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Your weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Show Notes:
IAAP (International Association of Accessibility Professionals ) with Christine Murphy Peck | www.accessibilityassociation.org
The New Apple TV: TidBITS Answers Your Questions http://buff.ly/1OogDAR
AppleVis Podcast | AppleVis http://buff.ly/1OogA81
Experimental Facebook App Can Answer Questions About the Content of Photos | MIT Technology Review http://buff.ly/1ksalD3
Call for participation – Adaptive Sports Equipment Standards Committee | Rehabilitation Engineering & Assistive Technology Society of North America http://buff.ly/1SnWOIy
PCAST meeting with President Obama – Assistive Technology News http://buff.ly/1LPJXw9
App: Kid Friendly Software www.AppleVis.com
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——-transcript follows ——
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: Hi, this is Chris Murphy Peck, and I’m the CEO of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, and this is your Assistance Technology Update.
WADE WINGLER: Hi, this is Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana with your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up-to-date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Welcome to episode number 232 of Assistive Technology Update. It’s scheduled to released on November 6 of 2015.
My interview today is with Chris Murphy Peck who is the CEO of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. We’ve got some great stories about Apple TV and accessibility and how Facebook is recognizing images.
We hope you’ll check out our website at www.eastersealstech.com, call our listener line at 317-721-7124, or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAproject.
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Within the last week or so, Apple has released their new Apple TV, which is a little bit interesting. It’s going to include a lot of gaming. It’s going to include some new things related to searching content. But I’m pretty impressed with the fact that not only has Apple TV always has voiceover that make it more accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired, but the new version also includes a Siri interface, which makes the searching a whole lot easier for people who don’t want to navigate that clunky on-screen keyboard that makes it hard to search for those shows for your kids.
The good news is, I haven’t had a chance to mess with the Apple TV yet, but our friends and colleagues over at AppleVis have. In fact, Dave Woodbridge who is a friend of the show and was interviewed not too long ago here related to the Apple Watch has done a series of podcasts that talk about the new Apple TV from the accessibility perspective. He’s got a show on the unboxing, the description, set up and voiceover settings, and then he goes on to discover how you can browse and search TV content on the new fourth generation Apple TV. I’m going to pop two links in the show notes. One is over to Apple Tidbits which is a great, general mainstream Apple blog, and then I’m also going to put some links over to the AppleVis podcast page where you can scroll down and find those shows from Dave Woodbridge to learn more about the more specifically the accessibility part of that. Check our show notes.
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We’ve got a couple of stories here from our friends over at RESNA. Are you interested or knowledgeable about adaptive sports equipment? Or more specifically, adaptive skiing? Does SMB, skis, mono skis, and bi skis ring a bell for you? RESNA is working on developing a standard that address the technical needs of adaptive skiers. They are working with a whole lot of folks. They are meeting in Breckenridge, Colorado, and this group has met once before and are looking to meet again to talk about some of the more technical and design aspects of adaptive skiing. They’re looking for participation of skiers, government manufacturers, program managers, and coordinators, and the ski area or ski industry operators, as well as teachers and other specialist. The next meeting is scheduled to happen in Breckenridge on 3 December in the evening. If you go to the website, you can download an application to be part of the committee that’s looking at this stuff. I’m going to pop a link in the show notes over to this blog post that says call for participation adaptive sports equipment standards committee. If you’re into adaptive skiing, you should definitely check that out.
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Also from RESNA, we are being linked over to a really interesting story from MIT Technology Review, under their computing new section. The headline reads Facebook app can answer basic questions about what’s in photos. There’s a researcher there at Facebook. His name is Yann LeCun, and he’s the director of their artificial intelligence research group. They are showing off an app that can look at photos and tell you about what’s in them. For example, in one of the demonstrations, they show a picture of a cat that was sniffing a large bunch of unripe bananas. Apparently the app was able to answer questions and identify what the bananas were sitting on, the color of the bananas was green, and that the cat was black and white. They also had another example where a dog held a toy in its mouth and when they asked what game the dog was playing, the app was able to look at that photo and say frisbee. They insist that this is not a fake. It’s a real system, and they are using a thing called deep learning. It’s a technique that creates software that’s kind of modeled on the way brain cells connect and work together. It really is learning. It’s creating some significant increases and the ability of machines to understand speech and recognize objects.
There are some predictions that we are getting pretty close to computers being able to grasp the nuances of language and carry on basic conversation, and apparently do some pretty sophisticated object recognition in photos. I’m fascinated by that, especially what it might mean for people who are blind or visually impaired or otherwise need a little more description to the images that they are seeing online. I’m going to pop a link in the show notes over to MIT Technology Review and you can read more about the details of this new Facebook app that can describe a picture.
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A friend of the show John Williams does a website called Assistive Technology News, or ATechNews.com, where he talks about some of the latest things happening in the field of technology. One of his recent posts is about the fact that President Obama presides a PCAST meeting. PCAST is the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. This group came out with four specific recommendations that are sort of related to hearing loss and hearing aids and amplification and those kinds of things. Among their four recommendation is that the FDA should designate distinct categories of basic hearing aids, kind of the most common ones that wouldn’t require intervention by a credentialed dispenser and would make them available for over-the-counter sales. They also suggest that the FDA withdraw its draft guidance documents about personal sound amplification devices, those devices that sort of do basic amplification. They are known as PSAP devices. And then a similar recommendation, they think that the Federal Trade Commission should define a process that would allow vendors of hearing aid and hearing equipment to be able to request those reports from the professionals. Now it’s important to say that the Hearing Industries Association, the HIA, strongly disagrees with these recommendations. They have created a white paper that talks about their discussion or their disagreement with these recommendations, but all that stuff is over on John’s website at ATechNews.com. I’m going to pop a link in the show notes and you can read about what’s going on here related to hearing aids and form your own opinion.
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Each week one of our partners tells us what’s happening in the ever-changing world of apps, so here’s an app worth mentioning.
SCOTT DAVERT: From AppleVis.com, I’m Scott Davert with this week’s app, or in this case apps worth mentioning. Today I’m talking about a company called Kid Friendly Software, which are the makers of a series of games that fall under the tagline blindfold. These games are accessible to everyone who can hear, whether sighted cited or not. They do have some pictures on some of the games. There are things to follow on the screen, but they are also audio. Everything that is in a game is self-spoken. You don’t need to have voiceover or anything running to be able to use them. All the gestures are custom, and they are really easy to learn. There’s a help file that are built into them. Among the games they have include solitaire, dominoes, Simon, poker, crazy eights, racing, or racer as they call it, and many more. For more information, you can type blindfold into the iOS App Store and pull up a list of all the games they have. You can also check out AppleVis.com where we have a series of podcasts demonstrating the various games and how they work for a blind user. From AppleVis.com, I’m Scott Davert.
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WADE WINGLER: So you know the name of our show is Assistive Technology Update, and we mostly talk about assistive technology. However, there’s more to accessibility than just assistive technology. In fact, we kind of dance around the edges of assistive technology versus accessibility in a number of the topics that we cover here on the show. I’m excited because Robert Pearson, who was a guest on our show if you to go or a couple of months ago, talked about an organization called the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, or the IAAP, and how more mainstream organizations are interested in accessibility kind of from the ground up. I was super excited when he introduced me to Christine Murphy Peck who is the CEO of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. She agreed to have a conversation with us today. Chris, welcome to the show.
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: Thank you, Wade. It’s a pleasure to be with you.
WADE WINGLER: We’re so glad that you’re here. I thought before we jump into the accessibility topic, we might talk a little bit about you. Can you give me a little bit of your background and how you became interested in accessibility and in the role you’re in now?
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: Certainly. I am the daughter of a nurse, who prior to ADA inspected and licensed homes for folks with a disability, and was a lifelong geriatric nurse who was very interested in making sure the people had a comfortable life, access to the things that they loved and needed, for her entire career. She also had MS, so I personally assisted her, watched her go through the progression of the finding of the disease to how it continued to affect her mobility. So I have first hand knowledge of living with someone who is a child with a disability. On the other side, my dad was a college professor, and so all areas of education, policy, how that works, all were part of my upbringing and very much of interest to me. That’s how I came to both sides of the coin which led me to my lifelong nonprofit work, 30-plus years now, in the nonprofit industry of which IAAP is located as an association.
WADE WINGLER: So let’s talk a little bit about the organization, the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, or we’ll say IAAP here just so that our show doesn’t go for an hour. Talk about the history of it, and how did it start, and who was involved kind and what do you guys do.
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: Approximately five years ago, colleagues from Microsoft, ATIA, including David Victor who is the CEO of ATIA, and several folks got together, sat down with Kathy Martinez, then the assistant secretary for disability employment policy at the US Department of Labor. They realized that accessibility was starting to be something that people talked about. It was starting to become a profession. They wanted to talk with Kathy about the idea of testing the notion of a certification program. The theory really was that it would be viable, but there was no data to back it up. ODEP did a survey with ATIA and this collection of some of our founding members. From that result, 65 percent of the respondents indicated that they lacked formal training and a certification. That was tremendous validation for us, that people really were seeking a place in a way to professionalize the work that they are currently doing.
So from there, other players came into the process. The organization held a strategic planning session in October 2012 in Chicago. Several organizations came together and really, at that point, committed, lay down their commitments to founding IAAP. Over the next year, 30 organizations signed on as founding members. The official public launch of the organization took place during the CSUN conference in San Diego in March 2014. The organization was initially supported via the good, hard at work and coordination, staffing, and management structure of ATIA.
In October 2014, IAAP entered into their own agreement with Smith Buckland which is an association management company to become an independent organization. They hired the first CEO. You’re speaking to her here. Our first president was a member of that initial group and really helped shipper this entire process. That is Rob Sinclair, the CAO at Microsoft.
WADE WINGLER: Absolutely. You kind of have a laundry list of some luminaries in the field when you talk about the founders. Some of those folks are friends of our show so I’m glad to hear you talking about them.
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: Certainly. Including Robert Pearson and the good folks at AMI, I must say as well.
WADE WINGLER: So we’ve talked about AMI and Microsoft and ATIA. Who are the other organizations who might be members. I think we may be talked about this a little bit, but why do they care? Why are they interested in being members?
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: There are a couple of different things. For the companies, it really is we want a way to validate, to vet good people, to train good people, to find good people, to keep them there, to keep accessibility at the forefront, to make sure that it’s not an afterthought, to make sure that it’s really part of when you design a product, or service, the facility, it’s part of the conversation. So they have a vested interest in terms of as a company. And then of course there’s the consulting groups that are part of our organization and the groups to provide assistive technology, and of course as you indicated, we sort of overlap in the work that we do. The one is the technology, the other aspect helps people to access the technology.
Certainly we have our professional members, the ones were individuals, are really looking for their people. They are looking for folks to connect with, to join with, to talk about this. Oh, hey, this is what it’s called? You do this, I do that. This is what we are named now. We really are working to define the profession to help people find a career and a development pathway. That’s part of the purpose of the certification. We’ll talk about that in a minute.
But it really is, we can be sort of the biggest gathering place. When I mean great gathering place, it’s both technology organizations, service providers, accessibility consultants, people in academia who are looking to teach students how to do this better, who are looking to test products and services, people in tourism and travel, people in healthcare companies, people in the airlines. The range is huge. This is really – everyone needs it to have a comfortable life. It makes life better. So people are really finding a place in IAAP where they can gather, connect, talk to each other, learn more, support each other as the profession matures and grows.
WADE WINGLER: Thanks for fleshing that out. Accessibility only really is important in places where people want to go or do something, which is kind of everywhere. I love that you described it that way. Talk to me little bit about the certification. Who gets certified? How? What’s the current status of the certification? Take me to school.
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: Right. So the current status is that, as you may or may not know, the certification has been in development for about the last two years. The first examination — and we are very excited to say — will take place Q1 of 2016. The content outline for the examination is currently on our website. It really focuses in sort of three areas, as you’ll see. Basically we tested the notion, kind of thought process, about what should be in the exam the way we did that is sending a validation survey to the 3,800 contacts in the IAAP database, as well as we posted in public forums including Web aim to get some feedback.
It really is intended for folks who manage accessibility outcomes and for anyone who plays a key role in ensuring that the digital and physical work accessible. So basically pretty much everyone touching this industry, including Web design, software, engineering, hardware, consumer and industrial product design, transportation, architecture, the built environment, educational accommodation, folks coming to us who are attorneys looking to provide the right kind of accommodations and help their companies be compliant. We have HR directors coming and saying I need to make my place compliant. I need some help. So we are really starting to broaden the area. As I look at the content outline — which is the next thing that we did, and we have published it as indicated it’s on our website — you’ll see sort of where we are in process is. There’s three areas for the exam. Disabilities, challenges, and assistive technology. The second broad category is accessibility and universal design. The third category is declarations, standards, laws, and management strategy. So we really to cover sort of the entire fabric of the accessibility world.
We are going to open up the registration for the exam in January 2016 as indicated with the idea that we would launch the exam in March 2016. So we’ll have our first iteration of the exam at our recent event, IAAP access 2015, which took place the 21st to the 23rd and Henderson, Nevada, at a wonderful place, Western Lake Las Vegas.
We got our first round of item writing, so that the technical term as I know you are familiar, being certified as you are, for exam questions basically. We took the exam content outline with the validation survey, and now are drafting questions. We did that both live in now we’ve got a bunch of people who are writing online, people from all over the world. That really does enable people in New Zealand, people traveling to other parts of the world to participate in the process. That alone has been exciting because we really are a global entity. We want people to be able to participate in the process. So more information to follow as we will put out the exam, obviously the candidate handbook which we’ll share with people, where and how they can get registered, where and how they can take the exam, what locations are available. All of that will be filled in towards the end of this year.
WADE WINGLER: It sounds like there’s a whole lot of work going into this. I know it has been for a while. You are kind of getting to the end of the launch pad here up. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes.
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: It’s so exciting. I know for people who’ve been involved with this, certainly our chair and our wonderful volunteers who’ve been helping and for the board, it’s just a lot of hard work and really very exciting to see really come to life.
WADE WINGLER: One specific question I have about the exam, and tell him if it’s too early to tell. Will it be an in-person exam, or will there be an online option, or has it been determined yet?
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: There will be both kinds of options. Obviously we are an accessibility organization so we’re looking to make accommodations as much and as many and as often as we can. We will offer an option, probably for — I guess technically the term is paper and pencil, but we would certainly make an accommodation for the first iteration to do our assessment of the exam and determine a cut score. We’ll also open it up disability at the same time. So there’ll be a number of ways to access the exam to ensure that people have the opportunity to take it wherever they may be around the world and whatever the situation may be, whether they can travel outside of their office or home or not, whether they need to go to a center. We are finishing all that information now.
WADE WINGLER: Great. You mentioned the conference, and also know that there are some other educational things. Education is part of what you are doing. Tell me about those educational opportunities that you guys offer with the IAAP
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: We offer monthly webinars, and we are looking to expand that to two times a month in 2016. Those are available about every third week of the month. Sometimes that changes up. They are all recorded, and people can access them afterwards so you can attend sort of live and ask your questions in person or download the archive and listen to it after that time. We will also have the recorded sessions from our event, IAAP access, available at approximately mid-November for people to download who weren’t able to come to the conference. That will be at least a dozen or more sessions that people can take advantage of and listen to. That’s very exciting. Anything that we do live, we want to record for folks, knowing again that we’ve got a global audience. This way people can listen and enjoy at their leisure, whatever time frame that may be for them around the world. As we go forward, will look to add to our own realm of educational programs and products, certainly the three big pillars have been the webinar series, launching certification program, and getting things ready for that, and then the event, sort of in the terms of professional development.
WADE WINGLER: Excellent. I’m going to throw a curveball at you. What’s your elevator pitch for certification. You and I just stepped onto an elevator and I say, I’m a developer or fill-in the blank career path that might be eligible for certification. What you do? What’s your elevator pitch?
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: The certification program is the opportunity for you to demonstrate that you are proficient in the basic knowledge and language of accessibility, including the realms of disability challenges, assistive technology, accessibility, universal design, declaration standards, laws and management strategies, which help define you as someone who fully understands the depth and breadth of the accessibility profession.
WADE WINGLER: You’re getting a chuckle out of me because that sounds very well-rehearsed and well written. That wasn’t the curveball that I thought I would get out of you.
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: Is there another one coming? Is that what you’re telling me?
WADE WINGLER: No. That was good. The reason you and I are talking today is because Robert Pearson, who is the chief Accessibility Officer over at AMI in Canada suggested we talk. I was fascinated by his role of chief accessibility officer. What do you see the role, or what do you see on the horizon for organizations, mainstream organizations especially, who are looking at a disability and creating these high-level, C-level position for accessibility?
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: We are starting to see more of them. They are starting to identify with each other. We are privileged to have several of them, including Robert, as active members of our organization and among our volunteer leadership. Certainly Rob Sinclair at Microsoft, Francis West of IBM. We are finding that this is increasingly becoming a designation for people in this realm, and we are dedicated to doing whatever we can to support their continued growth and development. It just really goes part and parcel with defining the career pathway for an accessibility professional and articulating that this is a career pathway. It is a set of knowledge and skills. It is a unique profession. The CEO, we really see as the pinnacle towards the recognition of that, of accessibility. One day we hope it will be mainstream, but basically recognition that accessibility has got to be the start of the conversation, not something that we do after the fact to try and make our products and services accessible. It’s integral to the conversation. We see this increasingly. As I said, we are devoted to do all we can to support CAO’s, support companies, looking for people who have the requisite set of skills to be a CEO, be an accessibility professional. We do have a job board to help people find one another. Anything we can do to support the continued growth and development and heightened awareness of the profession, and particularly of that job title we are committed to doing.
WADE WINGLER: Great. We are about out of time for the interview for today. If people want to learn more about certification, your webinars, your conference, where would you direct them?
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: I would direct them to our home website, which is AccessibilityAssociation.org.
WADE WINGLER: You mentioned a lot of stuff they can find there and contact information and all that kind of stuff.
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: That’s correct. Contact information, information about the certification program, information about the educational offerings, information about membership and the benefits, just a question about how we are ultimately working together to create more accessible products, technology for persons with disabilities.
WADE WINGLER: Christine Murphy Peck is the CEO of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, or the IAAP, and has been our guest today. Chris, thank you so much for sharing your information with us today.
CHRISTINE MURPHY PECK: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
WADE WINGLER: Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? Call our listener line at 317-721-7124, shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject, or check us out on Facebook. Looking for a transcript or show notes from today’s show? Head on over to www.eastersealstech.com. Assistive Technology Update is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. Find more shows like this, plus much more, over at accessibilitychannel.com. That was your Assistance Technology Update. I’m Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana.