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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: Wendy Stephens, Services Manager, Lifetech in Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
mail@lifetec.org.au
wendystevens@lifetec.org.au
Comcast’s Internet Essentials program: www.InternetEssentials.com
How to use Accessibility for iPhone and iPad: The ultimate guide | iMore http://buff.ly/WceBdW
ATCoalition News – Free Webinars http://buff.ly/1lzFioC
WebAIM: Survey of Web Accessibility Practitioners Results http://buff.ly/1lzExMm
FamilyConnect http://buff.ly/1lzDXOB
Mobile accessibility checklist – Accessibility | MDN http://buff.ly/1lzDgom
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WENDY STEPHENS: Hi, this is Wendy Stevens, and I’m the services manager of LifeTec Queensland from Australia, and this is your Assistive 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 171 of Assistive Technology Update. It’s scheduled to be released on September 9 of 2014.
My guest today is a new friend of mine. Her name is Wendy Stevens, and she is from Australia she’s the service manager for LifeTec in Queensland which is in Brisbane in Australia. So we’re going to talk with her about the differences between how assistive technology is done here in the United States and Australia.
And we’re excited to unveil two new segments this week. One is called Tweet of the week and the tweet highlights something particularly interesting we found on Twitter. And the other is called On the Hill with Audrey, which is an update from Audrey Busch and talk to us about how the legislative process impacts assistive technology in the United States.
We have some information on the ultimate guide to iPad and iPhone accessibility. A bunch of free webinars from the ATCoalition. The results of a survey of web accessibility practitioners. Information on sending your kid who is blind or have low vision back to school. And information about mobile accessibility for developers.
We hope you check us out online. Our website is eastersealstech.com. Call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Or shoot us a note on Twitter at INDATA Project.
Did you know that Comcast offers Internet service for only $9.99 a month for people who meet certain income requirements? I’m going to pop a link in the show notes over to Comcast’s Internet essentials program where you can learn more what those qualifiers are and how you might be eligible to get high-speed Internet from Comcast in your home for a low cost. Check our show notes.
You need to brush up on your sign language? I know I do. I’m a little bit rusty. There’s a new app called the American Sign Language Dictionary. It’s a mobile app for iOS and android and includes over 5200 words signed by an ASL interpreter by video. It’s broken down by category like idioms, phrases, alphabet, general numbers , and then you can also search by the term that you’re looking for. Now I found this because our friend Andrew Liebs over at about.com has done a full article on it. I’moing to pop a link in the show notes so that you can see and find out how to get a hold of this app and learn more about what Andrew talks about in his article. Check our show notes and find the link that says ASL video dictionary app for iOS devices and android tablets.
Next week, Apple is scheduled to do a big product announcement. Everybody’s expecting bigger iPhones, bigger iPads, maybe iWatch, all kinds of rumors going on, but in the meantime, until we have real information, I found a link here on imore.com about how to use accessibility in your iPhone and your iPad, the ultimate guide. I was a little skeptical when I first looked at the headline. Ultimate guide, really? But it is actually pretty good. It has a whole breakdown here of different tutorials and there must be more than a dozen of them, everything from how to use voice control with Siri to how to make toggles more visible by enabling off and on button labels. How to enable mono audio. How to use the LED flash as a visible notification light on your iPhone. How to use assistive touch. How to enable switch control. A lot of stuff that I feel like I know but I haven’t seen the place where they are all together in one place like this. I’m going to pop a link in the show notes over to imore.com. There’s lots of cool tutorials there but this one is all about the different things you can do to make your iPad and your iPhone more accessible. Check our show notes and I’ll put a link.
The accessible Technology Coalition sent out an email newsletter here recently that has just a ton of free webinars all related to assistive and accessible technology. Some of the ones — and these are all happening in September by the way — include AT for the common core; creating accessible narrated PowerPoint; PDF in the classroom, the future of digital textbooks; accessing your iPad with a switch; Who’s Who in social media for augmentative and alternative communication; next is android apps for special education; iPad accessibility; and android is accessible. Really. These are put on by organizations like AbleNet, the ALS Association, the Special Ed Tech Center at Central Washington University, and ADA online. They are all free and they all listed on the website that I would direct you to in our show notes and you can check out some of these really cool webinars all about assistive technology.
WebAIM is an organization that spends a lot of time focusing on the accessibility of the web and all things in it. In July 2014, they did a survey of web accessibility practitioners, the people who work in the business to make their web more accessible. They talked to 900 people and they got a lot of survey results.
A few of the highlights are that people who work in the field of web accessibility are generally older, better paid, and better educated than their peers in general website development. More women and people with disabilities work in the field of web accessibility, but there is notable pay disparity for women and people with disabilities in the field. 41% of folks without disabilities use Chrome, but was 16% of those with disabilities use Chrome web browser from Google. Almost everybody, 99.5%, have JavaScript enabled on their computer. The screen readers that are used by web accessibility practitioners are different from the screen readers used by the general user population. People who work in the field are generally optimistic about accessibility advancements but there’s some disparity about what motivates web accessibility practitioners and the organizations that they work for.
I’m going to pop a link in the show notes over to webAIM.org and I’ll make the link point right to the survey results page where you can get the overview that I just read a portion of and also a link to the full survey results and you can learn more about what’s going on in the heads of people who do web accessibility for a living. Check our show notes.
A lot of kids are heading back to school. In fact, my daughter is heading into her senior year of high school. It makes me feel like an old man. However, I’m looking at an article from AFB called Spotlight on Family Connect. It talks about how the family connect.org website is a resource for parents. It’s got message boards come a blog post, videos, all kinds of articles, and then a listing of local blackness agencies that can help you do things like orientation to new buildings when you’re dealing with a student who’s blind or visually impaired, issues surrounding transition into preschool or even into middle school and high school, and information about how to prepare for and has a successful individualized education program, or IEP, meetings. Lots of information over there at familyconnect.org. I’m going to pop a link in the show notes and you can check out those resources.
A lot of assistive technology information happens on Twitter. You can follow us at INDATA Project. And here is the Tweet of the Week.
And in this week’s Tweet of the Week, we have a mobile accessibility checklist from the Mozilla developer network. When people are developing mobile apps, it’s really important that they make them accessible to screen readers and folks who have disabilities. This is a mobile accessibility checklist that includes areas of color, visibility, focus, text equivalence, handling state and general guidelines to to break that down just a little bit, it talks about how the color contrast within an app must meet the WCAG 2.0 AA level requirements. So talks about contrast ratios in an app and even provide some links to some tools that will help you check the contrast. It talks about things like visibility and how to handle things like invisible items on the screen. It talks about how all activateable elements must be focusable. It talks about the importance of text equivalence for things that are image-based and how handling states can tell somebody whether a checkbox is checked or unchecked or those kinds of things. Uses a lot of aria language and talks about some different automated accessibility testing services that are available.
With this week’s Tweet of the Week, I’m going to pop that in the show notes and you can check out more about this mobile accessibility checklist from mobile app developers.
It’s time for On the Hill with Audrey. Audrey Busch is the director of policy and advocacy for the Association of Assistive Technology Act Programs. In her update, she lets us know how the power of politics is impacting people with disabilities and their use of assistive technology. Learn more about Audrey and her work at ataporg.org
AUDREY BUSCH: This is Audrey Busch come a policy director for the Association of Assistive Technology Act Programs, coming to you with your monthly Washington update. Congress has spent the last four weeks in their hometowns attending to districts and state business while also focusing their energies on the November elections and securing their seat for this next legislative session ahead.
They return on September 8 to Washington with a laundry list of items to file through. Technically they only have 12 legislative days remaining before the November elections, while the amount of work that remains far outpaces that amount of congressional working days in September and October. Given that it is an election year, it is likely Congress will attend to the most pressing issues like passing a funding bill for the federal government for fiscal year 2015 which begins October 1, and then turn right around and head back home to their districts to continue on the campaign trail. Most Washingtonians assume that after the elections, Congress knows where the power lies, meaning whether the Republicans keep the house and the Democrats keep the Senate. They will then determine what the legislative docket will look like when they return to Washington for the lame-duck session starting November 12.
Let’s just focus, however, on what will happen in these next congressional days in September. Congress must pass a bill that will fund the federal government past September 30 when the fiscal year 2014 budget expires. Congress tried to pass all 12 appropriations bills in both chambers this year with no success. Therefore the likelihood of a new fiscal year 2015 budget being passed in the 10 legislative days left before the budget expires is very unlikely, leaving Congress to likely resort to passing a continuing resolution, which means that they will continue the funding levels for all federal programs at fiscal year 2014 levels. It seems unlikely that political showdowns over the federal spending are in the forecast for Congress before the big election day in November. A continuing resolution is the easiest solution to pacify any potential posturing to shut down the government over spending disputes like we have seen in past years.
As this relates to federal programs that fund assistive technology, specifically the Assistive Technology Act, it looks like forecasting spending at FY 2014 levels as the best approach for the coming month until Congress reconvenes in the middle of November and puts the final stamp on the federal budget for FY 2015. In the meantime, it is the calm before the storm in Washington as advocates and staffers await the return of Congress next week.
Look forward to my next update in October where there will hopefully be good news to report after Congress spends some time in the capital of Washington, DC.
WADE WINGLER: I think listeners of the show are aware that the RESNA conference was held in Indianapolis just a few weeks ago. I was pretty involved in the process. One of the hidden benefits of being involved in the RESNA conference this year was I made a new friend. I met Wendy Stevens who is the services manager for LifeTec, Queensland, Australia. While she was here, she visited our location at Easter Seals crossroads and the INDATA Project and we also hung out at a baseball game and at the conference and got to know each other a little bit.
It got me to thinking about there are some differences between the way assistive technology is that here in the states versus how it’s done in Australia. So I thought how interesting would it be to bring Wendy on and talk about those differences just a little bit? So connecting via Skype late in the evening, early in the morning for me, Wendy, are you online?
WENDY STEPHENS: I sure am.
WADE WINGLER: Good. Thank you so much for staying up late on a Friday light instead of going out and doing something really exciting and talking with me here on my early Friday morning. I want to talk a little bit about your recent visit to the states, but before we kind of jump into that, can you tell me a little better about yourself, the work that you do, and how you got into the field of assistive technology?
WENDY STEPHENS: Sure. I’m born and bred Australian, and I am an occupational therapist by trade. I’ve been doing that for about 15 years. I currently manage an organization called LifeTec in Queensland, Brisbane. We are a social enterprise and our purpose here is to connect people in their communities through assistive technology to enable them to achieve their goals. So our service does provide a lot of specialists, assistive technology services, information helpline, online database, and we provide a lot of resources and services across the state.
WADE WINGLER: I was going to say, when you and I got a chance to visit a little bit, it kinda turns out that we have similarities in our programs. We’re both a nonprofit organization, we serve a wide geography and do a lot of assistive technology, so I was a little bit surprised that there is a similarity there.
WENDY STEPHENS: Yes. Very much so. So our main goal is to promote assistive technology and to let as many people know about the options available for them and their families and hopefully help them achieve what they want to achieve in life and put everybody in the right mix.
WADE WINGLER: Cool. A quick geography lesson for folks who aren’t familiar with Queensland and Brisbane. Where are you located in Australia?
WENDY STEPHENS: So Queensland is on the eastern state side of Australia. A little bit of geography lesson, I suppose, for you is that I’ve been googling some stats of my own. As people may or may not know, Australia only has about 22 million people but we have about the same similar landmass as the United States. The main difference that I see in our geography is Queensland is actually 17 times larger than your state of Indiana. We have almost as many people. So we have 2 million less people. So our services in Queensland have to cover basically 17 times of your Indiana state with the same type of resources. So we certainly have some distance to travel throughout. We do a lot of remote services and telehealth services to be able to spam that scope of distance between services and people.
WADE WINGLER: So you’re telling me when I’m driving three or four hours to cover the remote areas of Indiana, I shouldn’t complain about that?
WENDY STEPHENS: Definitely not. It would take us back to full days in the car to get from the top to the bottom of our state, let alone our country.
WADE WINGLER: Well. So you recently came to Indiana. I think when we talked, it was your first visit to the States. Why did you come to the RESNA conference and why did you come to Indiana and where else did you visit while you are here?
WENDY STEPHENS: Certainly. Part of what we do here in Australia is we always look at different service models and countries and how they do business to learn as to what we can do better and bring that back home. So America has always been on our list of places to visit and certainly the RESNA conference was a perfect opportunity for us to start exploring how the American system works and the AT practice.
So I spent most of my time in America and Indianapolis at the RESNA conference and certainly spending some time with your services over there. On top of that, I spent a little bit of time in California and spent the day with California telehealth network and looking at how they provide remote services in the region.
WADE WINGLER: And while you are here, a conference to take in is a lot but visiting a couple of programs is a lot as well. What did you find that was interesting? What kind of sparked your interest in what you are here?
WENDY STEPHENS: I found that the most fascinating difference was certainly the way that your system uses AT practitioners that are not traditional health professionals. So in Australia, a lot of our AT practice is molded around an occupational therapist, a physiotherapist, speech pathologist, or rehab engineer to help that prescription process and application for funding and matching the client with their goals and their technology needs. In Australia, we don’t have the system that you guys have in terms of having AT practitioners so I find that really fascinating and certainly a lot of learning in that space as to how we can implement something similar here to be able to promote good AT practice for people to get the best technology for their goals.
WADE WINGLER: And you know, I guess we probably take that for granted because we certainly do have physical therapist — and I love that you call them “physios” by the way. We have physical therapist and occupational therapist and speech therapist. Some of them do have assistive technology skills and do some of that as part of their practice. I always have taken for granted that we also have AT specialist, people who only do that. That’s an interesting different. What other kind of differences have you noticed during your visit and during your research in the way Australia versus the United States do assistive technology?
WENDY STEPHENS: So I think the other area of course is the application of our distance over time. so certainly our telehealth and tele-consultation services may be a little bit more developed and Queensland and Australia because we just have to deal with those differences and distances a lot more creatively.
Other than that, I think the product range and manufacturing range is certainly very similar here as we see the globalization of our manufacturing and distribution of technologies across the board, both disability specific, but also the mainstream technologies as well.
WADE WINGLER: So after having exposure to both countries, what do you think the pros and cons are? What you think is being done better in Australia or what you think might be done better in the United States?
WENDY STEPHENS: From what I’ve learned and what I’ve seen and heard about the way AT is funded, they certainly some areas of AT practice I feel in America that appears to be much better funded then in Australia. But certainly I think in Australia, we also have a good vision in terms of having one national system for AT funding as well as our national disability insurance scheme progresses over the next couple of years.
WADE WINGLER: Can you elaborate a little bit on how assistive technology is funded there in Australia?
WENDY STEPHENS: Assistive technology in Australia is funded through a variety of means depending on the goal and the background of the person. Traditionally, we have funding through a healthcare scheme and also through a disability scheme. Each state in Australia has a different funding or subsidy level for different types of equipment. That’s why our system’s undergoing significant reform at the moment to make a national system that’s equal in accessible by all people to be able to get their AT needs addressed within the national system as opposed to at the moment we have different funding schemes in different states.
WADE WINGLER: So it’s generally government funded. Is there also private funding and something equivalent to private health insurance like we have here in the states?
WENDY STEPHENS: We certainly do have private health insurance but it’s certainly not the same extent from what I see as what is an America. So there is private funding mixed throughout. And again it depends on where the person is, whether the funding comes from the government or nongovernment sector. But in Australia, we find probably about 80% of assistive technology is self-funded through the families themselves or through their care network.
WADE WINGLER: I visit Canada a few years ago and was looking at telehealth interestingly enough and explore somed of the differences between US and Canada. What I found there was the services were pretty easy to get funded but that equipment wasn’t. Do see similar kinds of differences there between the equipment and the actual services and how they are funded?
WENDY STEPHENS: Certainly. So we have a fairly good public health system here in terms of accessing free services or very subsidized services to get prescriptions and information and advice and therapy involved. Again, that difference is very broad between states in different geographical areas as well. We certainly have reasonably good access to Allied health professionals to help people come a but certainly the funding for some of the technologies is limited or not available at all.
WADE WINGLER: I think that’s common in a lot of places around the world. So I have a very difficult question for you, one that I’ve been waiting to ask since I saw you here. Did you ever find any good coffee here in America?
WENDY STEPHENS: Unfortunately no. I did not. But I did come home with an appreciation of coffee from a café Italian background. So certainly I’ve realized that the coffee culture in America is different to Australia and I needed to absorb that and take the full on when I was there.
WADE WINGLER: That’s a nice way of saying no, the coffee is terrible here. I know this kind of a running joke with Australians when they visit is that our coffee here that strong enough and is just not good, right?
WENDY STEPHENS: It comes from a different background so it comes from more of a café background as opposed to a diner background.
WADE WINGLER: There you go. Based on your visit, are there things that you learned or so here in the states that you think you’ll check back and implement?
WENDY STEPHENS: I think the advancement of mainstream technologies and the use of how people investigate their options and find out about their options in terms of online media and online platforms. It’s certainly an area that Australia needs to move forward in. Also using and embracing the mainstream technologies that are available as well. So really looking at how we can use generic and mainstream technologies to better help everybody to achieve their goals. That’s probably the main areas that I’d like to see implemented here. Certainly have made a lot of new friends and a lot of new networks in America so I am looking forward to continuing that dialogue as AT industry advances on the international market.
WADE WINGLER: Excellent. So you’ll be starting your own podcast soon, right?
WENDY STEPHENS: Not so sure about that but we might just start with increasing how much information and videos that we have online and slowly develop our digital platform and certainly continue to progress our telehealth services as well.
WADE WINGLER: Cool. So based on what you know about assistive technology in your background and your visit here, what advice do you have for assistive technology professionals here in the United States?
WENDY STEPHENS: Just keep going. Every day is a new challenge and I think internationally, we all have the same challenges to try to best match the person with the technology within the funding and our systems that we have. So I think the outcome and best technology match that we all achieve is certainly paramount and we just need to keep moving forward and keep communicating with each other so we can internationally progress the benefits of AT for all.
WADE WINGLER: So are you going to come back, and if so, what else would you like to see when you’re here?
WENDY STEPHENS: I’d love to come back and probably more areas that I want to look at and investigate, as I said, I think there’s New York area in terms of technology and AT practice that it back to explore. Certainly some networks in the Chicago and Michigan area and Canada is also on the list as well. Hopefully my boss isn’t listening to this so he wants know how many study tours I might be asked to go on.
WADE WINGLER: If you decide to come back, let me know because I have contacts in those areas and can connect you to folks. If you’re coming to Chicago come on my drive up there to have coffee with you.
WENDY STEPHENS: Fantastic. I look forward to it.
WADE WINGLER: Wendy, before we finish the interview here, if people want to learn more about LifeTec or learn about what you’re doing there in Austria, what kind of contact information which you provide?
WENDY STEPHENS: Certainly. Our website is www.lifetec.org/au. Our resources and services are there and webcasts that we do. Also maybe follow us on Facebook.
WADE WINGLER: Wendy Stephens is the services manager for LifeTec in Queensland Brisbane Australia and a new friend of mine in recent visitor here to the US for the RESNA conference. Wendy, thank you so much for being on our show today.
WENDY STEPHENS: Not a problem.
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. Looking for show notes from today’s show? Head on over to EasterSealstech.com. Shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject, or check us out on Facebook. That was your Assistance Technology Update. I’m Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana.