Access on Main Street

As we write this, the United Nations is celebrating ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which promotes all kinds of things dear to our hearts, including the need to “Work on and encourage new technologies in all aspects of life that are useful for people with disabilities, especially those that are low cost” and “Provide information about all types of assistance, including technologies, and other forms of assistance, in a way that can be understood by people with disabilities.” Ratification came pretty quickly; we’ll send good vibes that first efforts towards implementation do as well.

BBC: UN celebrates disability treaty

A significant majority (61%) of polled Americans said they’d prefer to vote in the next election via text messaging, and the percentage is even higher among those who’ll become eligible to vote by 2016. Reliability issues aside, this could be a boon for people with disabilities–or a nightmare, depending on implementation. How will write-ins be handled? Will the system be able to recognize creative spelling (Barak, Barac, Braq…)? Will verification and confidentiality issues be addressed? We refer anyone interested in the implementation of this strategy to the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines for a comprehensive view of accessibility considerations.

Cellular News: U.S. Cell Phone Users Open to Texting Their Vote for President

We’ve posted a good bit about CAPTCHAs, the automated techniques that try to distinguish humans from vile software bots when visiting websites or registering for accounts, such as the blurry letters you have to type into a box. It’s an arms race between CAPTCHA designers and bot designers, with visually impaired users as collateral damage.

The latest design calls for users to click near the geometric center of any image in a composite set of wall-to-wall images drawn from a database. That’s only step one; step two shows you another image, which you must identify from a list of options. They’re gonna have to get really creative to figure out a non-visual approach to this task. And hey, webmaster, is your site’s porn late medieval Italian poetry really worth all this effort?

Ars Technica: Researchers stay step ahead of bots with image-based CAPTCHA

Designed for motorcycle riders, this wearable air bag system will protect against falls and other high impact events.  Many more people could continue to live independently if they felt safer moving around their homes and neighborhoods.  Just be sure to de-activate it before doin’ the Bump at the Senior Surgical Sock Hop.

Wearable air bag - Boing Boing

Hitachi is creating an optical character recognition technology for use with captioned media, ostensibly to make it easier to find specific scenes. Of course, for this to work, captioning not only needs to be added more universally but also needs to meet reasonable quality standards…ooh, people with hearing and learning disabilities are going to like this.

Tech-On!: Hitachi’s New Technology Recognizes Characters in Video Subtitles

The Question Box provides Internet-based information through a live agent.  The user just presses a button on the box, which connects via intercom to the computer-equipped agent, who may be in another town.   The user asks a question, the agent does a search, and reads back the result.  Designed for communities without computers or connectivity, the Question Box certainly has a forgiving, low-demand interface.

Question Box: the Internet for remote places, no literacy or keyboards required - Boing Boing

As Florida’s election officials move to paper-based optical scanning, what to do about the 29,000 touchscreen machines they have? Well, they’re going to be marketed to other jurisdictions (!) or “de-manufactured”, AKA “taken apart and sold for components and scrap.”

E-Vote: Florida Touch Screen Voting Machines to be Recycled - Government Technology