Lisa Herrot at Sitepoint blog:
"For the most part seminars and industry nights hosted by the Mobile Monday
guys or AIMIA focus on marketing, advertising, gaming and identifying ways
of further monetising the mobile industry. BORING. I've even stopped
attending the Mobile Monday events because they appear to have such little
interest in promoting any discussion around best practices or mobile
accessibility. [...] Mobile use is at an all time high globally and it
offers affordable access to the web for a huge proportion of people
including many users with disabilities. It's time for industry groups to get
back on track and deliver informative sessions on how we can produce
accessible, usable web content. [...] What Do We Want? Discussion! When Do
We Want It? Now!
What I'd really like to see is a lot more information presented by web
community groups and industry nights that focus on accessibility issues for
the mobile web. I don't give a toss about what the latest Nokia is, or what
cool data plan 3 is offering at the moment. I want presentations,
discussions and tutorials. I want to hear real people talking about their
experiences and I want us to do it now. [...] All it takes is for us, the
community, to speak more loudly. Contact the industry groups you're involved
with and tell them you want to know more. Better still, put something
together and present it yourself. But don't forget to let me know. I want to
come along and see it!"
Source:
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/05/01/the-open-letter-initiative-...
I hope that Android will become a helpful platform for blind persons in the
future. For this, the Android platform should provide an API for assestive
tools such as screen readers. This would allow blind persons to use many
different applications and services without being addicted to the prices,
terms and trading policies of just one or two global companies. Applications
for blind people should not only be the property of a few developers or
vendors.
OCR, satellite navigation, mobile web access and location based services
are very helpful aids and many other solutions are imaginable as well. As it
seems, developers and companies from the mobile technology sector are just
interested in new business models and in making money. I am not the only
blind fan of mobile technology, there are 37 million blind and 124 million
visually impaired persons around the world, including 1.4 million blind
children, which surely would like to have affordable access to the
revolutionary new possibilities!
If any of you have submitted applications for blind or otherwise handicaped
persons to the challenge and unfortunately had no success, please let me
know. I would like to promote your efforts:
http://blind.wikia.com/wiki/Open_Letter_Initiative
Come on Google, show the world that you are not evil but accessible. You
already did a very good job by improving the accessibility of some of your
web services and now it's time to open Android for all.
Best regards, Per
P.S.: Sorry for repeating my arguments but obviously nobody is interested in
these topics as yet.
