Introduction
You’re listening to a podcast from Media Access Australia. Inclusion through technology.
Philip
I’m speaking with Dr Scott Hollier, the digital accessibility director for Media Access Australia. The cloud seems to be everywhere these days, and I’m not talking about the weather of course, but cloud computing. And with an ever increasing reliance on mobile devices with limited on-board storage, the cloud is bound to keep growing.
Philip
So Scott, you conducted a fairly in-depth review of the cloud 2 years ago. What have been the biggest changes you’ve seen since 2014?
Scott
Well it has been an interesting process in terms of how technology has evolved, even in just a very short space of 2 years. As you say, back in 2014 we did do a white paper looking at the cloud and particularly how it relates to accessibility. And what we’ve seen is a general trend towards more use of mobile devices, the importance of being able to access things through those devices, and particularly [inaudible] in the way that we do tend to use the web more through our mobile devices than say the desktop or traditional devices. So it’s been really interesting to see that mobile trend, and also to ensure that accessibility’s a part of that.
Philip
That’s great. What are the implications for the changing cloud-based landscape for those people with a disability or impairment?
Scott
I think there’s some very exciting implications when it comes to accessibility, and one of the things we have seen in recent times is a trend towards the internet of things, IoT. So in addition to our devices becoming more mobile, we also want to engage with devices in other places. So for example if we’re moving around with our mobile phones, we might want to also keep track of how things are going at home in terms of security, we might want to make sure that our fridge has those groceries being ordered and so we’ve seen a lot of developments in terms of devices being accessible and also being on the cloud. So the ability for a fridge to order its own groceries or for you to take care of that while you’re out and about, to make sure that say our lighting and our heating and our security is all handled and being able to monitor that wherever we are, this is really where things are going. And it’s, of course, important to make sure that accessibility’s a part of that, and there’s really two possible ways that this future direction can go. One is to make sure the device itself is accessible, or to make sure that our accessibility is all connected through a device that we already have, like a smartphone. So what’s been interesting is that, well some of the big movements is been around using our own smartphone and our own devices, which is quite accessible now, and using that to engage with things like our fridge or our washing machine. So very interesting things to see where it’s all going.
Philip
In terms of accessibility then, can you explain the whole GPII versus IoT debate?
Scott
Sure.
Philip
What are the pros and cons of each platform?
Scott
Well when we looked at the cloud paper two years ago, we focused a lot on GPII which stands for Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure. And the focus of that was looking at the idea that you can walk into say, a train station, you can go up to a ticket machine, and that ticket machine will adjust itself, say for example if you’re in a wheelchair the touch buttons would be lowered or if you’re vision impaired it might talk to you or change its interface to high contrast. And the idea was that this would enable people with disabilities to easily interact with that machine. And GPII is a global initiative that’s currently underway. The issue though is they haven’t progressed very much in terms of getting traction, and a big part of that is because trying to get industry and government and everyone to come on board to make every device accessible is difficult. But when we look at the idea of what we were just talking about before, when you can control the internet of things devices through what you already have on you, which would be an accessible start phone or a wearable that has accessibility features, I think that suddenly does become more possible. So while GPII is something we were very strongly in favour of in our report two years ago, and I still think that collaboration between government and industry and technology providers is really important, what I think is becoming more the trend now is that we use the device we already have on us with bring your own device, to engage with IoT. And as you walk around a city for example, we might use our smartphones to communicate with a list to choose our floor, or the vending machine to get our drink, or indeed ticket machines. So it’s been interesting that even in just this very short period of time, only two years, we’ve seen a move away from trying to make the device accessible and much more a move towards getting the device to talk to our already accessible device, which to me seems like a great way to go given that you can now get smartphones for as little as $50.
Philip
It does seem to be a natural progression. Scott, what does IoT stand for, by the way?
Scott
The internet of things. And it basically is this broad category, it’s very broad and getting broader all the time. But essentially it’s about making sure that our everyday devices are connected online, communicate via the cloud and interact with the other things we’re doing in the cloud. So some examples we’ve seen at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in recent years are things like a washing machine that can send messages to tell you how far through the cycle it is or a fridge that can order groceries for you, detecting when you’re running out of milk. And while some of these things do seem a bit gimmicky, from a person with a disability’s perspective, it’s a great thing because for example if you can’t see the display on a washing machine or you’re in a wheelchair and you can’t easily get to the controls, to be able to drive all that through an accessible device of your choice makes all these things possible. So I think the IoT space whilst it might sound a bit odd to have your washing talking to you and sending messages, the principle of it could be very beneficial.
Philip:
And anything that makes washing easier, gets my vote.
Scott:
I’ll second that.
Philip
Are there any downsides to our increasing reliance on the cloud?
Scott
I think the downside is that there’s still those two different directions. So some manufacturers have focused more on putting giant touchscreens on the devices like a refrigerator that has a interface by a giant touchscreen rather than using devices that we already have. And there’s still those separate schools of thought around the development of IoT. So for people with disabilities, there is a concern that perhaps the direction will be more focused on making the device and the interface of that device accessible on the device, which means there has to be a new way of dealing with it from the accessibility standpoint, rather than pushing the information to something that’s already accessible like a smartphone or a wearable. So I think the main concern in terms of engagement is around exactly what way manufacturers are going and ultimately from our point of view, we want to make sure that people with disabilities can easily interact with things.
Philip
Well fantastic Scott, and look, thank you so much for giving us your time today.
Scott
Thank you.
Conclusion
This podcast was presented by Media Access dot org dot au.