Smarter Organizations for People with Disabilities Chieko Asakawa IBM Fellow IBM Research - Tokyo Smarter Organizations for People with Disabilities 1

774 million non-literate adults in the world Workforce Diversity 650 million people with disabilities in the world 774 million non-literate adults in the world http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=18 このページはデータとグラフで構成 世界人口の10％は障害者 これを活用しないということはありえない これに高齢者や非識字者も加えれば「hidden workforce」のパイは非常に大きい 506 million elderly population in the world July 20, 2009 2

Special Technologies are Becoming General Telephone Keyboard OCR Voice Recognition July 20, 2009 3

IBM History of Accessibility 1960s　Talking Typewriter 1975　1403 Braille Printer 1984　Talking 3270 Terminal 1988　ScreenReader/DOS 1990　VoiceType™ 1960s Talking Typewriter 1984 Talking 3270 Terminal 1994　Screen Magnifier™/2 1997　Home Page Reader 1998　ViaVoice® 2000　Accessibility Center 2004　aDesigner 2007　aiBrowser for Multimedia 2007　Eclipse Accessibility Tools Framework 1999 Home Page Reader Japanese, Italian, French, German, Spanish, US English, UK English 2008　Social Accessibility 2009　ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Application) July 20, 2009 4

Mail File sharing Chats Wiki E-Learning Profile Online Workplaces are Crossing the Chasm Mail File sharing Chats Wiki E-Learning Profile July 20, 2009 5

Emerging Real-time Workplace Striving for productivity and high performance leads toward “real-time workplace” More speed! Real-time collaboration Chats Interactive E-meeting Micro-blogging Twitter Interactive e-learning Shared tele-pointers, whiteboards, etc. Real-time information Business analytics and real-time dashboard Next generation realtime platform Lotus Sametime Google Wave Microsoft Sharepoint E-mail Chats (beachhead!) Wikis Blogs E-learning Portals July 20, 2009 6

Opportunities Digitalized Knowledge Expansion of digitalized knowledge Social computing aims at digitalizing implicit knowledge Real-time collaboration tools yields text, audio, and video. Digitalized knowledge is potentially accessible Chat histories Micro-blogging streams Digitalized Knowledge Screen sharing videos Drawings on digital-whiteboard Discussions Annotations Voice recordings July 20, 2009 7

Workshop Experience Internal workshop for technologies for workplace accessibility held by IBM Academy of Technology September, 2005 Attendees US, UK, Japan, China, India Hearing impaired and visually impaired Remote participants Real-time captioning service for hearing impaired Benefits for non-native participants Presenters tried to describe the slides Benefits for remote participants July 20, 2009 8

Challenges - Flood of Real-time Information Real-time information exploits full bandwidth of human cognitive ability Voice channel Screen sharing E-meetings Presenter video Model Human Processor- p26 of The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction Side-track chats Participants list Related resources July 20, 2009 9

Accessibility and Interface Adaptation Diverse users Interfaces for the blind Interfaces for senior citizens Adaptive Interface Content, documents, and applications Interfaces for deaf and hard of hearing Standard interface Interfaces for phone access Interfaces for mobile devices July 20, 2009 10

Three Focus Internet Media Accessibility Platform E-meeting Accessibility Social Accessibility July 20, 2009 11

Internet Media Accessibility Platform Project Goal Create an open source platform for audio descriptions and captions Authoring tools and players Captions and “text-based” audio descriptions Based on Eclipse.org Accessibility Tools Framework (ACTF) Contribute to standardization of Internet media accessibility Supported by a Japanese government agency NICT: National Institute of Information and Communications Technology July 20, 2009 12

E-meeting Accessibility Activities Cross-divisional virtual team was formed to discuss ideal e- meeting environment. Software Group, Research, CIO, etc. Created an agenda toward more inclusive e-meeting environment Lotus Sametime LotusLive Meeting July 20, 2009 13

Social Accessibility Social Accessibility Service New methodology to make webpages on the Internet more accessible by gathering users’ voices and by using the power of the open community. Social computing + accessibility Any Web user can improve accessibility of any webpage on the Internet without changing the original content. Any visually impaired user can join the improvement process through various collaboration mechanisms. 2) Respond by using authoring tools. 1) Encounter a problem in Web content. Social Accessibility Service Report Notification Visually impaired users Sighted volunteers Accessibility metadata Accessibility metadata Generate “Yes we can” Load Submit alttext = “Yes we can” 3) Access the improved page! 14 14

to work smarter. Social Accessibility for Workplace Accessibility Agile – can improve a web application immediately Adaptive – can answer employees’ voices on demand Affordable – less workload and lower cost Dynamic adaptation of the Web infrastructure 　to cooperatively utilize people’s intelligence and creativity, and enable us to work smarter. 15

How can organizations incorporate these technologies? July 20, 2009 16