow to change. This need not be the case in
developing accessible on-line services because new and open
standards are emerging. It should be the Commonwealth's aim to
present as much information as possible in electronic formats
that take advantage of these open standards."
However, access to information is predominantly a one-way
process. For people with disabilities to really be a part of
Australian society they need to be able to interact with
Government with equivalent effectiveness as their non-disabled
counterparts. This topic is discussed further in section 8.6
below.
There are a wide variety of Commonwealth and State Government
initiatives designed to provide online access to government
services, provide government information online and promote
wider up-take of E-Commerce and participation in the Information
Economy.
A good summary of these (current up to late 1998) can be found
in an Australian E-Commerce briefing paper prepared by NOIE for
the 1998 OECD E-Commerce conference and can be accessed at
http://www.noie.gov.au/oecd/overview4.html
A more recent NOIE report titled ' Australias E-Commerce report
card =96 report' on Australia's E-Commerce progress through until
April 1999, can be found at
http://www.dcita.gov.au/cgi-text/
webdriver?MIval=3Ddca_dispdoc&ID=3D3789
The most recent coverage of this issue, with a specific
E-Commerce and disability perspective is the Human Rights and
Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) paper titled ' Issues
Paper: Accessibility of electronic commerce and other new
service delivery technologies for older Australians and people
with a disability' at
www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/current_inquiries/ecom/
ecommerce_issues_paper.htm
8.1 Stated Government Commitments
The following fragments were extracted from a background paper
prepared for the OECD ministerial conference on E-Commerce held
in late 1998. Accordingly, the timeframes and the scope of the
stated commitments may have changed since the preparation of
that document.
The full document can be found at
http://www.noie.gov.au/oecd/overview4.html
Australia is committed to the following undertakings.
* Delivering all appropriate Commonwealth services
electronically on the Internet by 2001. This will complement -
not replace - existing written, telephone, fax and counter
services.
* Establishing a Government Information Centre through OGIT [now
OGO] as a single point of access to information about government
services, with the first stage to be completed by the third
quarter of 1998. The Government Information Centre will
complement existing initiatives from agencies, including the
Australian Taxation Office, Centrelink and the Business
Information Service, to provide services to Australians through
call centres. In consultation with State governments, the centre
will facilitate single window access to government information
and services. The centre will be developed in partnership with
the private sector.
* Establishing electronic payment as the normal means for
Commonwealth payments by the year 2000. By 2000 the Commonwealth
will move, in partnership with banks, to full implementation of
Financial Electronic Data Interchange as the normal means for
paying suppliers.
* Establishing a government-wide intranet for secure online
communication by the end of 1998. This will facilitate the more
timely exchange of information between government agencies, the
Parliament and Ministerial Offices. It is expected to provide a
full multimedia capability to agencies to communicate and secure
access to external networks. Australia will work with industry
in developing innovative solutions.
8.2 Stated Government Strategic Directions
In December 1998, the Australian Prime Minister announced the
Government's strategic directions for the Information Economy =96
containing ten key priorities for action. The Commonwealth is
working to develop action plans against each of these priority
areas in consultation with the States and Territories. It will
direct its efforts to achieve these priorities with assistance
from Australian industry.
Of most relevance to people with disabilities is priority 1, but
priorities 9 and 10 also have indirect and long-term
implications for increased access. Priority 1 states:
1. Maximise opportunities for all Australians to benefit from
the Information Economy.
In section 2.1 of the report the Government says the following
about the first priority:
Australians will be able to use the Information Economy to make
social and business contacts; gain knowledge, education and
training, assistance and income; access government services; and
go about their everyday business with much more speed and
convenience. These benefits will be profound for Australians
whose disabilities or disadvantage make such transactions
difficult, for example people with disabilities, senior
citizens, and people from a non-English speaking background.
The government is committed to ensuring that all Australians
have open and equitable access to information available online,
and that, through education and training, they are able to
contribute creatively to that stock of information. This
commitment must include the most vulnerable in Australian
society-entailing a national approach to infrastructure, to
ensure there are no pockets of disadvantage among different
categories of regional and rural users. This will play an
important part in securing a strong democratic, informed and
inclusive society.
Of course the intent of this priority is extremely clear and
positive, but what is not at all clear, or stated in this
document is actually "how" the Government will achieve these
outcomes.
In July 1999, the National Office for the Information Economy
released an updated document titled ' A Strategic Framework for
the Information Economy' found at
http://www.noie.gov.au/strategy/strategic_summaries.htm In this
document one of the actions against this first priority is to
conduct more research into the benefits of widespread online
participation, possible barriers to segments of the community,
and some solutions.
Until very recently, with the exception of the 'AccessAbility
Grants Program' funding, there wasn't any concerted or
coordinated effort by the Government to identify the
difficulties in achieving the accessibility requirements of the
first priority, or a strategy in place to ensure that the
priority could be fully met. As can be seen in section 8.3
below, the recently announced HREOC E-Commerce Reference is a
very positive and welcome development.
In reading the paragraphs quoted above from the Prime Minister's
Strategic Directions report, it still seems that the real focus
is regional access, and that although disabilities are listed,
it is mostly assumed that this group will automatically benefit
from Government moving online. Clearly, this will not be the
case without accessibility being made a key priority and
requirement for all online Government efforts.
The Government's clearly stated 'light touch' approach to the
Information Economy =96 a technology-neutral policy, and leaving
most of the implementation decisions to industry =96 lends further
weight to the fear that various sectors of the Government don't
have a clear handle on accessibility and the Strategic
Directions reports clearly demonstrate that accessibility
generally isn't a priority for the E-Commerce Industry or NOIE =96
which in more recent times seems to almost exclusively be
focusing on promoting E-Commerce to business and industry.
On a daily basis new Government websites are appearing, and the
majority of these are not designed with accessibility in mind.
Several of the key Government documents which can be found on
the website of the National Office for the Information Economy
(NOIE) are completely inaccessible. Firstly, many of them are
only provided in PDF (Portable Document Format) (a format that
is cumbersome and difficult to access for people who are blind
and vision impaired) and secondly, the PDF files are prepared in
such a way that they can't be converted into an accessible form.
The website itself has a very confusing layout and is
extraordinarily difficult to navigate using a screen-reader.
If the websites of NOIE, (the body charged with bringing
Australia into the new information age) and DCITA (the
Government Department we would hope is demonstrating 'best IT
practice') are not designed with consideration of
accessibility, then we are only left to speculate on how
industry and other Government bodies will fare in this regard.
Following is a summary of the ten priorities taken from Section
1.6 of the report which is titled "A strategic framework for the
Information Economy :identifying priorities for action"
December 1998
1. Maximise opportunities for all Australians to
benefit from the Information Economy.
2. Deliver the education and skills Australians need
to participate in the Information Economy.
3. Advance the growth of a world class
infrastructure for the Information Economy.
4. Increase significantly the use of electronic
commerce by Australian business.
5. Develop a legal and regulatory framework to
facilitate electronic commerce.
6. Promote the integrity and growth of Australian
content and culture in the Information Economy.
7. Develop the Australian information industries.
8. Unlock the potential of the health sector.
9. Influence the emerging international rules and
conventions for electronic commerce.
10. Implement a world class model for delivery of
all appropriate government services online.
8.3 Recent Developments and Documents
The Commonwealth has developed two excellent documents which
promote and advise in relation to the accessibility of online
documents and webpage accessibility. These are:
=A7 AusInfo's Guidelines for Commonwealth Information in
Electronic Formats, at
http://www.ausinfo.gov.au/guidelines/index.html and
=A7 The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's
Advisory Note on web accessibility at
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/www_3/
www_3.html
8.4 Telstra and the Government
Until recently, Telstra was working with the Australian
Government to offer an electronic payments system for use by
Government departments and suppliers named Transigo. In January
1999 this contract, which was to continue until June 2001, was
cancelled by both parties.
Telstra is also developing a new generation product originally
called the multimedia payphone. These phones will in effect be
multimedia information kiosks incorporating a touch-screen, a
smart card reader, and, as the name suggests, regular public
telephone facilities.
Initially, Telstra's focus on people with vision impairments did
not appear to be forefront in the trial and development of the
product. More recently, subsequent to significant lobbying by
Blind Citizens Australia and others, Telstra appears to be
working more concertedly to make at least some of the services
accessible to people who are blind and vision impaired. Telstra
did carry out significant consultation with accessibility
specialists internationally to address the needs of people with
low vision and other physical disabilities.
The challenge of developing a product which is accessible to a
broad cross-section of people is significant, but in view of
Telstra's plans for widespread deployment of the product, it is
important that people who are blind and vision impaired are not
locked out from access. This is particularly important
considering that this group is unable to access information in
paper from, and considering that information provision is the
key purpose of these kiosks.
Based on the information that Telstra is a major player in the
International Chip Cards Alliance, (it hosted this body's
convention in 1997), its utilisation of the Chipper smart card
platform and more recently its sign-up with the Mondex
electronic purse platform, Telstra is clearly working to place
itself at the forefront of widespread smart card utilisation in
Australia.
It is quite likely that Telstra is hoping to have in place an
infrastructure which allows it to offer a widespread electronic
cash implementation which will use its planned ubiquitous
multimedia payphone network to add electronic cash value to its
smart cards. If this is the case, then its very important that
people with disabilities can independently access electronic
cash through use of the payphones. In view of the reticence with
which the banks have encouraged up-take of smartcard-based
electronic purses, Telstra may indeed be well placed to achieve
success in this endeavour.
It is also expected that Telstra will sign up a variety of
government and non-government information providers who will
provide content which can be accessed via Telstra's multimedia
payphone network.
8.5 Centrelink Developments
On several occasions over the last few years, Centrelink
(formerly the Department of Social Security) has considered the
use of smart cards to improve the delivery of funds and more
efficient records access. Issues including privacy and more
recent uncertainties about which smart card technologies should
be considered have lead to inaction until very recently.
Recently it was announced that Centrelink was working in
cooperation with the majority of States and Territories to agree
on the most suitable smart card platform to provide a single
card to meet their diverse needs.
A recent trial by Centrelink in Western Australia now allows a
person to use their telephone to obtain information about their
Centrelink records through use of an interactive voice response
facility. This same information is quite possibly also going to
be available via the Telstra multimedia payphones in the future.
The Internet is another format that Centrelink customers can use
to access (and eventually update) their information.
At present all these means of information access are read-only.
It will not be possible to allow people to update their details
unless there are reliable and efficient means for them to
remotely identify themselves e.g. through a Centrelink smart
card or equivalent, which authenticates that the person is who
they claim to be.
If Centrelink did use Telstra's multimedia payphones to make
information and services available to their clients, then it is
conceivable that Centrelink payments could be transferred
directly to a Centrelink-issued smart card which also contained
an electronic purse. It is unclear whether the termination of
the Transigo electronic payments system between Telstra and the
Commonwealth would hinder such a service.
Smart cards and electronic payment systems are discussed in
detail in a companion 'Smartcard Accessibility' document which
can be found at http://www.bca.org.au/smartcard.htm
8.6 Government Transactions and Completing Forms
In addition to a range of Government information being made
available online, the Government will also be providing a
variety of services online for Australians.
Both the Australian Tax Office (ATO) and the Commonwealth's
Office of Government Online (OGO) are currently implementing
digital signature technologies which are designed to ensure 1) a
system for authenticating that people are who they say they are
when transacting electronically (authentication), and 2) that
the information they send cannot be tampered with (data
security). If this electronic signature technology doesn't have
an accessible user interface, then many Australians with
disabilities will be barred from engaging in such transactions.
For example, the Australian Taxation Office expects over 100,000
Australians to lodge their returns electronically during the
1999/2000 financial year involving this digital signature
technology.
The Government has embarked on Project Gatekeeper =96 an effort to
enable all government departments to communicate securely within
the next few years. Interestingly, New South Wales has recently
commenced using a rival (and incompatible) digital signature
system.
Possible online services involving interaction between citizens
and Government might include: online registration for services,
online access to personal information, online requests for
information, online registrations, online Government bill and
fines payment, completion of tax returns, voting and the like.
These services will only be accessible to people with
disabilities if a variety of issues are considered, tested and
addressed by those departments and contractors responsible for
implementing these new online services.
For example:
=A7 Will it be possible for people who are blind or vision
impaired to complete online forms with confidence and
convenience? (The current offerings from Adobe for online forms
completion are not accessible.
=A7 Will it be possible for blind and vision impaired
people to independently carry-out searches of Government
databases for relevant information, and effectively access the
resulting documents that are found? Some Government documents
which are online at present are in formats that are difficult or
even impossible to access by this group.
=A7 Will the Government-approved methods for individuals
to identify themselves online be accessible and useable by all
groups of people with disabilities? What aspects of Project
Gatekeeper impact on user interface design, which could help or
hinder accessibility?
=A7 Will the methods adopted by the Australian Government
for online electronic payments and funds transfers be accessible
to people with disabilities?
9 DISABILITY RIGHTS LEGISLATION
Over the last one or two decades, in Australia and a variety of
other countries, disability rights legislation has been
developed to help protect the rights of people with disabilities
to participate in education, employment, leisure, the economy
and society as a whole.
Although most legislation of this kind is relatively young in
legal terms, legislation such as Australia's Disability
Discrimination Act (DDA), the United States' Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA), Public Law 508 and recent amendments to
the US FCC's telecommunications Act are all applying pressure on
Government and non-Government service and product providers to
be more aware of the accessibility requirements of people with
disabilities and older people.
For information on Australia's Disability Discrimination Act
(DDA) see the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Comission's
site at
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/cgi-bin/textonly.cgi/disability_rights/
index.html
For general information about the Americans with Disabilities
Act (ADA) see the US Access Board's website at
http://www.access-board.gov
For E-Commerce-related information on the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA), US Public Law 508 as well as various US
state-based legislative developments, see Cynthia Waddell's
Digital Economy paper at
http://www.aasa.dshs.wa.gov/access/waddell.htm
For information on the recent changes to the US Federal
Communications Commission's (FCC) recently updated disability
legislation, see
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/News_Releases/1999/
nrcc9048.txt
For information on proposed copyright reform in Australia see
Section 11.2 below.
The recently released HREOC E-Commerce issues paper at
www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/current_inquiries/ecom/
ecommerce_issues_paper.htm also covers a variety of local and
international legislative issues in the context of accessible
E-Commerce services.
Interestingly, in general terms, online E-Commerce service
developers don't appear to have designed their services in line
with the spirit of these legislative reforms, and individuals
have submitted relatively few complaints specifically focused on
online E-Commerce services and sites. It is expected that as
E-Commerce and internet usage by the community gains momentum
and becomes more central to the daily activities of more people,
that a stronger response to disability rights legislation - in
the form of more accessible design - is likely.
The recently announced HREOC Reference into the implications of
E-Commerce and other technology developments on people who are
older and people with a disability is also likely to bring to
light a variety of access barriers in Government and
non-Government services which will need to be addressed.
10 PARTICIPATION IN EMPLOYMENT
In order for people with disabilities to obtain and retain
employment, they need to be able to perform the activities
required in the job, and access the software, hardware and
facilities used in the workplace.
>From an E-Commerce perspective, this has relevance for workers
in financial institutions, the ATO, the Department of Treasury
or any accounting or finance department in an organization.
If business applications and systems can't be used by staff with
particular disabilities, then their job options are limited or
their continued employment is at risk.
For example in the United States there are a significant number
of blind employees working for the IRS (Internal Revenue
Service) and the NSA (National Security Agency) who require
access to the systems used by these bodies.
United States public law 508 requires that purchases made by the
US Government are accessible. This legislation has recently
been strengthened, making this requirement even stronger.
This situation has significant implications for Australian
companies who are producing financially-oriented products for
sale in other countries. If these Australian companies don't
consider accessibility in the design of their products then they
risk losing a huge US market for their goods.
In November 1998, the Australian and US Governments announced
their intent to cooperate on E-Commerce issues to enhance trade
and standardisation.
Joint statement on Electronic commerce
Australia and the United States believe that the growth of the
Information Economy is a significant and positive development
for both countries and, generally, for society and global
business. The benefits of E-Commerce, in particular, include
access to new markets, quality of service, encouragement of
innovation, more efficient management of supply and distribution
and better customer service. These benefits should accelerate
economic growth in all sectors, and across all regions and
communities.
The full Australia/US joint statement is available on the NOIE
website at http://www.noie.gov.au
In the last few months (up to September 1999) several other
similar agreements have been signed with Japan, China and other
Asian countries.
11 BARRIERS AND OPPORTUNITIES OFFERED BY ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
We are moving into an era of electronic publishing, electronic
and online books and in the future an era of paperless libraries.
At present books and documents printed on paper present
significant problems to people who are blind because this group
is unable to "read" the wealth of information available in
print. People with some physical disabilities are unable to
handle, manipulate and use printed books (for example may have
difficulties turning pages and selecting books from a shelf,
desk etc.)
The digital age offers many possibilities for increasing access
to information in accessible formats =96 information which was
once only available in hard-copy print. In principle, any
document prepared using word processing software, any
information stored in a database or spreadsheet, any information
stored online in machine-readable format =96 can now be made
available in any mix of high-quality synthetic speech,
reasonably accurate Braille, or large-font print.
As is discussed in the next section, copyright and protection of
authors' and publishers' rights is a key concern leading out of
the move to digital production and the potential for perfect
replication of digital materials.
We are also starting to see a move towards small units of
information, such as poems, articles, short stories,
commentaries etc being made available to an audience for a very
small (or not so small) fee. The processes being developed to
manage the licensing, access and reading rights for digital
information are generally known as Digital Rights Management.
Combining digital information and the Internet and digital
rights Management offers potential models for selling units of
information to an Internet customer for single-use or rights to
access the material long-term.
Just as there is in the software industry,so too in the
publishing industry there is a distinction between physical
products which a customer can buy and digital information which
a customer is able to license. Such information is not
generally owned by the customer, but the customer has rights to
access and use the information in specific ways.
Because the paper-based libraries that currently exist are
generally inaccessible to people who are blind or vision
impaired, the online alternatives potentially have good
accessibility for independent searching and access to
information. This may mean, however, that this group pays more
to access information which sighted counterparts could less
expensively buy in paper form or legitimately borrow on paper
from a library. This assumes that the Digital Rights Management
System and the E-Commerce payment system for an information
resource on the Internet are accessible. Also, it is necessary
that the information itself be stored in an accessible format.
This is discussed in more detail below.
Just as many sighted people prefer to print all or part of an
online document in hardcopy form, so too, Braille readers need
the ability to produce Braille transcriptions of all or part of
documents they gain access to. Blind and vision impaired readers
who do not use Braille may similarly wish to store all or some
of the information into a portable reading device, such as a
RoadRunner, Braille Bookworm, or one of the several speech and
Braille output personal organiser/note-taker devices.
While a lot of effort is going into online access systems and
page-perfect printing options for sighted readers, most online
reading software tends to be designed in such a way that the
material cannot be exported for reading within a portable access
device or in a form facilitating braille or large print
production.
In February 1999 the Texas Education Agency issued a
comprehensive document titled "Report on the Computer Study
Project" which made a variety of recommendations relating to
accessibility of education materials. Amongst its
recommendations were the development of both a CD-ROM-based
demonstration text book and an Internet-based online text book
which can independently be accessed by people with disabilities
without the need for assistive technology. It requires that by
2003 all CD ROM-based textbooks or materials adopted by the
Board of Education comply with all the minimum accessibility
requirements of the World Wide Web consortium.
Similarly, three recent Bills in the State of California require
that many text books for educational use be made available to
the State in a form which can be made available in Braille and
other alternative formats.
As is discussed in Cynthia Waddell's 'the Growing Digital
Divide' report, distance education technologies and materials
also are at high risk of being inaccessible to people with
disabilities. The California Community Colleges - pursuant to
the compliance requirements of the US Department of Education,
Office for Civil Rights - have now published guidelines for the
accessibility of long-distance learning resources which are
online at
http://www.HTCTU.FHDA.EDU/dlguidelines/
final%20dl%20guidelines.htm The California Community Colleges is
the largest higher education system in the US serving a
population of over 4.1 million students.
Closer to home, the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind and
Deakin University are collaborating on a project titled
"Electronic Provision of Information Resources to Students who
have a Print Disability". This project will look at ways and
means by which library information can be made more accessible
to the 60 students registered with the university who have a
print disability.
Although moves such as these are promising, as already
discussed, recent electronic publishing developments may be
withdrawing some of those possibilities as digital systems for
ensuring copyright and copy protection explicitly limit the ways
and means by which a person with a print disability can access
multimedia electronic books and online information.
A very positive development has been the publication by AusInfo
of a guidelines document titled ' Guidelines for Commonwealth
information published in electronic formats' at
http://www.AusInfo.gov.au/guidelines/index.html containing
recommendations and information about producing Commonwealth
documents for online delivery. AusInfo was formerly the
Australian Government Printing Service. Blind Citizens Australia
provided input to this document, and the document contains
several references to print disabled readers. It is expected
that, in time, this document will become a companion volume to
the next edition of the AusInfo style guide, which is expected
to be available at the end of the year 2000.
11.1 Copyright Law and Standards Efforts
Some of the latest developments in copyright law make it illegal
to try and access an electronic document other than through the
provided viewing software. This means that attempts to decrypt
or convert the information into text or Braille may actually be
against the law in some countries, and probably Australia. This
could result in enormous wastage of time and effort required for
re-keying or scanning print texts.
In recognition of this important issue, Sacramento - Governor
Gray Davis has signed legislation, AB 422 by Assemblyman Darrell
Steinberg (D-Sacramento), requiring publishers of instructional
materials to provide the University of California, the
California State University or the California Community Colleges
with an unencrypted electronic format of any printed
instructional material requested for use by disabled students.
The electronic format must be provided in a timely manner and at
no additional cost.
The drive for these extreme copy protection approaches and
associated legislation is predominantly coming from WIPO (World
Intellectual Property Organization) and is believed to be
orchestrated by influential for-profit publishing groups such as
major record companies, Hollywood film producers and publishing
houses. Whereas the concept of Copyright was originally
developed to protect the rights of individuals and to add to the
social community of information, most of the influential players
now direct their pressure at increasing revenues and restricting
the access rights for individuals, whether disabled or not.
Recent copyright law changes in the US have lead to a wide range
of titles due to enter the public domain, now having their
copyright further extended into the future.
Many of the recently developed software and hardware viewing
solutions offered for modern electronic publications aren't at
all accessible to people with disabilities, and others are very
cumbersome. Most assume that the person has a PC (or sometimes
a Macintosh) or a proprietary electronic book reader. These
assumptions don't always apply to people with disabilities. A
large proportion of blind and vision impaired people use
portable note-taking devices which contain storage memory for
electronic text and information. Similar in concept to PDAs
(personal Data Assistants) these devices also act as mobile book
readers, using synthetic speech and Braille output to present
information stored in them.
An excellent source of information relating to e-book
(electronic book) developments is the E-Book-list mailing list.
To subscribe to E-Book-list, send an eR09;mail message to
[log in to unmask], and place the following line in the
body of the message
info E-Book-list
Fortunately, several significant standards efforts are underway
to improve accessibility of electronic book materials. These
include the 'Open E-Book' standard (an industry standard being
driven by Microsoft and the key electronic book reader
developers, Open E-book is XML-based; DAISY (Digital Audio
System) www.daisy.org; and the efforts of the W3C (World Wide
Web Consortium), www.w3.org and its Web Access Initiative (WAI)
domain www.w3.org/wai
Because of the fear by publishers that they may lose
intellectual property rights (such as copyright) by making
electronic documents available to people with disabilities,
researchers in Europe are developing a system that combines two
key technologies =96 an Electronic Copyright Management System
(ECMS) and accessible document design. The concept behind this
project is that publishers can licence the required information
to people with disabilities who can't access it in its primary
formats, and that this package will enable those people to also
access the document in an effective manner.
Unfortunately, one of the big disadvantages of this approach is
that it imposes greater restrictions on blind and vision
impaired readers than equivalent sighted readers of print books
are subjected to. Those limitations are primarily imposed
because of the significant encryption and security software
components of this very complex system that is PC-bound.
In an era of open standards and data exchange, this technology
seems excessively proprietary and publisher-oriented, even
though it purports to be enabling blind and vision impaired
readers.
11.2 Australian Copyright Law Reform
The content in this section has been taken from the recently
released issues paper prepared by David Mason of the Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. It is an excellent
explanation and summary of the recently proposed changes to
Australian copyright.
"The Attorney-General and the Minister for Communications,
Information Technology and the Arts announced on 26 February
1999 the release for public comment of a draft Copyright
Amendment (Digital Agenda) Bill 1999.
The central aim of the reforms is to ensure that copyright law
continues to promote creative endeavour and, at the same time,
allow reasonable access to copyright material on the Internet
and through new communications technology. : Daryl Williams AM
QC MP, " Copyright reform: into the digital future" 12 February
1999, available at
http://law.gov.au/ministers/attorney-general/articles/
Futures.html
As noted by the commentary released with the exposure draft of
this Bill,
Digital technology and the growth of computer networks,
particularly the Internet, have posed challenges to the
protection and enforcement of copyright throughout the world.
Creators and owners of copyright material are concerned to be
able to protect their copyright on the Internet. Users of
copyright material, such as libraries, archives and educational
institutions, are concerned about being able to obtain
reasonable access to copyright material on the Internet.
http://law.gov.au/publications/copyright_enews/digital_agenda/
commentary.rtf
The Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Bill was introduced
into the Parliament on 31 August 1999. The Attorney-General's
second reading speech of 2 September 1999 is available on line
by searching the Australian Parliament House site
http://www.aph.gov.au . Some extracts are included here for
convenience.
The reforms will update Australia's copyright standards to meet
the challenges posed by rapid developments in communications
technology, in particular the huge expansion of the Internet.
This extraordinary pace of development threatens the delicate
balance which has existed between the rights of copyright owners
and the rights of copyright users. The central aim of the bill,
therefore, is to ensure that copyright law continues to promote
creative endeavour and, at the same time, allows reasonable
access to copyright material in the digital environment.
This bill and the recently passed Copyright Amendment (Computer
Programs) Act 1999 are integral components in the government's
strategy to develop a legal framework that encourages online
activity and promotes the growth of the Information Economy. The
Information Economy is developing from the revolutionary new
opportunities for the use, storage and transmission of
information being made possible by digital technology.
.. The centrepiece is a new broadly based technology-neutral
right of communication to the public. The new right will subsist
as an exclusive right in literary, dramatic, musical and
artistic works, and in sound recordings, films and broadcasts.
To complement the introduction of the new right of communication
to the public, the bill will introduce an important package of
exceptions to that right. As far as possible, the proposed
exceptions replicate the balance that has been struck in the
print environment between the rights of owners of copyright and
the rights of users. The extension of this balance into the
digital environment was one of the fundamental principles
underlying the 1996 WIPO [World Intellectual Property
Organization] treaties.
The existing exceptions for fair dealing will apply to the new
right of communication to the public. The fair dealing
exceptions permit the use of copyright material for purposes
including research or study, criticism or review, and reporting
news.
The new legislation also extends the existing exceptions for
libraries and archives to the reproduction and communication of
copyright material in electronic form. The library and archives
provisions have been carefully reviewed to ensure that an
appropriate balance is achieved between the rights of copyright
owners and users. The definition of `archives' has been
clarified to include museums and galleries which satisfy certain
requirements currently specified in the act. This will allow
such bodies to take advantage of the exceptions applying to
archives. The extended exceptions in the bill will enable
libraries and archives to undertake a vital role in providing
reasonable access to copyright material in electronic form,
whilst at the same time protecting new commercial markets for
such material online.
The reforms also extend the existing statutory licences in the
Copyright Act for copying by educational institutions to the
reproduction and communication of copyright material in
electronic form. The new statutory scheme for the electronic use
of copyright material by such institutions has been drafted in
broad terms to enable it to adapt to future technological
developments. The key to the new scheme is flexibility based on
agreement between educational institutions, such as universities
and schools, and the relevant collecting societies. I strongly
urge, in the interests of both copyright owners and users, that
the parties work together to reach agreement on issues such as
process and the rate of equitable remuneration under the new
scheme. However, the bill provides that, where agreement is not
possible, the Copyright Tribunal has new jurisdiction to
determine these matters.
The bill establishes a similar statutory licence for the
electronic use of copyright material by institutions assisting
persons with print and intellectual disabilities.
This Bill, if passed and implemented, would appear to address a
number of difficulties which educational institutions and
students, in particular, have experienced in securing equal
access through digital technology to materials available in
other forms, but it is unclear whether the exemptions for
accessing password-protected documents include institutions
providing services to people with print or intellectual
disabilities".
11.3 Portable Document Format (PDF)
Portable Document Format (PDF) is a popular file format
developed by Adobe which is particularly well suited to
presenting information on a variety of computer platforms, and
with excellent replication of visual layout. PDF replicates the
paper page on screen.
Unfortunately, PDF files frequently present significant
difficulties to the reader who has a print disability, as well
as requiring extra processing steps by the user before the
information can be read. Depending on the visual layout and
complexity of the PDF document, these additional processing
steps often don't provide an adequate representation of the
information. For example many mobile phone and other software
and equipment manuals can "technically" be converted into ASCII,
however, most symbols are omitted and the layout is often
confused.
More recent versions of the PDF file format have facilities for
presenting on-line forms which can be filled in by the person
reading the form. Unfortunately, current versions of the Adobe
software for producing and completing PDF-based forms are not
accessible to people who are blind or vision impaired. Many
jobs and electronic commerce transactions involve completion of
online forms, for example in the past the US IRS (Internal
Revenue Service) provided all its tax forms in PDF format =96 but
these were not easy, and in many cases were impossible to access
for many print disabled Americans.
Adobe's latest PDF file specification also allows PDF documents
to contain digital signatures and to be digitally signed.
Unless such signed documents can be directly read by blind and
vision impaired users of the Adobe Acrobat software, then many
jobs involving reading and validating such electronic forms
would be denied to these people.
There is currently debate in Adobe regarding how it should
handle protected or locked adobe documents. Adobe's file format
supports the concept of locking a document from being saved =96
viewing only. People with disabilities have difficulty
accessing the Adobe software, and at present some of the
publicly available PDF to text converters ignore this lock flag.
Non-disabled Adobe customers have strongly complained to Adobe
that this circumvention of the in-built PDF security features is
unacceptable to them. This means that future access modules
from Adobe are likely to lock out accessibility in such cases
where the author/publisher wants to lock access to the file to
read-only.
Several companies are publishing electronic books using the PDF
format. Some of these books are being produced with the lock
flag set to protect copyright, resulting in restricted access to
this information for disabled readers.
Many websites and electronic publishers are only making their
documents available online in PDF format. Alternative versions
of these documents need to be provided online along-side the PDF
versions to facilitate equivalent access for people who are
blind or vision impaired, and for anyone who doesn't have access
to a PDF browser. These alternative formats include ASCII,
HTML, XML and RTF.
The web guidelines for the City of San Jose require that if PDF
files are made available on a site, that alternative versions in
ASCII or HTML are also made available.
The issue is not that PDF files should not be employed by
publishers of information, but that the extracted text from such
PDF documents is often inadequate for the reading needs of
people with disabilities, so alternative formats of the
information also need to be available, without the need for
extra effort or searching.
A positive move on the PDF front is the recent inclusion of
structural facilities in the latest PDF specification (version
1.3). This new functionality will (in time) enable a PDF
document to contain both the particulars required to visually
represent the document aesthetically, and the internal
structural information about the document so that converters and
future PDF viewers can present the document in more reliably
accessible formats. The improved specification also allows
alternative text descriptions to be added to graphics contained
in a PDF document.
At present there are few tools for producing structurally-rich
PDF documents, but a tool called PDF Baker is available from
Adobe which converts style-based word documents in to structured
PDF versions. At this stage, there are no publicly available
PDF tools to enable such structured PDF documents to be
converted into structurally rich formats for use by people who
are blind or vision impaired. It is also important to keep in
mind that these enhancements to the PDF format will have no
positive impact what-so-ever for the huge base of existing PDF
documents, and that it will be some time until an increasing
number of documents are available which include structural
mark-up.
A variety of tools exist to convert existing PDF documents to
ASCII or HTML, and their results vary depending on the way in
which the PDF document was created.
If a document has only been scanned into a PDF file, then it
will be completely inaccessible to a person who is blind or
vision impaired. Unfortunately, there is no means of
establishing ahead of time, whether the document is accessible
or not.
A free product assembled by Jamal Mazrui which can do bulk
conversions from PDF to ASCII that runs in a Windows 95 or
Windows 98 DOS Box can be found at:
http://www.empowermentzone.com/pdf2txt.zip
An email service is also offered by the Trace center which can
convert PDF documents to text and HTML. E-mail containing PDF
files as attachments can be sent to the following addresses:
[log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask]
Another service that offers a range of web-based file
conversions including PDF can be found at http://www.gohtm.com/
however, This service will not convert protected PDF documents,
for copyright reasons as discussed earlier in this section.
It is reported that Adobe are becoming more involved in the area
of XML, as well as being members of Microsoft's Open E-Book
standard. Hopefully these developments will lead to quality
access options for Adobe file formats in the future? XML is
discussed in the next section.
11.4 XML
XML is the latest buzz word in the world of electronic
publishing. A standard developed by the W3C, XML takes the best
features of SGML and its small cousin HTML, to provide a
powerful language with which to mark-up any electronic
documents. XML is rich, powerful and is expected to be the
primary standard for marking up text for books, Internet
webpages, online documents, manuals and catalogues.
XML stands for extensible Mark-up Language. It is based on the
15-year-old text mark-up language SGML. It is gaining strong
support due to its ability to be extended, allowing virtually
any document to be described.
XML is the heart of Microsoft's Office 2000 suite, and is the
key to Office's increased ability to prepare documents for, and
directly access and operate on documents from the Internet.
Although, at present, XML appears complex and involved to
publishers and others, a huge number of editing and publishing
tools are under development which will completely hide XML's
complexity from the user. XML ensure that documents are
described in terms of their structure e.g. headings and the
kinds of information they contain. XML doesn't describe the way
the document will look, this role is handled by style sheets =96
documents that define how various components in a document will
look on paper, on a computer screen, when produced in audio etc.
XML therefore fully separates a documents content from the way
it looks when printed =96 the key to reliable transcription into a
range of formats, and essential for reliable computer
interpretation of documents.
The move towards XML will result in increased opportunities for
accessibility of documents in a variety of formats, including
high-quality synthetic speech.
XML allows a document to be formatted once, and then made
available on a variety of platforms and formats including a PC
computer, Macintosh, portable hand-held personal data assistant,
a webpage, a next-generation talking book machine, sent to a
Braille translation system, and more.
12 CONCLUSION
In this discussion paper a variety of E-Commerce technologies,
trends and issues have been explored from the perspective of
accessibility for people with disabilities.
The intent of this document has been to raise awareness of
accessibility issues, to widely promote discussion, and to offer
a constructive mix of hope and realism to people with
disabilities who wish to avail themselves of, or who have need
of, the increasing range of electronic commerce services and
facilities which are being introduced in Australia and in other
countries.
It is also hoped that this document will serve as a starting
point for disability and accessibility education for E-Commerce
designers, developers and implementers.
It is true that both technology and accessibility have come a
long way in the last 15 years. However online and other
technical developments over the last two or three years are far
out-pacing developments in accessibility. If we wish to be able
to fully participate in the economy and the community over the
next 15 years and beyond, then all of us will need to lobby,
continue to raise awareness, and generally ensure that people
with disabilities aren't a 'second class' group of citizens -
with only 'second class' levels of access and independence.
Blind Citizens Australia is actively seeking partnerships and
strategic alliances to further these goals. If you are
interested in working with Blind Citizens Australia to improve
the accessibility of E-Commerce facilities, please contact the
author at [log in to unmask]
All suggestions, corrections and enhancements in relation to
this report will be gratefully received by the author, and will
be incorporated into further revisions of this document. Please
e-mail any comments on this paper to [log in to unmask]
Additional topics, references and technologies will also be
included in subsequent revisions of this document - the most
recent version of which is available from
http://www.bca.org.au/ecrep.htm
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End of Document=0D
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