Josephine L. Taylor Leadership Institute fosters discussions on Technology For The Blind and Announces Access Awards

This year’s Josephine L. Taylor Leadership Institute was held at the San Francisco Airport Marriott hotel encompassing three days in early April. This conference honors and seeks to continue the work of Dr. Josephine L. Taylor who dedicated herself to improving opportunities and quality of life for blind and visually impaired individuals. The conference affords the opportunity for leaders and emerging leaders in the blindness field to come together and share knowledge and expertise.

This year’s conference featured many forums and seminars related to technology for the blind. The first afternoon featured a seminar on conducting assistive technology assessments. A thorough assessment is very important for children and newly blinded adults. For example, is a screen reader or screen magnifier most effective for a given blind person. Which choice will create the greatest efficiency on the job. For some legally blind folks, the answer may be that both technologies are needed depending on the task to be performed. Or, will a Braille display enhance job performance?

The second morning featured a session on the next generation of assistive technology. The lead speaker was Jim Fruchterman, founder and CEO of Benetech which manages www.bookshare.org. This session also included speakers from AT&T, Microsoft and IBM. The afternoon featured sessions on technology in the workplace, managing financial transactions online, conducting assistive technology assessments, solutions for access to educational media, a tour of FamilyConnect, a new website for families of the visually impaired and getting around town featuring discussions of quiet cars, complicated intersections, tactile maps and GPS solutions.

The second day of the conference featured sessions on assistive technology with speakers from GW Micro, HumanWare and the Sendero group. Other sessions included teaching assistive technology and using assistive technology to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

The final day of the conference featured repeats of previous sessions in the morning and two especially interesting sessions in the afternoon. The first was entitled Tech-Tonic Shifts: Mapping the Fault Lines in Our Field’s Technology Policy. This panel, moderated by Mark Richert, Esq., Director of Public Policy, American Foundation for the Blind offered attendees the opportunity to hear from change agents regarding how they have improved the technology landscape for blind and visually impaired individuals. The final panel was entitled MySpace, Flickr, and Facebook, Oh My! This was an introduction to social networking sites which have changed the way people interact and market themselves to the wider world. Attendees learned how vision loss organizations have used sites such as MySpace and Facebook to do outreach, raise funds and build online communities. They also learned what is being done to make these sites more screen reader-friendly.

The conference also handed out its access awards to honor individuals, corporations and organizations that are eliminating or substantially reducing inequities faced by people who are blind or visually impaired. This years recipients included:
Code Factory for making cell phones and PDAs accessible using Mobile Speak and Mobile Magnifier;
Lainey Feingold and Linda Dardarian for pioneering a legal advocacy method that emphasizes collaboration amongst the disability community, technology providers, businesses, and lawyers;
And Serotek for providing access to screen reading software from any computer at any time through System Access To Go.

While it is good that those in the technology field are interested in improving accessibility, there is much work to be done. AT one point during the conference, one of the speakers asked how many in the room use a Blackberry. Lots of hands went up. Then the speaker asked how many blind persons use a Blackberry. No hands went up. The Blackberry is probably the most popular PDA and remains decidedly inaccessible for blind persons.

For more information on this year’s Josephine L. Taylor Institute, go to “www.afb.org/section.asp?SectionID=28&TopicID=92”