We’re all about accessible and usable products — products that work better for everyone because they’re easy to use.
Inclusive Technologies provides free and paid consulting services to companies, public agencies, consumers, researchers, purchasers, and policy makers on how products can better meet the needs of all users, including users with disabilities and elders.
We’ve been involved in accessible and usable technologies for more than 30 years. Our principal, Jim Tobias, has worked at Bell Labs and Bellcore, schools, rehab centers, and independent living centers. He co-Chaired the Access Board Advisory Committee for Section 508 and 255. Other staff skills include clinical evaluation, hardware and software development, user testing, and legal/regulatory analysis.
Our clients and partners include AOL, the California Secretary of State’s Office, the California State University system, the Center for Accessible Technology, Cisco Systems, HP, IBM, Microsoft, National Science Foundation, Panasonic, Raising the Floor, and Verizon. Contact us to learn how we can work together.
Going to be at the International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference in San Diego this week? Please visit our presentations if you’re interested, and stop by to say “hi”.
Not on the program, so bonus points for anyone who asks me about inClue or Mr. Potential Head.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office on Disability Employment Policy has funded a new project — the Accessible Technology Action Center; Inclusive Technologies’s Jim Tobias will be its Technical Director. To quote from the ODEP press release:
“The development and adoption of accessible, universally designed technology is vital to ensuring that individuals with disabilities are hired and successful at work,” said Kathy Martinez, assistant secretary of labor for disability employment policy. “We are extremely excited about the creativity and expertise RESNA will bring to our newest effort to promote accessible technology in the workplace.”
ATAC will collect and disseminate highly detailed information that employers and employees can use right away, and workplace ICT developers can use to make their products more accessible. We’ll be gathering much of this information from the grassroots, so please contact us to learn more and hook up.
As part of its support for the idea of a Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII), the U.S. Department of Education recently funded a project to develop ways for people to explore, refine, and store their needs and preferences for interfaces. Inclusive Technologies will be part of the team; we’ll be focusing on possible users and stakeholders — who they are, how they operate now, and how they might like such a system to work for them.
Jim Tobias of Inclusive Technologies participated in an Office on Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) webcast on August 16, 2012. It was a chance to discuss how emerging technologies like the cloud and mobile apps will address accessibility. Under Secretary Kathy Martinez, Vint Cerf of Google, and Jim kicked around some interesting ideas about the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure and getting information out to more people who could benefit from accessible solutions.
There’s a new Spider-Man movie out (no, I won’t link to it — if you haven’t already been slimed by the promos, you probably don’t live close enough to a theatre anyway). And like seemingly every work of fiction since the Bible (no comments, please), the bad guy just has to be someone with a disability. In the current case, the real trouble begins when the character attempts to do something about his missing arm. So the message is … leave half-well enough alone? Stay tuned for the accessible technology remakes: wheelchairs become Transformers that swallow their riders whole; Chucky as an AAC device that whispers and kills; JAWS terrorizes web surfers.
We’ve put together a new music video about web accessibility, called “POUR Me a Website”. Take a look and leave a comment here or on YouTube.
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