What type of mobile phone user are you?  Are you a Blackberry, Android, iPhone or another device?  I am still a Blackberry user and fairly happy but peeking over the fence at iPhone and Androids.  At first I stayed with the Blackberry because I travel internationally and they seemed to get better coverage.  Plus I work all the time (bad habit of mine) and Blackberry really met my needs.  However after I started using an iPad in May 2011, yes I was a slow adopter but thanks to Tim Springer I went to the other side and I really love my iPad.  I like it so much that now I am considering moving to the iPhone to replace my Blackberry.  Now I am not willing to give up my windows based Laptop but using all these devices together is sublime.

I have a lot of choices however many people have very few choices because there are still a lot of accessibility problems with mobile phones not to mention the Digital Divide where many consumers cannot buy the latest device available.  It is discouraging to see my friends and family not having the same choices that I do because of accessibility issues.

In February CBS News did an article stating that the number of mobile phone subscriptions had reached 4.6 billion and was expected to hit 5 billion in 2011. It is critical that everyone have access to communications and technology and that includes people with disabilities.

“Mobile phone providers in rich countries offer advanced services and handsets, while people in developing countries increasingly use the mobile phone for health services and banking, said the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).  “Even during an economic crisis, we have seen no drop in the demand for communications services,” said the agency’s Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure.”  (1)

Mobile devices are being used to access all kind of data including financial data.   “Between 500 million and 1 billion people will access financial services by mobile by 2015, depending on estimates. The MFS market will be dominated Asia, driven by mobile operator-led initiatives in developing nations to bank the unbanked. Remittance/transfers by mobile is growing three times faster than m-banking.” (2)

So what needs to be done to assure everyone can participate.   A good first step is to design the device following Universal Design and Accessibility Standards.   Blind, Vision Loss, Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Mobility Impairments, Intellectual Disabilities and the Elderly are impacted by inaccessible devices.

According to the W3C:

“More concretely, many of the mobile devices’ limitations match a number of well-known disabilities:

• the small screen can easily induce pages with very small characters,
• the limited viewport makes layout and browsing context changes as disturbing as for someone with limited vision,
• the sometimes difficult lighting conditions (e.g. from using a phone screen under the sunlight) can make colors and contrasts as difficult to identify as for a person with colors perception problems,
•  the lack of mouse matches the inability of some persons to use a mouse due to motricity difficulties,
• likewise, the very limited and often hard-to-use keyboards available on mobile devices is evocative of the difficulties some persons with disabilities can have to interact with a keyboard
• the social and mobility context of some mobile users make the use of some modalities (sound, video) for multimedia content inappropriate, matching the inability for some people to hear sounds or see images
• in a mobile context, a user might have a very limited or patchy attention span, as someone with a cognitive disability might have
• on mobile networks where time and cost are often limiting factors, being able to determine what an image is before it gets downloaded matters — at having such a description would help a blind user
• the use of some technologies (plug-ins, scripts) might not be possible on a number of mobile devices, like they wouldn’t be usable with a number of assistive technologies” (3)

Everyone needs access to the internet, communications and technology.  I applaud companies that have made accessibility part of the development life cycle.  In the future, I will be blogging about some of these amazing best practices.

References and Footnotes

(1)    www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/15/business/main6209772.shtml

(2)    http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats

(3)   http://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/

Why Is Apple Embracing the Community of People with Disabilities?

By Debra Ruh, CEO and Founder of Ruh Global Communications

Apple is said to be taking steps to make its iPhone and iPad more user-friendly for people with disabilities. Since the products all use touch screens, some with visual or mobility impairments can have trouble with the devices; however, in a recent filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple has said it is seeking to patent a method for connecting its products to accessories that could act in place of a touch screen. I know their products have always been thoughtfully designed, with assistive technology included in all of their devices as a standard feature. Now it looks like they are planning to take it a step further – raising the bar for accessible mobile technology.

So why does Apple care so much whether or not people with disabilities can use their products?

I recently joined the legions of Apple users by buying and falling in love with my iPad2. My son, a senior in VCU Arts College, has been a long-time fan of Apple products and encouraged me to give them a try. At first I was all thumbs and couldn’t even figure out simple things like cut and paste. I was a programmer for many years, and because of that I think the problem was that I was trying to make everything so complicated. I had been training myself for many, many years to navigate around my Windows based PCs, and I wasn’t expecting my iPad to be so intuitive. Don’t get me wrong I am still a big fan of my PC and Windows, but I do adore my iPad2.

I didn’t have to go to Apple to get a tablet – there are some amazing tablets on the market that use Windows based operating systems. Still, I am a technologist and I have been reading all the amazing articles about how accessible the iPhones and iPads are for my community – the community of people with disabilities.

My husband and I have two children, Kevin 23 and Sara 24. Sara was born with Down syndrome and she has inspired me every day of my life. Sara took to the iPad2 like a fish to water. I was so surprised because as I fumbled along trying to make my PC brain work on the iPad she was just zooming along. Flipping on movies, eBooks, podcasts and music, and let me tell you she is an expert at purchasing items from iTunes. It was amazing to watch and I wondered how much better her education would have been if she would have had access to a device like the iPad.

As a parent, I am grateful to Apple for including her in the wonderful digital movement. She is saving her money to buy her own iPad so she can have full access. Now if only I could figure out how to lock her out of iTunes! (Guess I will have to ask Sara how to do that…)

Okay, so why does Apple care about someone like me – a middle aged, working mother of two children-one of which happens to have Down Syndrome?

Well, according to She-conomy, an online guide for marketing to women, women account for 85% of all consumer purchases, including everything from autos to health care.

Plus, like my own, 1 in 3 households in the US are impacted by someone with disabilities. Likewise, the 2000 U.S. Census reported that almost 42% of older adults (65+ years) have one or more disabilities. In fact, the percentage of people with disabilities is larger than any single ethnic, racial, or cultural group. At 19.3%, the number of people with disabilities exceeds the next largest group – Hispanic people (14.9%) – by a fairly wide margin.

In the UK, the numbers are also equally as large. For example — CSR Europe, a European business network of Corporate Social Responsibility, estimates that 8.6 million people (aged 16 and over) self-identify as having a disability, which translates into 15% of the population. Those over 50 years of age currently account for one fifth of the UK population, and they own more than 80 percent of the country’s asset wealth and are the group most likely to vote in general elections. Surprising to some, 33% of 50-60 year olds now have a disability.
In all of Europe it is estimated that at least 39 million people have a disability. It is also estimated that in every country 10 to 20 percent of the population has some form of disability, a number that is expected to grow.

On a global scale, the National Organization on Disabilities says that this powerful group controls over $3 Trillion in discretionary income worldwide, and the numbers are growing.

Why would a company as smart as Apple care about this segment? I would say that it’s because it is providing them a solid return on investment and they are making a profit for their efforts. My family will certainly continue to buy their products – not only because they are convenient and easy to use, but because we choose to support companies that make their products and services accessible to ALL people.

Kudos to Apple – I wish them huge success in all of their future endeavors!

For further information about TecAccess and their current endeavors, visit their website at SSB Bart Group