Naidex 2007 was on in the UK last week. For those who aren’t in the know it’s a fair with improving the lives of people with disabilities in mind.
One of the cool ideas that were exhibited was guide dogs with a difference (www.caninepartners.co.uk).
Check it all out at www.naidex.co.uk
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Sometimes it can astound you how thoughtless people can be. Take this braille map in the main foyer Arts Block of TCD. Surely the people who put the toner bin, battery bin and direction signs need not have chosen that exact place?
I despair half the time! …and yes this issue has been raised by me numerious times!
Click on the logo to visit the campaign for making the world more accessible to all!
A truely worthy excuse reason to be online on November 14th!
I was delighted by an email by one of the members of the Save Audioscope team yesterday where I have been informed that Audioscope will return.
However there is a sting in the tail in the fact it’s going to be on MW and not on RTE Radio 1. Still it’s something at least. I strongly urge people to still sign the petition located over on www.saveaudioscope.com and still campaign for it to be placed back to it’s usual slot.
After the misery of the tokenism I wrote about yesterday and the failures of RTE comes the delightful news that Google has once again come up with a valuable public service.
Fresh from Google Labs is a new accessible search engine that when searched will return websites that are more likely to be usable to screen readers than flash sites or heavily loaded image sites. This for me is a nice simple solution to the problem of making the Internet a resource for everyone (in the English speaking world at least). What is of interest is how this development came about. In August 2005 Google hired a certain Mr. T.V. Raman who was one of the first in Google with a strong knowledge of web accessibility. Now after developing this variant of the worlds most popular search engine it seems Google is embracing this area of the web and is hiring web developers with knowledge of W3C accessibility standards.
For me this is a major development since I was beginning to lose hope for an equal web. I say this because recently I was fortunate enough to be talking to Microsoft in the capacity as an Undergraduate representative. They were looking at selling their warez to students using a web interface. The offers they were pushing were excellent so I’m not knocking them on that BUT there was a slight downside to the meeting. As I often do I asked about what grade accessibility the site was rated at in terms of the internet standards set by W3C. A look of pure confusion and bafflement occurred next by the MS representative. I explained that Trinity has it’s own policy on all websites being rated at least to the AA standard. Again, what was this “AA standard” I was talking about, what had batteries got to do with a website. The next bit was the most humourous though, I was handed a business card and told to contact Microsoft and tell them how to make their website accessible. Ah… ha… Right-e-o then… Major multi-billion dollar global company was uneducated in Internet standards and were offering me a job in fixing their websites…
…and on that bomb-shell I’ll leave you, the reader, to digest that gem!
…and so election year seems to have started in earnest… Our wonderful Irish Government has seen fit to promote how it has now exceeded its target of a 3% in employing people with disabilities in the public sector. Indeed the 7% they quote is quite impressive after years and decades of discrimination and lost opportunities. Well done FF & PDs…
BUT…
According to the Irish Examiner, Brian Cowen, Minister for Finance, called on the private sector to match such an impressive employment quota. For me this is the equivalent to running down the length of a football pitch to score the best goal of all time… except… you just put it past your own keeper… Fool…
When anyone with a disability applies for and gets a job you would like to think it’s because they are the right person for the right job. By confusing the issue with statistics we aren’t in reality reaching true equality in employment. We are in fact working towards a system of ‘positive discrimination’ which is one of my pet hates. Positive discrimination is nothing more than tokenism, a band-aid for social ills. True equality is were everyone has a fair chance to fulfil ambitions and careers.
What Brian should have announced was the government finally addressing the inequality in our education system by a windfall amount of money to increase access to education for people with disabilities. Oh I know… We have the HEA and the ESF fund. Sure that’ll do the job… Well err… No!
The problem certainly at third level is the total lack of considered investment and will to address the barriers to a full education for people with disabilities. Let me lay out the charges I hold over our Governments in relation to Trinity College Dublin.
Until we address education issues in Ireland we will never truly have the diverse and equal workforce that the Government demands in the private sector.
Some of you may be aware of my involvement with disability issues over the years. I have seen many advances and a few backwards steps taken by people who we trust to do the right thing by involving people with disabilities into a world that puts so many barriers up. When there is a backward step we usually have the old reliable economic excuses for not making an investment in a building project or a service. Yet RTE are doing the unthinkable in cancelling a radio program called Audioscope aimed at the visually impaired simply on the basis of reconfiguring a schedule.
The insanity of this decision is unfathomable to me. The figures for the listenership is quite outstanding for the 15 minute program. Some 60,000 tune in to hear TCD’s own Bethan Collins present an informative and entertaining show.
60,000!
Think about it. There are some radio presenters that are nationally known but couldn’t hope to dream for such listening figures.
If you agree with me and Lexferenda please sign the petition at Save Audioscope.