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Keyboards to the Rescue

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Keyboards to the Rescue 01 Front cover A78:Layout 1 23/6/10 20:40 Page 1 Assistive technology at work Issue 78 Summer 2010 Keyboards to the rescue I Home Access survives Becta cuts I Employers gain from grant upgrade I Fix the Web gets underway I How students rise to IT challenges BLANK PAGE copy:Layout 1 25/6/10 22:03 Page 8 03 Contents A78:Layout 1 23/6/10 18:34 Page 3 contents Editorial 4 Web accessibility 17-18 Victorian invention Fix the Web John Lamb looks at why the QWERTY Why Dr Gail Bradbrook of Citizens ISSN 1352-7665 keyboard has been so long-lived Online wants to persuade thousands of volunteers to improve accessibility Contacts Feedback 5 Product focus 21-22 Editor and publisher • How accessible is public transport? John Lamb • Assistive technology for students Keyboards to the rescue [email protected] • UCanDoIT is looking for home learners Love them or hate them keyboards are here • Problems for vision impaired academics to stay, but there are ways of making them Production Editor Mandie Beckley easier to use [email protected] News 7-13 Contributors • Becta to go but will not be forgotten Dr Gail Bradbrook • Access to Work makes grants easier to get Debbie Brixey • Technology groups feel the financial Kevin Carey pinch EA Draffen Janet Duchesne • BS 8878 raises the standard for Jane Fletcher accessibility Guido Gybels • Talking set top boxes out this summer Briefing 27 Paul Jarman • LookTel aids vision impaired users Val Shawcross • Collaboration the key to assisted living Clean audio Technology could make TV better for Published by people with hearing impairments, says John Lamb Media Ltd Workspace 14-15 Pellingbrook House Guido Gybels Lewes Road Monkey business Scaynes Hill Janet Duchesne (below) describes how she The profession 28 Haywards Heath coped when she injured her shoulder West Sussex RH17 7NG working with orang-utans in Borneo Streamlined grants Tel: 01444 831226 Improvements to the system for handling DSA applications Printed by Micropress 27 Norwich Road Resources 29-33 Halesworth Suffolk IP19 8BX • Ergo4u provides forearm support • Code Factory launches free update for Geo 2.0 • Pocket alarm from Tunstall Healthcare • Online course to make travel more accessible • Researchers home in on RAatE Ability is grateful for the support of the following sponsors: conference • TextHelp boosts Mac accessibility • What’s on and list of useful contacts Lights, camera, action! Carey On 34 Jane Fletcher reports on a training initiative from Leonard Cheshire Disability A modest proposal to help more disabled people find work in Kevin Carey has three suggestions for the media plans to save money www.abilitymagazine.org.uk Ability Issue 78 | Summer 2010 3 04 Editorial A78:Layout 1 23/6/10 18:35 Page 4 editorial A Victorian invention that still rules the digital age or all its emphasis on new things, technology often clings to some pretty old ideas. The standard QWERTY keyboard is one of them. It is astonishing that Fa device developed nearly 140 years ago, which is impossible for people without the right level of dexterity or visual acuity to use, should still be the standard way of entering data and commands into a computer. Designed in 1873 to prevent the keys on a mechanical typewriter from clashing, the QWERTY keyboard is the great survivor. The inventor of the typewriter, Christopher Shole, redesigned his original alphabetical keyboard so that the most used keys were furthest from one another, to prevent them from jamming. There have been efforts to improve on Shole’s design. In the 1930s, August John Lamb looks at why Dvorak came up with an alternative layout that uses less finger motion and hence the QWERTY keyboard puts less stress on a typist’s hands. Dvorak claimed his keyboard resulted in has been so long-lived increased typing rates and reduced typing errors. However, although Dvorak’s key layout is today incorporated into most computer operating systems, it never really caught on. The US government, in a damning 1950s report, concluded the cost of retraining typists and buying new keyboards outweighed potential efficiency gains. Early on the QWERTY keyboard also began to come under fire for ergonomic reasons. Researchers claimed that the layout meant that the weaker ring and little fingers were overworked. In 1926, EA Klockenberg described how the keyboard layout required the typist to assume body postures that were “unnatural, uncomfortable and fatiguing”. He suggested that the keyboard be divided into two halves (one half for each hand) and that the halves should slope sideways to reduce the muscle tension in the shoulders and arms. It wasn’t until the veteran UK entrepreneur Stephen Hobday teamed up with typing expert Lillian Malt that the keyboard got a serious revamp. Hobday’s standard three dimensional Maltron keyboard, produced in the 1970s, has a cup shape for the hands, an outward slant and a key layout that brings a typist’s thumbs into play. Alternative forms of keyboard followed thick and fast: one handed keyboards, chord keyboards that involve pressing several keys at once, keyboards controlled by head pointers and touch screen keyboards. Software developers began adapting their operating systems to allow users to get round the hurdle of having to press several keys at once, while onscreen keyboards allowed users to select characters using a switch or an eye gaze system. Many people hoped that voice recognition would do away with the need for keyboards altogether, but that has not happened yet. It would be nice to get out of the Victorian era and into a world in which users are free to control a machine simply by speaking, but we are going to have to stick with QWERTY for a good while yet. I 4 Ability Issue 78 | Summer 2010 www.abilitymagazine.org.uk 05 Feedback A78:Layout 1 23/6/10 18:38 Page 5 feedback How accessible is public UCanDoIT started in 1998 in the they exist only in image format. transport? belief that the internet can change the lives Witness the Google books project as Does reduced mobility make using public of disabled people, bringing them a greater the archetypal example of this. But where is transport difficult for you? Do you ever level of independence and combating social the pressure upon organisations that struggle to board Tubes, buses or trains or exclusion. Since then we have taught generate this material to do something are you forced to make complicated almost 3,500 people with over 80 different about this coming from? journeys to get to a ‘step-free’ station? disabilities from all backgrounds and all age The answer is that no-one is doing it, If so, the London Assembly Transport groups. and why not? Because everyone knows that Committee would like to hear from you. We now have over 70 tutors in the UK, nothing can now be done. It’s already all We are examining the experience of a large percentage of them in Greater too late, so we concentrate instead on the people with reduced mobility on the London where we originally started but same old same old. capital’s transport network. also in the Home Counties, Wales, Once you’ve put your project beyond This includes people in wheelchairs, Birmingham and Devon. Many of our the use of a certain group of individuals, older people, and people with buggies and tutors are themselves disabled and some are that’s it. There is no going back, nor any young children. former learners who have chosen to pass on alternative on offer. Our investigation will look at how their skills. Visually-impaired academics are now accessible the network is at the moment – We have a dedicated Scottish charity many, many times worse off than they were from journey planning through using each primarily funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s 10 years ago, and the major digitisation form of transport and the interchanges Supporting 21st Century Life. We have projects of the future – such as the British between them – and what improvements nine tutors, many with a background in Library’s project to digitise all British are needed. teaching assistive technology, as well as newspapers – are slowly ensuring that the To help our investigation, please share funding for learners needing reconditioned final nails are being hammered into the your experiences of this issue with us, by computers and any software needed. coffin. email: [email protected]; phone We have also won funding from the And where are the voices concerning 020 7983 4206; or write to London Westminster Foundation to extend our inequality of access being raised? Does Assembly Transport Committee, PP10, home training services to disabled people in anyone hear them, because I can’t. The FREEPOST LON15799, City Hall, The Liverpool, Manchester and surrounding truth is that, like so much in disability Queen’s Walk, London, SE1 2BR. areas. culture, in the end we are only interested in We welcome views from people until If you or anyone you know would like changing what we know we can change, the end of September. For more details to apply to learn with UCanDoIT please and as for the rest, heads are just buried in about our investigation visit: www.london. contact [email protected] or call sand. gov.uk/assembly/transport-access 020 7730 7766. Details can also be found Many may object to what I’ve written, We look forward to hearing from you. on our website at www.ucandoit.org.uk but, in the end, I ask a simple question: Val Shawcross Debbie Brixey when the British Library project is finished, Chair Public Relations why can’t I have the same access to the London Assembly Transport Committee UCanDoIT newspapers as my fellow historians? It’s as simple as that.
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