2004 World Bank International Disability Conference

Washington, DC, November 30, 2004

"Enabling Access through Information Technology Round Table"

Discussion Points

By:

Steve Jacobs

President

IDEAL Group, Inc.

steve.jacobs@ideal-group.org

The discussion points presented in this paper are being introduced in support of achieving the following objective:

"To structure World Bank Group (WBG), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and International Finance Corporation (IFC) information and communications technology (ICT) loans in manners that strongly encourage and reward the development and implementation of ICT to meet the wants, needs and preferences of as many individual consumers as reasonable, technically possible and economically feasible."

Discussion Point 1: Accommodating People with Disabilities [top]

The same techniques used to make ICT accessible to people 65+ years of age can make that same ICT more accessible to people with disabilities.

Supporting Data for Discussion Point 1 [top]

The estimated number of people with disabilities in the United States and worldwide varies greatly from source to source. The National Council on Disability estimates that there are approximately 500 million people with disabilities worldwide¹⁶.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2000 report there are 49.7 million people with disabilities living in the United States [Table 4].

Discussion Point 2: Accommodating People Living in High Density Populations  [top]

The same accessible design techniques used to make Human Computer Interfaces easier to use by people with learning disabilities can be used to reduce the time it take to complete transactions on public access terminals, thereby reducing wait times in countries with high density populations. 

Supporting Data for Discussion Point 2 [top]

The top eleven largest developing countries have population densities from two to 15 times more than that of the United States. There are more than 3 billion people living in these countries [Table 5].

Discussion Point 3: Accommodating People of Low Literacy [top]

The same speech recognition technologies used to accommodate people with mobility disabilities can accommodate the needs of people of low literacy.

Supporting Data for Discussion Point 3 [top]

The average 2000 primary school enrollments across 17 of the top 20 largest developing countries with data listed was 92.5% [Table 6]. However, this number decreases significantly to 69.5% [Table 7] when one looks at across the 12 of the top 20 largest developing countries with data listed in World Bank’s Development Indicator Database.

Discussion Point 4: Accommodating People who Never Learned to Read [top]

The same text-to-speech technologies used to accommodate people who are blind and people with low-vision can accommodate people who never learned to read. 

Supporting Data for Discussion Point 4 [top]

In the top 20 largest developing countries there are 740 million people who never learned to read [Table 8].

Discussion Point 5: Accommodating the Enhancement of Distance Learning [top]

The same captions used to enable people who are deaf to enjoy video programming, and people who are hard-of-hearing can be used to quickly search for and retrieve video content, by frame, for distant learning.

Supporting Data for Discussion Point 5 [top]

• PBS News Hour:
  http://ideal-group.org/demonstrations/v_PBS_News_Hour.htm

• Scientific American Frontiers:
  http://ideal-group.org/demonstrations/v_Scientific_American.htm

• Washington Week:
  http://ideal-group.org/demonstrations/v_Washington_Week_Video_Search.htm

Discussion Point 6: Enhancing the Translation of Content into Other Languages and Accommodating the Needs Users of English as a Second Language (ESL) [top]

The same “Plain Language” writing techniques used to accommodate children who are deaf, people with cognitive reading disabilities and users of English as a Second Language (ESL) can reduce the cost to translate content into multiple languages by as much as 30%.

Supporting Data for Discussion Point 6 [top]

• David Crystal of the University of Wales, the author of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, says about one-and-a-half-billion of the world's six-billion people speak English as a second language compared to the 400-million native speakers².

• In just 5 of the top 20 largest developing countries there are 142 languages spoken by 500,000+ people [Table 9].

• Fifteen of the top 20 largest emerging markets have cell phone to standard telephone ratios greater than the United States. Eight of these countries have more than twice the number of cell phones per standard telephones as that of the United States [Table 10].

            Plain Language Resources:

• U.S. Government Plain Language Website
  http://www.plainlanguage.gov/

• Plain Language Writing: From a Good Idea Emerges Good Public Policy
  http://www.writersblock.ca/spring2003/busword.htm

• Writing Styleguide and Dictionary of Plain English
  http://www.techcommunicators.com/pdfs/style-diction.pdf

Discussion Point 7: Accommodating the need to Translate HTML Content in Wireless Device Formats [top]

The same techniques used to make, e-commerce sites, and e-learning content accessible to people with disabilities can enable the automatic transcoding of these applications into formats that are accessible by wireless devices operating from within low-bandwidth environments.

Supporting Data for Discussion Point 7 [top]

• Nineteen of the top 20 largest emerging markets have less bandwidth availability per 100 people than the United States. In fact, a majority of the 3.6 billion consumers living in these countries have access to less than 1% of the bandwidth available in the United States [Table 11].

• Try transcoding your standard Website into a wireless format using the following transcoder: http://ideal-group.org/wireless/

Discussion Point 8: Accommodating the Needs People 65+ years of age [top]

The same techniques used to make ICT accessible to people with disabilities can make that same ICT more accessible to people 65+ years of age.

Supporting Data for Discussion Point 8 [top]

There are 237 million people, 65+ years of age living in the top 20 emerging markets [Table 12].

Income and population data
for the World Bank countries cited in the discussion points 1-8, above, can be found in [Table 1], [Table 2] and [Table 3] below: