Global Resources and Promising Practices for Building and Refining Accessible and Inclusive Smart Cities from Darren Bates LLC.
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.
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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In this episode, we talk with deaf-blind civil rights lawyer and accessibility advocate Haben Girma about accessible justice and how designing courts, law firms, and the attorney-client relationship for people with disabilities can increase access to justice for everyone.
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Airbnb is part of something called the sharing economy, an evolving system in which people who own certain things, like homes or cars, rent them out to others when they are not using them. In many cases, travelers can save a significant amount of money by staying at an Airbnb host’s property rather than at a hotel. Uber is another company that is part of the sharing economy. Drivers use their own vehicles to drive people around town. Despite Uber’s sometimes lax regulations and harassment and discrimination scandals, people still love using it and other services like it because of their lower prices and the ease of summoning a vehicle.
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This article aims to educate and challenge current thought leadership and emerging policies concerning the development of our Smart Cities, and the design and deployment of digital technologies and their impact on citizen wellbeing. We want to ensure that future Infrastructure and Smart City solutions serve the needs of all sectors of society; including people living with sensory loss, older people, people with physical disability, and people with learning disabilities. These sectors of society are so often forgotten and have struggled for years in a world defined by a legacy of Victorian infrastructure; as we move to the next great era of technology innovation, our policies and standards for city design and infrastructure investment need to proactively champion inclusivity for everyone.
Inclusion for all sectors of society surely has to be an important metric to attain ‘Smart City’ status….
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On November 1, 2017, the DIAUD Network held another successful meeting in preparation for the 9th World Urban Forum (WUF9), which will take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia next February. Members provided information about their planned representation and contributions at the Forum and were also able to collaborate in planning logistics for various events and meetings that will be taking place. The discussion was led by Federico Batista Poitier, Executive Assistant to the President and Communications Coordinator for Global Alliance on Accessible Technologies and Environments (GAATES) outlining the side events under consideration by GAATES and World Enabled for WUF9….
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At eBay, we take digital accessibility very seriously. We strive to create a company culture that promotes it and focuses on action.
In my last guest post, I discussed what digital accessibility actually means to your brand. Digital accessibility is a way to improve your bottom line and avoid litigation, but more importantly it is a way for a brand to become an even better version of itse
Now I want to provide some actionable steps that can be taken within your company to promote accessible designs and help establish digital accessibility as a priority….
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If there were an untapped multi-billion-dollar market, would you want to know about it? Would you want to know if you were inadvertently blocking those consumers from doing business with you? And would you try to get ahead of your competitors by courting them?
That market is Canadians living with disabilities. It’s no niche market: one in five Canadians has a disability. And they represent purchasing power worth a whopping $55 billion annually.
Now, factor in the following:
– More than one in three seniors has a disability; and….
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This post is part of Complete Streets month at Smart Growth America; we will be sharing a series of blog posts that cover and explain each of the 10 revised policy elements in some detail.
Complete Streets implementation relies on using the best and latest state-of-the-practice design standards and guidelines to maximize design flexibility. Creating meaningful change on the ground both at the project level and in the creation of complete, multimodal transportation networks requires jurisdictions to create or update their existing design guidelines and standards to advance the objectives of the Complete Streets policy. Road design is key to truly make streets safer and accessible for all people regardless of age, race, ethnicity, ability, income, or how they choose to travel….
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“Accessibility by design” is an important concept for Microsoft, and one that underpins many of its artificial intelligence-powered products, including Seeing AI.
Announced on Wednesday among a series of other AI tools, Seeing AI is a free mobile application designed to support people with visual impairments by narrating the world around them. The app — which is an ongoing research project bringing together deep learning and Microsoft Cognitive Services — can read documents, making sense of structural elements such as headings, paragraphs, and lists, as well as identify a product using its barcode….
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15 per cent of the world’s population lives with a disability. This represents about 1 billion people globally. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as mobile phones, satellites or the Internet, are a unique infrastructure that expand access to key public services, promoting digital inclusion. Throughout the world, persons living with disabilities are already benefitting from the advantages of ICT-enabled applications. But…
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Now is the Time to Build Smarter and More Accessible Cities There are currently more than 1 billion persons with disabilities worldwide and the rate of urbanization is increasing throughout the world. By considering the needs of all people, we can design for and ensure that our cities become simultaneously smarter and more accessible. As cities invest in Smart City…
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Accessibility in the News—11/03/17. This issue: A journalist paralyzed for more than twenty years uses a high-tech exoskeleton to walk, new glasses enable a man born without optic nerves to read the abundance of text in his environment, and accessible computer applications provide a voice to a young college author and presenter with cerebral palsy. NOTE: To get news like…
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This issue: A journalist paralyzed for more than twenty years uses a high-tech exoskeleton to walk, new glasses enable a man born without optic nerves to read the abundance of text in his environment, and accessible computer applications provide a voice to a young college author and presenter with cerebral palsy. The suits center around claims that credit unionsâ…
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This video looks at why it’s so important to build accessible apps, how we can do so, and the impact this has on our users. We’ll look at the accessibility accommodations that iOS provides to the user; such as voice over, guided access, and display customisation. We’ll go into detail on the use of the iOS Accessibility APIs and developer…
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EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Nov. 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — In less than 70 days, local government agencies across the U.S. are required to make website content and all digital information accessible to all users, including those with visual, hearing or other disabilities. Vision, the innovators in website design and software for local government, today announced a number of services and free resources…
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AccessAbilities Expo 2017 starts tomorrow Under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, Chairman of Dubai Airports, Chairman and Chief Executive of Emirates Airline and Group, AccessAbilities Expo, the Middle East’s largest expo for people of disabilities, will start tomorrow (November 7) at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition…
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The evidence is clear: we are urban, period. Over 60 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities by 2030, and that number is expected to reach 70 per cent by 2050. Without innovation and global partnerships to support this rapid urbanization, future cities will not be able to support their most vulnerable members. The New Urban Agenda…
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AJ Fawver, the Planning Director in Amarillo, Texas shares her perspectives on land use, planning, and community development in this series. Learn more about AJ from her GovLove interview. When we are going about the important work of planning and shaping cities, it is important to not oversimplify the group of people we serve. After all, our population – wherever we…
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PROVIDENCE, RI–(Marketwired – November 03, 2017) – As a major landmark in the fight for universal website accessibility, 2018 will usher in new legal regulations to be upheld by any business or organization with an online presence. Since the Department of Justice (DOJ) proposed in 2010 that websites should be considered as “places of public accommodation” as defined under the…
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About The Disability Visibility Project (DVP)® is an online community dedicated to recording, amplifying, and sharing disability media and culture. The DVP is also a community partnership with StoryCorps, a national oral history organization. Our aim is to create disabled media that is intersectional, multi-modal, and accessible. What does the DVP do? Believes that disabled lives are valuable and our narratives belong to us Encourages people with…
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Middle East, Misc., November 3 2017 People with vision disabilities could soon have access to the world’s largest digital library which would also allow them to download and print braille. Benetech, a Silicon Valley company has recently begun working with Dubai Police and individual members to join its Bookshare library to give people with vision disabilities access to literature. The company…
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