Connecting open source software and web accessibility projects with some ideas behind physical disability hacks.

1. Hack Ability:
Open Source Assistive Tech
Liz Henry linux.conf.au 2010

2. Hack Ability
My wheelchair is a
machine to get my body
from one place to
another.
I'd like for it to be easy to fix
and hack.
Like a bike or a car.

3. Hack Ability
You can find info on how to fix a
car
Or you can go to a car repair place
Anyone can start a car fixing
business
They're everywhere

4. Hack Ability
You can find out how to fix a
bike
And there's little independent
bike shops everywhere

5. Hack Ability
But you can’t find out
how to fix a
wheelchair
Or build one
NOT!

6. Hack Ability
Because rather than
just being a tool like
a bike or a car or a
computer
It's a MEDICAL
DEVICE

7. Hack Ability
YOU will likely be
“disabled”
- have a significant physical
impairment -
for around 8 years of your
life

8. Hack Ability
✤ Hands are important
✤ RSI is hard
✤ People invent stuff to help with
that
✤ It’s proprietary and expensive
✤ Or in out of print books and
abandoned blogs

9. Hack Ability
Everyone needs a voice
In the last few years, Dynavox
bought:
Eye Response Technologies
Mayer Johnson
Enkidu Research
Blink Twice
AND MORE
Assisted and Augmented
Communication is big business

10. Hack Ability
✤ Why care now?
✤ Until you need it, you don’t
care
✤ When you need it, you will be
busy, poor, and in pain
✤ Don’t count on magic
benevolence or immortality
nanobots. Design and code for
your future.

11. Hack Ability
Why isn’t there more free/open
source access hacking?
* Medical expert model
* Charity model: PWD are passive
recipients of charity
* PWD are often isolated from
community
* Solutions are individual, and
then aren't shared

12. Hack Ability
Your impaired body is under the control of
the
MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
Your wheelchair repair manual
or voice control hack
might get you sued
if someone is injured
might violate copyright or a patent
might ruin someone's PROFIT

13. Hack Ability
YOU will need assistive technology
YOU WILL WANT TO HACK IT.
You'll need DIY attitude
@ access
You'll need open source information
structures and communities
Vision, speech, gaming making some
strides
but mobility mods aren't integrated with
open source culture

14. Let’s Get
Physical
✤ I have a sometimes obvious
physical impairment
✤ People ask me questions about
“web accessibility”!
✤ Disabled = all disability in their
minds
✤ So let’s look at the
commonalities. How are
software, web access, projects
handled compared to physical
mobility gadgets/inventions?

15. Physical Hacks:
The Tennis Ball Walker
✤ Common DIY hack
✤ Simple
✤ Cheap
✤ Effective
✤ Standard parts
✤ Easily noticed + copied
✤ Still necessary!

16. Easy Hacks
✤ Individual solutions
✤ Easy viral/info spread. People
see it in public.
✤ No special skills, tools needed
✤ Crutch pockets and other
carrying and gripping gadgets

17. Easy Hacks
✤ Crutch holders on a bike
✤ Lesson for inventors
✤ Don’t assume
✤ People’s abilities vary
✤ Sometimes from day to day
✤ Or hour to hour

18. Software !=easy
✤ Computer and web access is
treated as an easy hack
✤ Bolt on the crutch holders!
✤ Add some alt tags!
✤ Stick hand controls on the gas
pedal! (Be sure to patent that!)
✤ That creates many problems. It
doesn’t make for a viable DIY
or free/open source culture.

19. Easy Hacks
✤ Information hack can be simple
✤ Labelling tape has raised letters
✤ Control languages for voice
activation (use another human
language for a meta language)
✤ Address labels on your
crutches
✤ Individual, doesn’t require
systemic change

20. Complex Hacks
✤ Infrastructure changes
✤ Need strength, special tools
✤ Architectural mods
✤ Need maintenance
✤ (This is Miguel Valenzuela’s
hydraulic $100 toilet lift)
✤ It’s a good hack: it’s not a
viable ongoing project yet
✤ Still no pathway to make it one

21. Complex Hacks
✤ Ramps. Online how-to information is
rare.
✤ Nonprofits, state/county govt.
✤ Detailed blueprints. Disassembly too.
✤ Regulations, how to hire contractors or
find volunteer group to build it
✤ LOTS of meta information. Good!
✤ But it’s all Web 1.0. Hand coded html
pages, no feedback, no path to change.
Metropolitan Center for Independent Living, Minnesota

22. Complex Hacks
Great potential.
Giant legal disclaimers.
NGOs.
Center for International Rehabilitation

23. Complex Hacks
✤ Complex open source access
hacks need community
✤ Just as any open source project
does
✤ Whether it’s hardware,
gadgetry, or software.

24. Web access
✤ “The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone
regardless of disability is an essential aspect.” - Tim Berners-Lee
✤ Accessibility is still an afterthought.
✤ Accessibility for developers is important.

25. AAC and web access
✤ Software and web devs consider access to info and UIs
✤ Speech recognition, Text to speech
✤ Eye control, Switches
✤ Web site accessibility
✤ Software navigation
✤ In practice this often means bolting a crappy handrail onto a decently
designed building. That sucks for everyone! Design with access in
mind from the beginning.

26. Contributing to FLOSS
“I hope to be able to read, browse the net, and even participate in
conversations by email and messaging. Voice synthesizers allow local
communications, and I am making use of a free service for ALS patients
which will create a synthetic model of my own natural voice, for future use.
I may even still be able to write code, and my dream is to contribute to open
source software projects even from within an immobile body. That will be a
life very much worth living.” - Hal Finney

27. Accessibility
Projects
✤ Voice banking
✤ FestVox
✤ http://festvox.org/
✤ Screen readers -
✤ Firevox
✤ NVDA
✤ Fullmeasure.co.uk

28. Accessibility
Projects
✤ eViacam (Enable Viacam) Head
Mouse
✤ control mouse with webcam
and some head or finger
control
✤ Any standard PC with
webcam!
✤ GNU/Linux or Windows
✤ Great project!

29. Captioning! ✤ YouTubeCC
✤ http://www.youtubecc.com/

30. Accessibility
Projects
✤ Eye tracking
✤ ITU Gaze Group
✤ IT University of Copenhagen
✤ GazeTalk. Multilingual eye-
typing with prediction
✤ StarGazer, COGAIN
✤ EyeTube

31. Oneswitch
✤ http://
www.oneswitch.org.uk/4/
DIY/ Barrie Ellis. DIY site!
✤ Instructions to build, hack,
integrate single switch devices
✤ Wheelchair controls, phones,
games, computers, cameras
✤ http://mattschneider.com/
general/simple-hands-free-
camera-remote-hack

32. Accessibility
Projects
✤ GNOME projects for
accessibility in Linux
✤ http://projects.gnome.org/
accessibility/
✤ Cash for tasks completed.
Good idea. Still active? KDE: KMouth, KMagnifier
✤ http://live.gnome.org/Orca Adept1 (not free)
✤ http://live.gnome.org/Orca/ Ophoenix (Ubuntu project)
HowCanIHelp - Excellent
guide to starting work!

33. “There’s something inherent in the
Bloggers, hackers, abundance of a digital world and
dawning digital culture that requires,
testers, consultants even demands, openness on many
fronts.”
✤ Extreme users are excellent
product designers and testers
✤ Experts on pushing systems to
work in unusual ways,
adapting them for new
purposes
✤ Lifekludger.net - David N. Problems:
Wallace * asking for volunteer work
* work/benefits issues
✤ Glenda Watson Hyatt: http://
www.doitmyselfblog.com/

34. Collect some
information
✤ Global Assistive Technology
wiki
✤ OATS (Open Source Assistive
Technology Software)
✤ AbilityNet
✤ Disapedia, Wikihow
✤ Instructables
✤ Wikipedia?

35. BBC Accessible
Newsreader
✤ Create a user
✤ Choose content blocks
✤ Scanning speed
✤ Audio and font size setttings
✤ The site then scans through
navigation options. Good for
one switch or gaze control.

36. Build it into FLOSS
platforms
✤ BBC scanning idea is good!
✤ Could build similar options
into popular platforms like
WordPress
✤ Or into operating systems?
Rethinking navigation and
control.

37. Tactile Maps
✤ Tactile Maps
✤ Mashup, maps for visually
impaired
✤ Lighthouse for the Blind, SF
✤ $15 for businesses
✤ Free for California residents
with visual impairment

38. Text only
geography
✤ What about a mashup of open
street map and MUD/
Interactive fiction style text
descriptions of geographic
locations?
✤ You are standing in front of the
convention center. To the north
there is a stairway and a ramp
up to the city center plaza.
There is a small mailbox here.

39. ✤ Creating systems that PWD
Antifeatures! can’t contribute to
✤ Information silos
✤ One-off solutions that aren’t
put into public domain
(student contests, charity, what
you might do for relatives)
✤ Exploiting vulnerable
populations, insurance, govt.
✤ Freaking out about liability
✤ Selling out to industry
✤ Examples from charities.

40. Arts for All
✤ Idealistic, cool, great!
✤ Golf carts, mowers, rotisserie
motors, attach to walkers and
chairs
✤ Patents + bad online store =
limited and local
implementation
✤ Could publish the plans as DIY,
and still sell this stuff to
FLOSS culture emergency!
schools and so on.

41. Free
Wheelchairs
✤ Wheelchair Mission
✤ Neat invention
✤ Plastic lawn chairs, bike wheels
in a kit, ship 500 to Uganda
✤ Unmaintainable, breakable
✤ Undermines local industry and
market
✤ Thanks though...

42. Whirlwind
Wheelchair
International
✤ Rugged $200 chairs
✤ Partnering with local industry
in Nicaragua, Guatemala
✤ Manufacturing, training for
local repair industry
✤ Focus on sharing information
✤ But not completely free/open
source design (yet) for various
reasons.

43. 3D Printers?
✤ 3D Printers as materials get
better may provide a pathway
for inventors of stuff that will
be useful for people with
disabilities
✤ Ponoko, Shapeways

44. Further Thoughts
✤ Medical model of thinking of assistive devices, liability,
greed have limited hardware and gadget development
✤ Spreading FLOSS philosophies and community/
collaboration methods would help invention.
✤ The active FLOSS assistive tech projects out there are
unusually vulnerable to loss of individual contributors,
coordinators
✤ They’re also vulnerable to the power of the medical-
industrial complex. Fight the power!
✤ Improve your software by considering extreme users.

45. Radicalize!
✤ Cross pollinate ideas
✤ physical inventions, hardware,
needs more open sourciness!
✤ open source culture needs
physical inventiveness,
adaptations driven by
necessity, of pwd
✤ Document projects, preserve
information

46. IN THE FUTURE...
Will you be a sad lonely person fumbling to epoxy tennis balls onto the feet of your totally
World War II looking hospital walker ?

47. Or will you be hacking your burning man jetpack in a vibrant community that supports
serendipity and a culture of invention!

48. A DIY approach to
HACKING ABILITY
will help everyone
We'll invent cool shit
We'll open source our way out of
nursing home prisons run by the
medical industrial complex
and
The future will be awesome!!!
Date