2007 PhD Thesis Final Revised.pdf - Curtin University

developer conferences as a good way to gather information. In terms of hardware-
specific design, HP gathers most of its information through internal committees and
ongoing human factor research. HP also consults with AT developers for similar
reasons to Microsoft and looks at existing technologies which may be applied to
people with disabilities. The HP representative used the analogy of how the Personal
Digital Assistant (PDA) was initially designed for women as they did not want to
carry around a big laptop, yet the technology had appealed to both sexes. The same
‘accidental’ applications can be applied to people with disabilities, particularly
people with vision disabilities. Sun generally finds out what people need by
speaking with open-source product users and with vendors at conferences.
It is this kind of response which indicates the biggest flaw in corporate
policy. As discussed in section 3.4, with the development of travel aids and AT
products, it is extremely difficult to produce products that will benefit people with
disabilities unless there is some sort of formal consultation process. The responses
from these corporations indicate that the corporations seem to have very little or no
communication with people who are blind or vision impaired, effectively preventing
them from determining exactly what it is that people with vision disabilities need
from technology. Essentially, deciding what people need is done either internally or
with users who are already dedicated product users. This results in companies
guessing what people with vision disabilities need or running the risk of ‘preaching
to the converted’ by only talking with blind or vision people who are already
comfortable with the technology.
When asked about the difficulties in trying to communicate with people with
disabilities directly about what they need from technology, all the interviewed
corporate representatives conceded that it was a difficult process. The Microsoft
representative indicated it was simply not their role to actively communicate with
people with disabilities as this was left to the providers of AT who were experts in
the field. The Microsoft representative also added that he believed enough was being
done at an OS level to cater for people with disabilities, but agreed there was always
room for improvement. The representatives at IBM acknowledged that they were
deeply sensitive to the types of OS-based tools and AT technologies that were around
to help determine gaps, but also conceded that they rarely had the opportunity to talk
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