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Accessible News #14 — June 2002
Should you be using these old newsletters, please bear in mind that the web addresses were correct when the newsletter was created but that they may not be accurate now. We do not plan to change the back issues of the newsletters.
Contents:
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Achieving Excellence: Investing In People, Knowledge And Opportunities
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A New Policy on the Duty to Accommodate Persons with Disabilities in the Federal Public Service
Achieving Excellence: Investing In People, Knowledge And Opportunities
On February 12, two major discussion documents were launched simultaneously by federal departments. Industry Canada released "Achieving Excellence: Investing in People, Knowledge and Opportunities" and HRDC released "Knowledge Matters: Skills and Learning for Canadians". The purpose of the two papers is to provide a blueprint for action so that by the end of the decade, Canada is known throughout the world for its culture of excellence, learning and innovation. You can find the documents on the Innovation Strategy Web site at www.innovationstrategy.gc.ca.
On May 9, the Minister of Industry, the Honourable Allan Rock invited Canadians to participate in the development of the action plan to achieve Canada's Innovation Strategy. A series of regional summits will be held across the country, including the north, over the next few months, an interactive Web site will allow people to provide their views and find out about innovative Canadians and get details about the regional meetings.
To find out more about the consultations and to get a list of the regional summits being planned, visit the Innovation Strategy Web site or call 1-800-622-3232.
Multiple Format Production Made Easier
The National Library released its Manager's Guide to Multiple formats at the end of March. This document is intended to take a lot of the guesswork out of formatting, layout and production and includes a checklist of things to keep in mind when producing information in hard copy, audio format, braille and electronic versions.
The Guide was developed in response to one of the recommendations of the Task Force on Access to Information by Print-Disabled Canadians. It is available on the Web in both official languages at www.nlc-bnc.ca/accessinfo.
Government Disability Portal: One Stop Shopping
Industry Canada is one of four partners in the newly-created disability Web portal called Persons with Disabilities Online, which provides a central link to a variety of information sources, including the ADIO's Accessible Procurement Toolkits and links to provincial and non-government services.
Transport Canada's "Access To Travel" is another link that can be reached through the portal, along with Natural Resource Canada's "Mapping for the Visually Impaired" and HRDC's "Disability WebLinks". You can find the portal at www.pwd-online.ca.
A New Policy on the Duty to Accommodate Persons with Disabilities in the Federal Public Service
June 3, 2002
I am very pleased to announce that a new Policy on the Duty to Accommodate Persons with Disabilities in the Federal Public Service came into effect today, June 3, 2002. The objective of the new policy, to be jointly administered by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and the Public Service Commission (PSC), is to eliminate barriers that prevent the full participation of potential recruits and existing employees within the Public Service of Canada, and to ensure that the needs of persons with disabilities are taken into consideration when designing new programs, technological applications or physical environments.
The policy is a significant step in our wish to foster a culture of "inclusion by design" within a federal Public Service that is both representative and inclusive. Accommodating persons with disabilities in the workplace is not just a duty; it is a good business practice. A public service workforce that represents the diversity of Canadians will provide better service to Canadians.
The new policy is a good example of concerted efforts. It is indeed the result of extensive consultations with a wide variety of stakeholder groups within and outside government. Organizations consulted include the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the PSC Committee on Recruitment of Persons with Disabilities and the Joint Employment Equity Committee of the National Joint Council.
Under the terms of the policy, the employer is required to make every effort to accommodate employees with disabilities - unless doing so would create undue hardship. In determining undue hardship, the employer must take into account health of employees, safety and cost. This means that experiencing some hardship cannot be used as a reason for an employer to deny accommodation to employees. Deputy Heads of departments and agencies are responsible for the implementation of the policy and ensuring that employees and managers respect its provisions. Treasury Board Secretariat and the Public Service Commission will monitor the implementation of this policy.
I would like to add that the Policy on the Duty to Accommodate Persons with Disabilities in the Federal Public Service is in line with the principles that guide our modernization initiative. It helps create a Public Service that is a workplace of choice for current and future generations of Canadians.
You can access the Policy on the Publiservice Web site
at:
http: //publiservice.tbs-sct.gc.ca/home_e.html.
Lucienne Robillard
President of the Treasury Board of Canada
Community it Hero Awards Recognize Accessibility Needs
Two individuals whose work involves improving the accessibility of information technology have been given Community IT Hero awards. The awards, which were established by the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC) in conjunction with Industry Canada, were given out during Canada's IT Week, May 3-12. The awards recognize individuals who have assisted their communities in a significant way through the innovative use or application of information technology (IT).
"There are volunteers across Canada who understand the power that connectivity with the Internet and deployment of Web-based applications can have in changing the lives of the people in their communities," said Gaylen Duncan, CEO of ITAC. "They frequently work in obscurity. The Community IT Hero program gives us a chance to recognize their achievements and thank them for their dedication."
Recipients are chosen from communities across Canada and the awards are given locally. Here are the recipients whose work makes access to IT easier for people with disabilities and seniors:
In Ottawa, Industry Minister the Honourable Allan Rock presented the award to Ellen Cornell, Regional Manager of the Neil Squire Foundation's Ottawa office for its work in narrowing the digital divide for Canadians with disabilities. The Foundation, headquartered in Vancouver, BC, is a Canadian, not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to create opportunities for independence for individuals who have significant physical disabilities through education, technology, and career development. Through direct interaction with these individuals, the NSF researches, develops and delivers appropriate innovative services and technology to meet their needs. In recognising the importance of communications technology to Canada's future, the Foundation strives to engage society's most marginalised in acquiring IT skills to become full participants in Canada's future.
In Toronto, Pauline Hockenstein was recognized for the establishment of Neighbourhood Link/Senior Link, a not-for-profit Community Access Program serving the east Toronto community, in this case, seniors who surf the Net daily and use the computer with as much vigour and enthusiasm as the teenager next door. Computer equipment conveniently placed in seniors residences and drop-in centres with high-speed Internet access, brings out seniors to be with the community, to mingle, to learn from each other, and be more involved, while achieving self-care tasks like e-banking or learning about health matters. The centres cater to an average of 150 to 175 senior users per week, with volunteer trainers recruited from among the users themselves. For more than 20 years Senior Link has served the needs of community members through its various outreach programs. But with this technology access component, which got off the ground in February 2002, the Senior Link program has become even more effective and popular. Throug h their innovative placement of technology into the hands of seniors, the Senior Link program is following precisely the recipe for enhancing a senior's well-being.
Canada's IT Week and the Community IT Heroes Award Program is made possible by IT WEEK sponsors: Intel Canada, Sun Microsystems Canada, Computer Associates, Bell Canada Enterprises, Hewlett-Packard Canada and Microsoft. ITAC and Industry Canada are grateful for their support.
Remote Captioning Project Launched at CHHA AGM
The Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association saw the launch of a new project aimed at providing cost effective and reliable access to captioning for hard of hearing, deaf and deafened people. The Remote Captioning Project is the joint effort of Perceptec Inc. and Neeson & Associates Court Reporting and Captioning Inc. and is sponsored by Human Resource Development Canada's Office for Disability Issues.
In explaining the rationale for remote captioning, project participants pointed to the size of Canada and the shortage of available captioners in many parts of the country. This innovative system uses phone lines to connect computers and provide real-time captioning in a variety of settings, including three-way calls, in classrooms and at meetings both large and small. PCs equipped with software called Captioneer, which was developed for use in the system, are used by both the captioner and the location or locations requiring the captioning. The captioner's and recipients' PCs are connected by modem. An audio link, either by telephone or cellphone is needed so that the captioner can hear what is being said by all participants and translate the spoken word to text. CHHA plans to make the Captioneer software available free on its Web site in the near future.
Telephone connections make this a truly real-time system. Michael di Giacomo, President and CEO of Perceptec told CHHA members that phone lines were chosen as the transmission method because the Internet is not a truly real-time mode of communications. While information may often seem to arrive instantaneously, he explained, routing of data can be extremely circuitous and can take several minutes to arrive. The lag time using the phone line-based Captioneer is in the order of about 1.25 seconds.
The costs involved in using the system consist of the captioner's time, which must be booked in advance, the cost of two phone lines (one for the modem, the other for the voice line) and any applicable long distance charges. For example, if a person in Moncton wishes to set up a captioned call with a colleague in Winnipeg, the long distance charges would be for a connection between Toronto (where Neeson's captioners are based) and Moncton and between Toronto and Winnipeg for the transmission of the captions to both locations (assuming the captions are required for both the party in Moncton and the one in Winnipeg) and the voice line connections between the three cities. Because the system uses real-time captioning, which can display whole phrases with a single shorthand key stroke, and not note-taking technology which translates conversation word by word, the system is much faster than use of such technologies as TTY.
The project partners say they hope to port the system to hand-held wireless devices such as PDAs in the future. When that happens, it will make real-time captioning accessible to a much broader base of users.
For more information on the project, contact Janice McNamara, Executive Director, Canadian Hard of Hearing Association, 2435 Holly Lane, Suite 205 Ottawa, Ontario K1V 7P2, Tel.: (613) 526-1584, TTY: (613) 526-2692, Toll Free: (800) 263-8068, Fax: (613) 526-4718, E-mail: chhanational@chha.ca.
CSUN Round-Up
Once again, ADIO was present at the Technology & Disability conference, held each year in Los Angeles by California State University, Northridge (CSUN.) This year, 15 Canadian companies and organizations had booths of their own. The Canadian presence gets stronger every year.
At the International and Exhibitors' Reception, which is held the night before CSUN officially kicks off, Dr. Albert Cook of the University of Alberta was this year's recipient of the Strache Leadership Award, which is given by the University in recognition of achievement in the field of assistive technology and its promotion.
At a press conference on March 20, Madentec Limited of Edmonton, Alberta announced the opening of a branch office in Salt Lake City, Utah to handle its US sales of technology access solutions for people with physical disabilities. Randy Marsden, Madentec's CEO, will head the Salt Lake operation, while Bryce Campbell takes over as company president in Edmonton. But the big news at this press event was the joint announcement of a partnership with Don Johnston Inc., to take over the American company's Discover (R) computer access solution product line. Madentec was chosen because of the company's long and excellent track record in the development of single-switch access solutions, their dedication, skill and ability to further expand the capabilities of the Discover products. At a press conference announcing the partnership, Don Johnston, President and CEO of Don Johnston Inc., said "with Madentec's technical expertise, Discover will continue to thrive as the best computer access for many needs."
There was one sad note at CSUN this year. TECSO, which was to have an exhibit booth, was forced to close its doors in early March. We sincerely hope that the innovative software this company has been producing to enable blind users to use Windows-based applications will find other ways to continue to reach its clients.
Robotics and Persons with Disabilities
All of us can picture what robots can do and where they can be used. However, many of us do not realize how really advanced robots have become.
Today robots are used not only in factory automation or similar settings — they can also be used to help people in "real life" with every day needs.
We can use voice-activated technologies to control and move the robot. We can even use our own voice to program the robot for our own individual requirements. With the help of vision guidance, we can use cameras to control the movement of the robot, to calibrate the robot and to find objects.
Over the years, Samson Industries has engineered several robotic solutions that assist individuals in their vocations as well as in their daily living environments. Today, robotics can apply several technologies such as voice recognition, vision guidance, and robotic commands to help an individual with the everyday functions of managing the day-to-day operations of an office. Files can be physically manipulated, pages turned, objects located and retrieved from your desk and printers and scanners can be controlled robotically.
Thanks to these "innoventions", tomorrow will bring many other developments using robotics, which may be quickly realized in the home or into other areas where people with disabilities will find them useful.
We wish to thank Jeff Hoogveld of Samson Industries for his input on this subject. For more information, contact Samson Industries via e-mail at info@rehabrobots.com, on the Web at www.rehabrobots.com or call them toll- free at 1-800-661-4446.
News Bits
- VisuAide, has sold 16,000 of its Victor (TM) electronic book
readers to the U.K.'s Royal National Institute for the Blind. The
company has also made a major sale of Victor to Japan. Victor
uses the NISO/DAISY Digital Talking Book Standard, a standard
developed by an international consortium of which VisuAide was a
member. Industry Canada also participated in the development of
the standard. VisuAide has also concluded a deal with an American
nonprofit organization called Bookshare.org to provide its
subscribers with a downloadable special edition of the Victor
Reader Soft software. This will enable Bookshare.org subscribers
to download DAISY formatted books from the organization's
collection of more than 10,000 books. Victor has consistently
been ranked as the best of DAISY e-book readers. In 2001, it won
a performance competition against European and Japanese products
at the Technology & Disability Conference hosted by
California State University, Northridge. Victor Reader Soft was
also the winner of the E-Access Bulletin's road-test on DAISY
readers. Second runner-up in this road-test was the latest
hardware version of Victor, Victor Reader Pro.
- Betacom's VisAble Video Telescope (TM) has recently received
some very favourable press coverage, including a feature story on
CNBC. The product was researched and designed over a four-year
period by the company, in partnership with the University of
Waterloo's Centre for Sight Enhancement and Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore, MD and with initial seed funding from
Industry Canada. VisAble combines state-of-the-art digital image
processing capabilities, high-resolution display technology and
sophisticated microprocessing capabilities to provide people with
low vision with a lightweight, portable and extremely versatile
device that can magnify images and enable them to read and
navigate, even under low-light conditions. VisAble was also
recently featured in the Best of What's New section of Popular
Science.
- Jim Sanders, President and CEO of the CNIB, was one of this
year's recipients of the King Clancy Award, given each year by
the Canadian Foundation for Physically Disabled Persons. He was
chosen for a lifetime of work supporting and promoting the work
of the CNIB. Also honoured this year were Senator Joyce
Fairbairn, who has been an influential supporter of Canada's
Paralympic athletes and Chantal Peticlerc, who is a wheelchair
racer and a Paralympian currently training for the 2004
Paralympics in Athens.
- The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has posted
the " Specifications for the Digital Talking Book " on their Web
site as ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2002. It is posted in both HTML and PDF
formats (www.niso.org/standards/resources/z3986-2002.html and
www.niso.org/standards/resources/z3986-2002.pdf). This is the
first standard published officially in anything other than .pdf
to meet the needs of the user community. The standard is also
available in print form for US$99.
- The MED TECH conference announced in the last Accessible News
has been postponed to the fall.
- The CSA's B659 Design for Aging standard has now been
published in English and the French version is expected to be
released in August. It will be marketed primarily through direct
mail campaigns and industry newsletters. We will keep you posted
when order forms are ready.
- The CSA, in cooperation with the Government of Ontario,
Ministry of Citizenship released a new standard on May 31 that
will help organizations deliver effective customer services to
people with disabilities. CSA Standard B480-02, Customer Service
for People with Disabilities, includes information on the crucial
role of management, staff responsibilities, resources, planning
and delivery requirements, and important considerations in
understanding disabilities. The standard helps organizations
monitor and continuously improve their customer service by adding
a new dimension to their existing management systems. B480-02 is
available for sale by contacting CSA Standard Sales at
sales@csa.ca, by calling toll-free 1-800- 463-6727 or by visiting
the CSA online at www.csa.ca.
- In March and April 2002, Compusult successfully completed
installation of TeleTalk systems for Telephone Adaptation in the
Workplace in switchboard facilities at five different US Air
Force Bases in New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, Delaware, and
Washington. These locations all began employing blind and
visually impaired switchboard operators in April 2002. TeleTalk
helps these employees to independently operate all aspects of the
telephone systems. Additional TeleTalk installations at other US
Air Force Bases are scheduled for later this year. In June,
Compusult will be delivering a newly-designed Jouse, the
joystick-based alternative to a computer mouse that the user
operates via head and/or mouth control. The entire Jouse
electronics, hardware, and packaging will be replaced with a new,
more robust design and state-of-the-art components. Most
importantly, the new Jouse will offer USB connectivity for
direct, plug-and-play operation with Windows, Macintosh, Linux
and Unix computer systems, or any system t hat offers standard
USB-based mouse support.
- Soaring Eagle Communications(www.eaglecom.bc.ca) has
published a Simplified Web Accessibility Guide
(www.webaccessguides.org) that introduces and presents the Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines from the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C), in an easy to understand, easy to use question
and answer format. The Guide is targeted directly at developers
of career, learning and labour market information Web sites to
help them to produce better designed and more accessible Web
sites for persons with disabilities. This publication is the
result of a partnership between Human Resources Development
Canada, the BC Ministry of Advanced Education, British Columbia's
Office for Disability Issues, and the Centre for Curriculum,
Transfer and Technology. If you have any questions or need more
information, please contact Glenda Watson Hyatt at
glenda@eaglecom.bc.ca.
- Karlen Communications and Freedom Scientific have jointly
developed new courses and workshops on Web accessibility and
tagged Adobe PDF. For information on the workshops, visit Karlen
at
www.iprimus.ca/~martha/accessible-instructional-design.htm.
- A survey conducted on behalf of the Canadian Hearing Society
shows that 23 per cent of adult Canadians report experiencing
some hearing loss. It also reveals that nearly eight in ten
respondents have worked with or have family or friends with
deafness or hearing loss. The survey also shows that the average
age of people experiencing hearing loss is 51 and that one in
four are under the age of 40. The survey was carried out in
October 2001 with a sample size of 800 people over the age of 18.
The results were released in April.
- Carl Raskin has announced his retirement as Executive
Director of GLADNET, an international Web-based organization
specializing in employment and disability with a world-wide
membership of more than 800 individuals and organizations. We
will keep you posted when a new Executive Director is
named.
- Paul Whitney, chair of the National Librarian's Council on
Access to Information for Print-disabled Canadians and Chief
Librarian at Burnaby Public Library and Gwynneth Evans, recently
retired from the National Library and a member of the Council
shared the Canadian Library Association's Librarian of the Year
Award which was presented in late June at the CLA meeting held in
Halifax, Nova Scotia. At the same meeting, Gwynneth Evans was
also presented with the CNIB's Dayton M. Forman Memorial Award
for service to print-disabled Canadians
Our Web Site
The ADIO Web site can be found at strategis.ic.gc.ca/adio . At this site are all our old newsletters as well as different listings and links to other sites of interest. Should you be using these old newsletters, please bear in mind that the web addresses were correct when the newsletter was created but that they may not be accurate now. We do not plan to change the back issues of the newsletters.
Communications from ADIO
If you would prefer to receive our newsletter on disk or by e-mail, please contact us at the address below.
Where to Find Us
For more information, to discuss a project idea or to get on our mailing list, please contact:
Mary Frances Laughton or Deb Finn
Assistive Devices Industry Office
Industry Canada
P.O. Box 11490 Station H
Ottawa, Ontario
K2H 8S2
Phone: 613-990-4316 or 613-990-4297
Fax: 613-998-5923
TTY: 613-998-3288
Internet-mail: adio@crc.ca
Date last modified: June 2002
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