Category: accessibility

Find the similarity between Itzhak Rabin (1995) and Gal Fridman (2004)

Today I was in a shopping mall when a plasma TV caught my eye. It broadcast the mistral race in which Gal Fridman won the gold medal, first “proper” gold medal won by an Israeli in the Olympic Games.

The broadcast was, according to bottom messages, accompanied by a voice commentary by someone. Of Course, The Commentary Was Not Made Accessible to The Israeli Deaf.

Thus, the comments, which I wrote nine years ago (https://deaf-info.zak.co.il/d/deaf-info/old/rabinfuneral.html), still apply. While names were mentioned here and there and the mark times and positions were broadcast, this was courtesy of the Olympic Games original broadcasters. IBA does not have any credit for it.

Accessibility of disability related Web sites

I am active in the “Accessible Community” project in Petah Tikva.
This project is part of an effort made in several Israeli cities to improve the quality of life experienced by people with disabilities.

Today there was a meeting of representatives of the “Accessible Community” project from several cities. Among other things, two Web sites were announced:

  1. http://www.kn1.org.il/
  2. http://www.matnachim.org.il/

Of course, I asked about accessibility of those Web sites to non-IE browsers. Both announcers of the Web sites claimed that their Web sites are accessible to everyone.

After returning home, I surfed into those Web sites using Mozilla. I found that the first Web site has a problem of text layout, which causes some frames to overlap. The links, which I checked, did work. With the second Web site I saw no problems in my limited testing. I cannot finish this journal entry without an amusing anecdote. I schlepped a woman, who walks on crutches, to the meeting and back to her home. The woman is very active in the campaign against non-disabled people parking at spaces reserved to people with disabilities. Near her home there is a parking reserved for the car of another disabled person, and it was empty when I arrived there. I stopped my car in the reserved parking place to let the woman go out and then exclaimed “Oh, I am occupying a disabled parking!”. She LOL and almost ROTFLed.

Petah Tikva is to be more accessible to the deaf now

During the last two years, the Petah Tikva municipality has been operating the “Accessible Community” project for improving accessibility to people with all types of disabilities in the city. In the framework of this project, the municipal hotline, which is accessible by voice phone number 106, has been prepared to accept also FAX messages from people, whose disability precludes their use of regular phone.

This evening I was in a meeting, in which the manager of the hotline told us about the project. They accept for forwarding also FAX messages for the police, Magen David Adom (the Jewish/Israeli counterpart of Red Cross) and the firefighters. The FAX number is (03)9040304. We also got a form, which can be filled quickly in case of emergency for FAXing to the hotline. About fifty deaf people (1/4 of the total deaf population in Petah Tikva) participated in the meeting. The opportunity was utilized also by a representative of the Israeli Social Security, who told us about the vocational rehabilitation services provided by Social Security. The Web site of the municipality of Petah Tikva (http://www.petah-tikva.muni.il/) is not accessible to the Mozilla browser, which I used, due apparently to use of a IE specific extension at the home page. However, http://www.petah-tikva.muni.il/htmls/hebrew/moked.html gets you directly to the municipal hotline center (the page is written in Hebrew). I sent a complaint to their Webmaster, emphasizing the problem of blind people, who absolutely must use special browsers to browse Web sites.

Requirements for deaf and hard of hearing people on mobile networks

There are several aspects which need to be taken care of in order to maintain compatibility between 3G cellular networks and equipment used by deaf people for telecommunications.

http://www.etsi.org/cce/proceedings/4_4.htm discusses several of those aspects.

Now, can someone invent a way to levitate a 3G cellular phone before a deaf user, so that the deaf user can communicate using Sign Language and have the cellular phone transmit his message via video? Otherwise, one-handed Sign Language dialect may have to be invented for each Sign Language in use.

Several years ago I wrote a report – Impact of New Telecommunication Technologies on the Deaf – which was based upon projections of future technological developments. It is interesting to review the report from today’s perspective and marvel at how much reality differs from forecasts.

  • Videophone capability is now available everywhere there is fast Internet.
  • FAX machines in Israel now are reasonably priced, and deaf people, who buy them, get tax rebates.
  • I personally have been involved in Hebrew localization of the Nokia 9110 and 9210i cellular FAXes in Ozicom Communications Ltd.
  • “Computerized information systems” are now very popular under the names “Internet”, “WWW”.
  • When the report was written, access to the Internet in Israel was allowed only to academic institutions and Hi-Tech companies, due to the monopoly of Bezeq on all forms of electronic communications. Liberalization happened at 1994, few months after the report was written. All forms of electronic communications still flowed through Bezeq’s veins at least part of the way.
  • 056 services were moved to other prefixes, as the 05* prefixes were assigned to cellular phone companies. They are a niche market, mostly for “adult activities”.
  • Computerized speech recognition is not here yet, at least for Hebrew.
  • The technology to contact emergency dispatch centers exists, but it needs to be properly deployed.

The HELP 2004 Exhibition

Today I visited the HELP 2004 Exhibition in the Exhibition Grounds at northern part of Tel Aviv.
This is an exhibition of equipment, accessories, means and methods for the population of people with disabilities in Israel.

It was a small exhibition, occupying only one building in the Exhibition Grounds.
This exhibition started yesterday and will end tomorrow.

Overwhelmingly majority of the booths exhibited equipment which helps wheel chair bound people. Elevators, equipment which allows them to drive cars or to use cars at all, new kinds of wheelchairs, walkers, etc. The needs of the hard-of-hearing were represented mostly by booths of audiological clinics and hearing aid dispensers. I don’t recall seeing booths with equipment which serves the needs of blind or hard sighted people.

The hall was indeed full with people on wheelchairs. There was also respectable representation of people with hearing impairments, even though today was not Hearing Day (which was held yesterday, in parallel to the exhibition). Usually when I go to exhibitions or such places, I meet zero or one people whom I know from other place. This time, I met no less than two people whom I know from other places, not to mention people who manned (or rather, womanned) the booth of Bekol.

My personal goal was to find people, who develop new kinds of assistive equipment, and need help with the software part of their inventions. I located no such people, but I got hold of up-to-date contact information for M.I.L.B.A.T., the Israeli center for technology and accessibility. This center employs the services of volunteer professionals, who design custom adaptations for the needs of people with disabilities. I was in contact with the center several years ago, but somehow lost contact with them.