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Category: Accessibility

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Smart City: Accessibility

Concept

Accessibility can be viewed as the “ability to access” and benefit from some system or entity. Accessibility involves removing the barriers faced by individuals with a variety of disabilities (which can include, but is not limited to: physical, sensory, cognitive, learning, mental health) and the various barriers (including attitudinal and systemic) that impede an individual’s ability to participate in social, cultural, political, and economic life. Disabilities can be temporary or permanent.

The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers).

Accessibility is not to be confused with usability, which is the extent to which a product (such as a device, service, or environment) can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.

Accessibility is strongly related to universal design which is the process of creating products that are usable by people with the widest possible range of abilities, operating within the widest possible range of situations.

Smart City Practice

A key challenge faced by Smart Cities is to ensure the engagement and inclusion of all people including citizens with disabilities and those that are aging. An accessible Smart City is purposefully designed to include all people and equitably meets the needs of both people with disabilities and people who self-identify as non-disabled.

 A Smart City isn’t smart if it doesn’t support the needs of all citizens.

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Chairman’s Awards for Advancements in Accessibility | Federal Communications Commission

Chairman’s Awards for Advancements in Accessibility | Federal Communications Commission

Innovation is one of the core drivers for advancement in accessibility for people with disabilities. The Chairman’s Awards for Advancement in Accessibility (Chairman’s AAA) is an FCC program recognizing products, services, standards and other innovative developments that improve the experience of people with disabilities in telecommunications and technology. The Chairman’s AAA celebrates outstanding private and public sector ventures as part…

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Question: Who Benefits From Accessible Infrastructure? Answer: Everyone

Question: Who Benefits From Accessible Infrastructure? Answer: Everyone

Seniors, strollers, suitcases — it’s not just disabled people who use accessible infrastructure. Policy-makers need to reframe and broaden the conversation.  It’s been a long time coming, but the federal government is expected to unveil national accessibility laws this spring. Similar legislation in other jurisdictions, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, was passed back in 1990. The most visible…

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Melbourne’s Brightest To Tackle Smart City Accessibility

Screenshot-2018-2-15 City of Melbourne homepage – City of Melbourne

Submissions are now open for the six-week Open Innovation Competition, with $20,000 cash and up to $40,000 of in-kind prizes up for grabs for winning solutions. Chair of the City of Melbourne’s Knowledge City portfolio and Deputy Chair of the People City Portfolio, Councillor Dr Jackie Watts, said that the Open Innovation Competition aims to cultivate tangible solutions to make…

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What’s It Like For The Disabled To Navigate a Smart City That Isn’t Really Smart or Accessible?

Screenshot-2018-2-14 ‘I feel like a second-class citizen’ readers on navigating cities with a disability

‘I feel like a second-class citizen’: readers on navigating cities with a disability We asked readers with a disability to share their experiences – good and bad. Their responses show the many ways people can be shut out of their communities.     Only 50 out of 270 tube stations are fully accessible. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian  …

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What Would A Truly Disabled-Accessible Smart City Look Like

Screenshot-2018-2-14 What would a truly disabled-accessible city look like

What would a truly disabled-accessible city look like? Most cities are utterly unfriendly to people with disabilities – but with almost one billion estimated to be urban-dwellers by 2050, a few cities are undergoing a remarkable shift by Saba Salman To David Meere, a visually impaired man from Melbourne, among the various obstacles to life in cities is another that…

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Smart Paint to Help the Visually Impaired Navigate Smart Cities

Screenshot-2018-2-13 Ohio State University, Partners Develop ‘Smart Paint’ to Help the Visually Impaired Navigate Cities

In this installment of the Innovation of the Month series (read last month’s story here), we explore the use of smart technologies to help blind and visually impaired people better navigate the world around them. A team at Ohio State University has been working on a “smart paint” application to do just that. MetroLab’s Executive Director Ben Levine sat down…

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Talking Tech: Design Thinking for Accessibility

Talking Tech: Design Thinking for Accessibility: Associations Now

Talking Tech: Design Thinking for Accessibility     Accessible design enables people with disabilities to engage with digital products and services. Brightfind CEO Frank Klassen explains how associations can use design thinking principles to accommodate these users’ unique needs. Why should associations keep digital accessibility top of mind? One in five people in the United States has some sort of…

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How To Create an Accessible and Inclusive Presentation

Screenshot-2018-2-2 Inclusive Presentation Skills (audio described version) – YouTube

Ever wondered how to make your presentation inclusive and accessible to everyone…including us cool folks with disabilities.  Check out this new 2 minute video that walks through quick easy steps to make magic happen.

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What Do Accessibility and Universal Design Have To Do With Open Data and Smart Cities?

What Do Accessibility and Universal Design Have To Do With Open Data and Smart Cities?

Accessibility Series Part 1: Universal Design Matters in Open Data /.article__meta Open Data, Accessibility and Universal Design and interrelated concepts that tie into a general culture of inclusiveness and “openness.” We know what Open Data is, that’s probably what brought you here. But what do accessibility and universal design have to do with Open Data? This post will guide you…

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Digital Accessibility is a Civil Rights Issue

Digital Accessibility is a Civil Rights Issue

begin main content area Protecting digital accessibility ensures equal rights for disabled people toolbar By Lainey Feingold January 2018 features pagination logic primary story image on first paginated page Lainey Feingold. As the world has moved online, so have disability rights. Disability community activists use social media to spread the message of equality, opportunity, justice and inclusion. Disabled people and…

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Smart City Accessibility: Unlocking Potential | Smart & Resilient Cities

Smart City Accessibility: Unlocking Potential | Smart & Resilient Cities

“Smart City” is the concept that will change the way we see and live in cities. Thousands of experts worldwide analyze the advantages and disadvantages of this new technological and social revolution from all perspectives. To date, however, accessibility is still a nascent dimension of this movement and must firmly be incorporated into the very definition of a Smart City.…

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How to Create Polished Accessibility Experiences for Web Users in 2018?

How to Create Polished Accessibility Experiences for Web Users in 2018?

We have been successfully delivering web design and development services for more than a decade. Today we would like to discuss how you can make your website inclusive for the people with disability. What is accessibility? Accessibility basically refers to the experience of users who access or interact with things differently than a typical “user” does. To be specific, accessibility…

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Why Companies Must Invest In Accessible IoT and Universal Design

Screenshot-2018-4-4 Why Companies Must Engage Accessible IoT and Universal Design Smart Cities Library™

Innovating for People With Disabilities Why companies should invest in universal design. Sensor technology, automation, artificial intelligence and the evolution of natural-language processing have made our personal electronic devices more intuitive and functional than ever. In recent years, these technologies have converged to make up the Internet of Things (IoT)—that is, a movement to make everyday items “smart” by embedding…

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Convenience For You Is Independence For Me by @ToddStabelfeldt

Screenshot-2018-1-21 Innovating for people with disabilities Why companies should invest in universal design – IBM iX

Universal Design and Accessible IoT  Brings  Independence. Technology designed for the convenience of people without disabilities can give people with reduced mobility and functioning unprecedented independence. That outcome, says Louchez of Georgia Tech, can reconnect people to a fundamental part of the human experience. “A corollary of independence is also dignity,” he says. “Because the more independent you are, the…

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Diversifying the Blockchain with Raine Revere

raine-revere

It’s common knowledge that the tech and financial industries are not diverse and inclusive places. So when you combine the two and out comes blockchain, what you get from a diversity viewpoint isn’t pretty. “The consensus is that because blockchain is so niche and it’s mostly early adopters who come from tech and finance, that it’s actually less diverse than…

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Smart Cities Need Technology That Understands All Humans

Screenshot-2018-1-20 Future Cities Need Technology That Understands All Humans

Smart Cities Need Technology That Understands All Humans Cities need to be accessible to all, including those with hearing and sight impairments, and restricted mobility   The world’s cities and their populations are growing at an unprecedented rate. The United Nations predicts that by 2050, 66 percent of the world’s population will live in urbanized areas, compared to just a…

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The Value of Incorporating Accessibility and Inclusion into Smart Cities From the Start

The Value of Incorporating Accessibility & Inclusion into Smart Cities From the Start

  The city nearly drowned. In the warm days of mid-June, about 160 years after the old river town was incorporated, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was hit with the worst flood in its history. One of those 500-year floods that no one thinks they’ll ever see. The kind of flood that evokes allusions to Noah, or Katrina. The Cedar River swelled…

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#CES2018 Accessibility Technology Showcase B-Roll

Screenshot-2018-1-13 Add New Post ‹ Smart Cities Library™ — WordPress

CES 2018 Accessibility Technology showcases innovative technologies that are changing the way people work, live and play regardless of age or disability.

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Smart City Accessible Platform From Digital Services Georgia

Screenshot-2018-1-5 Accessible Platform

At Digital Services Georgia, we believe we have a social responsibility to make government content readily available to everyone. Our platform, used by over 75 state agencies in Georgia, features code, structure, and designs that are optimized for accessibility. Partnering with subject matter experts from the AMAC Accessibility Solutions and Research Center and the state’s ADA Coordinator’s Office, we make…

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States Can Help #SmartCity Vendors to Incorporate Accessibility | @NASCIO Report

Screenshot-2018-1-4 States should press vendors to focus on accessibility – report

Calling on vendors to develop an information and communications technology policy to establish and maintain an organizational structure that ensures accessibility is integrated into their offerings. States have a unique opportunity to help make their websites and apps easier to use for people with disabilities: They can force their vendors to make it a priority. That’s according to a new report from the National Association of State Chief…

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