As the trend toward online employment applications, online distance education, online health care information and online money management increases, the need for access to the Internet by people with disabilities becomes more critical. The nearly thirty percent of Americans without access to the Internet is grossly understated, when added to that percentage are those with Internet connections who are denied access, because the websites in question are not accessible to them.  Affordability and accessibility stand in the way of economic inclusion as the world moves its business from physical locations to virtual ones. This issue of Equity will focus on technology and how we can work together to ensure these barriers to access to broadband services are addressed.

Anita Shafer Aaron, Executive Director, World Institute on Disability

We Love Broadband, Don’t We?
By Jenifer Simpson

Everyone I am in contact with pretty much knows that I work on broadband for people with disabilities. The other day, however, someone said, “So, Jenifer, you’re always going on about broadband. So what is it, and why is it so important for us?”  An excellent question, I thought, and here is what I said in reply:

Broadband is a means to connect to the Internet that is not dial-up. I used to have dial-up at home to reach my AOL email, but more and more, people were sending me pictures, or I wanted to look at and use websites and things that, well, needed more “bandwidth” or space and that downloaded faster, and that is what broadband is for, speaking generally.

Zeros Make a Difference

However, as I found out recently when I switched to DSL broadband Internet, broadband speeds vary significantly depending on the particular type and level of service you are paying for. These speeds may range from as low as 200 kilobits per second (kbps) or 200,000 bits per second to six megabits per second (Mbps) or 6,000,000 bits per second. There is even 50 to 100 Mbps, I have heard.

All these zeros cause my brain to close up, so I will stop with the speed discussion right now, but if you want to check your Internet speed connection, there is a website for that. There is probably “an app” for that too, but I don not know it. Here is the website to take the Speed Test:  http://www.speedmatters.org/pages/test-your-speed

What you do need to know is that most broadband Internet access services for residential consumers typically provide faster downstream speeds (from the Internet to your computer) than upstream speeds (from your computer to the Internet), so it is worth knowing what your speed is, if you are thinking of switching or upgrading your service.

In A Digital Age

Having a broadband connection to the Internet allows you to access information via the Internet using any one of several high-speed transmission technologies that the Internet Services Provider (ISP) may use. Transmission – sending & receiving – is digital, meaning that text, images and sound are all transmitted as “bits” of data. The transmission technologies that make broadband possible move these bits much more quickly than traditional telephone or wireless connections, including traditional dial-up Internet access connections. Once you have a broadband connection to your home or business, devices such as computers can be attached to this broadband connection by existing electrical or telephone wiring, coaxial cable, or wireless devices, so phone companies and cable TV and satellite companies can be ISPs.

You will often find me sitting on my couch at home, watching Real Housewives and, with laptop computer on my lap, also tweeting away my opinion of the TV show, or reading other people’s tweets, so you can make an argument that broadband makes you more productive.

The Disability Digital Divide

The bad news about our disability community is that we are among several communities of people who lag behind in adopting broadband. Along with people in rural areas, low-income people, minorities, seniors, Tribal communities, Americans with disabilities have a much lower rate of adoption of the use of broadband than the general population. According to an FCC study, 93 million people, or one third of the country, are not connected to high speed Internet at home. This study found that 39 percent of all Americans without broadband have some type of disability.

The generally understood reasons for this lag, or digital divide, is that affordability – ability to purchase a computer, ability to subscribe to an Internet provider—are key reasons. “Lack of digital skills” is also cited as a reason by the FCC for the lag by these groups. Others say that the reasons include “lack of interest,” seeing “no need” or finding broadband content to be irrelevant, inaccessible or unusable.

Clearly, more research is needed to uncover the reasons why people with disabilities are not adopting broadband as fast as others and to develop policies or approaches to changing our disability digital divide. I tend to believe that employment is a key driver to adopting broadband, with employed people having to use their broadband Internet at work and finding they want similar fast access at home. The March 2010 employment participation rate is 22.5% for people with disabilities compared to people without disabilities at 70.2%, so if employment is a factor, it is no wonder that we have a digital divide. Therwfore, as our community gains employment, we could see that 39% number shrink. However, it is just as likely that several approaches to increasing broadband adoption would help, ranging from ensuring that more website content is accessible, useful or relevant, in addition to affordability concerns, such as better deals when purchasing computers and subscribing to the Internet.

We Use Broadband If It’s Personally Relevant

For many of us in the disability community, broadband allows us to take advantage of new services not available or not convenient to use with a dial-up Internet connection. One such service is Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), an alternative to traditional voice telephone service that may cost less. Some VoIP services only allow you to call other people using the same service, but others allow you to call anyone who has a telephone number – including local, long distance, mobile, and international numbers.

Likewise, for Sign Language users who need, and people with speech disabilities who may prefer, a video image when speaking on the phone, video phones are the best choice. This is where broadband provides better access for our community that it had before. Likewise, for users of Video Relay Service, the high speed connection and bandwidth needed can only be provided by a broadband Internet connection.

Broadband makes “telemedicine” possible: people with disabilities in rural areas, for instance, can confer online with medical specialists in more urban areas and share information and test results very quickly. Likewise, telerehabilitation is an area likely to grow, as more and more rehabilitation applications are developed and deployed. For instance, activities such as Remote Wheelchair Prescription, Remote Environmental Assessment for Accessibility, and Remote Job Coaching may all become more technologically feasible with broadband.

It is also likely that Electronic Health Records Management will grow as the health care infrastructure incorporates more and more Information Technology. In fact, by 2012, everyone is supposed to have an electronic Personal Health Record (PHR), if certain financial incentives to health care providers are implemented. Our challenge will be to make sure the interfaces of any devices that use your PHR are accessible and usable, for example, for people with vision disabilities. 

Broadband helps you efficiently access and use many reference and cultural resources, including library and museum data bases and collections. Genealogy research is one such useful activity that broadband has recently permitted me. I have been amazed at how I have been able to trace my family history back two hundred years simply because some birth, marriage & death databases in the old country had been uploaded online.

Digital Futures

I also learned recently that there are over 6,500 college courses offered online, and this trend will surely accelerate. And we all know that applying for a job and staying on top of your benefits at work usually involve an Internet connection. I recently got over my personal block to using a credit card online and now regularly shop for groceries, book hotels and plane flights on line and even buy and trade some stock, an activity I never did before, because stock brokers intimidated me. This way I am the only one who knows how much I lost on that last transaction! All of these would be difficult to do if I did not have broadband access to the Internet at home.

I have friends who watch TV and movies online, and you can be sure these applications needs big bandwidth and this whole area will expand dramatically. Once again, though, unless this video content is also made accessible and usable – captioning and video description and easy to use navigation -- it deters some of us from adopting broadband technology.

The potential for faster availability of emergency information is also made possible by faster Internet connection. While I am receiving text alerts on my cell phone from my local city Emergency Information office, I am also looking at those animated weather maps on some website that show how the storm, or cloud of ash, is moving away – hopefully – from me. What broadband could do for people with disabilities in the area of emergency information has not been really articulated in my mind, but I am sure someone will think this one through.

There is also no doubt that household appliances and equipment in “smart houses” and “smarter cars” on “smart roads” are in our future, and these will be using broadband connections. I also keep hearing about a “smart electric grid” which will allow you to know how much electricity you are using each time you charge your wheelchair battery or electric toothbrush.

We are also realizing that there will be more and more wireless access to Internet content and using “apps” that find, organize and send the information we need, when we need it. These technologies are taking off and will certainly contribute to our independence, but it does mean that whatever content we reach needs to be designed with disability accessibility in mind and designed to be available to a huge range of users coming to the content from all sorts of different devices (PDAs, laptops, cell phones, gaming equipment, etc.). There is also little doubt that wireless connection to the Internet allows us to do just about any activity from anywhere at any time, if we want that. 

Conclusion

In short, there are more and more areas of life where I am – and everyone is – relying on broadband access to do what we used to do somehow else or that we did not do at all before, and these trends are going to continue with new functionalities and features that we can hardly imagine right now. What these are and how they will benefit us, only the future will show.

Unfortunately, there is no requirement yet to ensure such devices or the “content” and “websites” are accessible, but it surely makes sense for a business – or museum or college or health care provider or public safety office or other content provider – to be reached by the widest range of uers and customers. So I will say, we love broadband Internet access, because it is always on and faster than the traditional dial-up access, BUT we will continue to lag behind unless accessibility, usability and affordability for us are considered at the outset, and that is something we can all work on!

Why We Need H.R. 3101, “The 21st Century Communications & Video Accessibility Act”

Many federal laws have been enacted to require greater access to telecommunications. There is only one problem - the federal laws that we worked so hard to enact over the past 20 years have not kept pace with many new technologies. A quick look around our world tells how fast technology is impacting us, with new products and services entering the market place daily and hundreds of them involving the Internet. Do you think these are designed and developed, so consumers with disabilities can use them out-of-the-box?

If you answered YES, you can stop reading now, otherwise, please continue. H.R. 3101 is a comprehensive disabilities communications legislative bill. If enacted, it will amend the nation’s Communications Act, the statute that rules the communications industry. This bill would ensure that new Internet-enabled telephone and television products and services are accessible to and usable by people with disabilities.  It will also close other existing disability gaps in telecommunications law.

H.R. 3101 does not fix all the concerns we may have about accessibility of technology, but it stakes out some definitive measures that will make sure people with disabilities will be a part of the new broadband nation into which we are all heading. It is, in essence, a way to modernize current communications law in light of disability accessibility.  H.R. 3101 is divided into two sections, Communications Access and Video Programming Access. Here is a summary of what it will do:

Communications Access

• Requires access to phone-type equipment and services used over the Internet (Current law: Section 255 requires telecommunications products and services to be accessible but does not extend to the Internet)
• Adds improved accountability and enforcement measures, including a clearinghouse and reporting obligations by providers and manufacturers
• Requires telephone products used with the Internet to be hearing aid compatible (HAC) (Current law: HAC required on all wireline and many wireless phones)
• Allows use of Lifeline and Link-up universal service funds (USF) for broadband connection and service (Current law: Discounts only available for products and services on public wireline telephone network)
• Allocates up to $10 million/year for equipment used by people who are deaf-blind (Currently: Inadequate state programs that distribute some free or discounted telephone equipment, but little is available for people who are deaf-blind)
• Clarifies the scope of relay services to include calls between and among people with disabilities and requires Internet-based service providers to contribute to the Interstate Relay Fund
• Requires FCC to develop a real-time text digital standard to replace TTY communications.

Video Programming Access

• Requires caption decoder circuitry or display capability in all video programming devices, including PDAs, computers, iPods, cell phones, DVD players, TiVo devices and battery-operated TVs (Current law: Caption decoder circuitry only required on TVs with screens at least 13 inches)
• Extends closed captioning obligations to video programming provided by, or generally considered comparable to programming provided by, a television broadcast station, even when distributed over the Internet: covers video programming that was previously captioned for television viewing, live video programming, and new video programming provided by or generally considered to be comparable to programming provided by multichannel programming distributors; does not cover user-generated content (e.g., YouTube videos posted by individuals) (Current law: Captioning required on most broadcast, cable and satellite TV shows)
• Requires easy access to closed captions via remote control and on-screen menus
• Requires easy access by blind people to television controls and on-screen menus
• Restores video description rules and requires access to televised emergency programming for people who are blind or have low vision

These are very specific requirements for change and were developed based on the combined “asks” from advocacy leaders in the deaf, blindness and vision loss, hearing loss, deaf-blind, intellectual disability and speech disabled communities. This was based on a review of the current requirements for disability accessibility in the Communications Act, and they would be prospective, not retroactive. The baseline understanding is that people with sensory disabilities are the most likely, within the 50-plus million people with disabilities in the U.S., to experience technical barriers to accessing available communications technologies. With such a modernization of requirements, it is likely millions of others with other disabilities will also benefit, because designing for disability usually benefits other users.

Currently, the measure is in the U.S. House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet and has 46 co-sponsors, 44 Democrats and two Republicans. Advocates expect a companion bill in the U.S. Senate soon. We need this measure enacted this year by this Congress before it is too late.

To find out what you can do to help, please contact the disability coalition working to enact H.R. 3101, the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology (COAT) via email info@coataccess.org, sign the petition on the website at http://www.coataccess.org/node/add/petition. Learn more at www.coataccess.org.

We simply cannot let people with disabilities get left behind again!