Introduction
You’re listening to a podcast from Media Access Australia. Inclusion through technology.
Philip
I’m speaking with Dr Scott Hollier, Media Access Australia’s Specialist Adviser, Digital Accessibility. And today’s focus is on an exciting new website: affordableaccess.com.au. The purpose of the Affordable Access project is to create an online resource where people with hearing, sight or cognitive disabilities and impairments can find information on low-cost software and devices that support their everyday needs, which were put together by Media Access Australia with support provided by ACCAN, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network. Scott, first up, when did research first commence for this project?
Scott
We started the research in the second half of 2015 and really, this project came out of a need from consumers from contacting us about the fact that they wanted to know how can we buy accessible products and make sure that they’re something that’s also affordable. I mean there’s some fantastic accessibility things, say, in the Apple product line, but they’re often deemed to be too expensive, so we’ve often had people say, “Well, what are my options in terms of affordable technology?” So as a result, and ACCAN was very kind to support the funding, and in the second half of 2015 we did a lot of research around what consumer products were out there that were accessible, also with the support of our partner Visibility who did some base research too, and contacted people over the phone as well, just to make sure that the information was very closely aligned with people’s needs, and through that we published this successful resource.
Philip
Fantastic. The Affordable Access website has four content categories: What’s Accessible, What’s Available, What’s Suitable and What’s Possible. Can you briefly take us through these four content categories?
Scott
The What’s Accessible section really looks at the operating systems, and what the accessibility features are that are built into those, so we’re talking about things like using Microsoft Windows, we’re talking about using Google Android, and just going through the availability of things like screen readers so the blind person can use a computer, magnifiers, onscreen keyboards, the ability to play back captioned videos and things like that. In the What’s Affordable section we really go into just about the specific products, so we’re looking at things like what tablets can you buy for under $250, what smartphones will run software that is accessible, and what are some of the great little devices like the Google Chromecast that lets you connect to a TV and show videos in a really big print, or even just to mirror your small device on a big screen. So the key is really to look at firstly what accessibility features are in popular devices, and then to talk about some of the devices themselves. In the third section we break this down into what’s relevant for particular disabilities and particular roles. So we look at vision, hearing, mobility, we also look at in terms of people, carers and families, we look at people in the workforce, and students and seniors. So we focus a lot, not just on the technologies but also people that need to access them. In the final section we look a bit at people who are tech savvy and in the What’s Possible we focus on if you really want to maximise the absolute cheapest device or the best access, what are some of the things you can do in terms of say, manually updating your phone, or sourcing products from other countries, or using something like a Raspberry Pie, which is a US$35 computer that can be made accessible. So it’s a bit more of a tech side of things for that section, but a lot of people said, “Look, we have information and abilities, so we’d like to see some of that,” and that led to the creation of that section. So overall, yeah, we’ve got these four sections on the site, so for consumers there should be some great options out there to understand what their needs are and source the device which is best for them.
Philip
That’s great, Scott. And there’s also resources that various groups of people can download that’s tailor-made for each group. Can you take us through them?
Scott
There were four main user groups that we focused on to provide support around affordable access, the first one being seniors. So we looked in terms of what seniors need the most and what technologies are both well-supporting of their needs and affordable, and what we found is that seniors generally favoured a desktop computer running Windows, and the main reason for that was because it’s very familiar. It also supports pretty much all assisted technologies that are on the market that support Windows, so that’s a really good option for seniors. And often seniors don’t travel around as much as some of the other groups, so to have something on their desk in a consistent way we found in our research, that works really well. Another group is looking at families and carers and children, so more of a family focus, and in that environment we found that cheap Android tablets work really well; not only can they be used for education and being able to install apps on a very cheap device, but also for entertainment. Cheap Android tablets are great to be able to pass to the kids and they run most Android software, so it’s quite effective as an option. Another group we looked at was students, and one of the things about students is they do need to have easy, portable mobile product, and they also need to be able to work on looking at assignments and things like that. So we found in that case a Windows tablet was quite good because it gave you the portability, but it also gave you the option to be able to do your assignments at home. But that said, we found in terms of the mobile phones students tended to prefer Android because they are quite cheap and very popular with apps, and especially around things like social media. And the final group was looking at the workforce, and if people needed different devices in the workforce, and what we found is that the results were similar to students and tended to favour some sort of Windows portable device like a Windows tablet for work and an Android smartphone in terms of their mobile side of things, and for similar reasons but the priorities were a bit different. So when we looked at Windows tablets it was mainly again to be able to do productive work with the Office suite, but on the phone rather than being for social media it’s just a need to be always on and always available. So those were the main four groups. And then we looked at that in terms of different disabilities.
Philip
And what disability groups are covered?
Scott
We focused a lot in terms of vision and hearing and mobility. We looked a lot at whether devices had screen readers or some sort of functionality to support people with a vision impairment, we focused on whether or not videos could be played back with captions, and we looked at things like the ability to interact with switch keys or some other things from a mobility perspective. We also looked at some devices which focused a lot on things like Chromecast which for listeners who aren’t aware of Chromecast, it allows you to push the output of something, say an Android device, to a big TV. Now generally that’s used for playing things like YouTube, but one of the really great benefits of the Chromecast is that on many devices you can mirror your small mobile screen onto a giant TV, which from a vision impairment point of view’s great because it blows up the text on a big screen. So what was really exciting about this research is we found little tips like that, and it’s great to get that information out there.
Philip
And it’s out there right now, affordableaccess.com.au. This content-rich website contains freely downloadable resources specifically created for students, carers and parents, seniors, and those in the workforce. Well, that’s brilliant Scott. Thanks for your time today.
Scott
Thank you.
Conclusion
This podcast was presented by Media Access dot org dot au.
Go back to the ‘Affordable Access website podcast’ story