In general, consumers and businesses alike are unfamiliar with assistive technology (AT) or with accessible mainstream technology (AMT) resulting from the practice of universal design (UD). Awareness of UD and AT principles has a significant impact on the availability, affordability and use of UD, AT and AMT products, services and systems. There are, in fact, both consumer and business-related awareness issues. Many businesses need more information and a better understanding of assistive products and cost-effective ways to make their products more accessible. Consumers need to know more about their options with respect to accessible products, AT devices, services, funding and resources. Consumers and those who provide care, rehabilitation and ongoing technical assistance to people with disabilities would benefit from an awareness campaign that communicates the existence and benefits of AT and AMT and provides mechanisms for consumers to find accessibility features in products. Industry could benefit from a UD awareness campaign that communicates the market opportunities within the industry and showcases industrial best practices in UD. The goal of this multi-faceted campaign would be to build a true, sizable marketplace where the rules of economies of scale begin to operate.

AT Campaign Targeted at the Public and Consumers

PROBLEM: There is generally a lack of awareness of AT and AMT, resulting from UD. Many people who can benefit from AT, could greatly enhance their independence if they had a better understanding of their options with respect to technology and disability.

The lack of consumer awareness takes many forms:

• Unaware of Limitations. Many people, particularly the elderly, gradually lose their abilities and may not realize that they have lost significant ability. These individuals are simply unaware of their functional limitation and do not seek help.
   
• Unaware of Solutions. Others are unaware that technologies are available that can improve their capabilities. They do not think to look or ask for a solution because they do not realize that such solutions exist.
   
• Lack of Product Information. People may lack information about where to find AMT and AT, and lack the information and ability to evaluate alternative products and devices. Compounding the problem is a lack of well-qualified service providers with expertise in evaluating, selecting and fitting AT and providing places for people to “try-out” technology.
   
• Lack of Financial Assistance Information. People may not be aware of or have easy access to possible financial help in getting products or services.
   
• Denial. Some people refuse to admit they have a functional limitation and thus refuse to use AT. In fact, 75–90 percent of the people who are losing their vision or hearing do not consider themselves part of the disability community.⁴⁰

A-1. RECOMMENDATION:

Create a general awareness campaign. There is a need for public and private efforts to develop and implement a large-scale awareness campaign intended to communicate the existence and benefits of AMT and AT to the public and consumers. Following are a few campaign ideas to assist in strengthening the awareness:

• This effort should be done in consultation with AT companies, their trade associations, media organizations, disability consumer groups and state AT programs dedicated to public interest;
   
• The campaign should inform consumers about availability and features;
   
• The campaign should work to increase the value of diversity, counter any stigma associated with AT and AMT and aim at the broadest possible audience; and,
   
• The campaign should encourage the development of technology that can enable people with disabilities to be more independent.

Potential mechanisms for distributing information and conducting the campaign include mainstream businesses, media and special events:

• A high-tech, hands-on demonstration-based mobile road show would familiarize the public with “cutting-edge” AT equipment;
   
• High-impact presence at industry trade shows;
   
• Articles in popular magazines, like READER’S DIGEST, discussing “simple” or “easier” ways to do things;
   
• Media approaches that reach the schools, e.g., WEEKLY READERS, CHANNEL ONE, etc.;
   
• Media spots that feature aging movie stars using AT and AMT devices;
   
• TV spots, including support for disability-oriented cable shows and Internet video;
   
• Displays and accessible kiosks in high traffic locations such as malls, banks, grocery stores and information technology retail outlets;
   
• A poster campaign;
   
• Engage libraries;
   
• Sponsor benefit programs;
   
• Tap into targeted senior citizen benefit providers such as AARP.

Mechanisms to Empower Consumers with Information

PROBLEM: Consumers encountering disability for the first time, or those who may have a pre-existing disability and are initially trying a new technology, often do not know what types of features to look for in products. To make matters worse, even if they do know something about accessibility features, consumers may have to consult many resources to investigate product features.

There is not a single location for information on AT and AMT. In addition, often people do not know how to obtain needed services from the current systems. When things go wrong, the current system lacks widely publicized information regarding product support.

For example, some consumers may have tried existing solutions, but they may be difficult, unreliable, cumbersome, or the equipment does not work as intended. This might be partially due to the fact that some of the specialization needed in selecting and customizing equipment is not available or completely ignored. In those cases, consumers need to know where to turn for help.

Ongoing and expanded activities to provide information about AT devices, services, funding and resources are needed and are sought by individuals of all ages in the community, workplace, school and home.

A-2. RECOMMENDATION:

Develop mechanisms to empower consumers with information. Tools or resources for consumers to find products that have the accessibility features they need should use clear, agreed-upon terminology, contain information about compatibility with AT and be available to people with different levels of technological capability. These mechanisms should provide:

• A framework for shared terminology from an industry and consumer standpoint;
   
• A format or platform to help people get accurate information; and
   
• Product support and advocacy.

The outcome of this effort should be a reliable, self-reinforcing system for industry to share its information, emphasizing marketing and compatibility, rather than regulations. Such a method would assists companies in marketing to customers who are either sensitized to usability and accessibility, or who themselves have disabilities.

This system should meet the levels of need of potential consumers and should address the following topics: What to look for? Where to find it? And, what to do if you can’t find it? This conceptual arrangement might resemble a “consumer guide” in nature.

What To Look For

The system should provide a framework for shared terminology. Ways that this might be achieved include the following:

• Define common accessibility features. Interested stakeholders need to identify accessibility and to develop common terminology that they agree to use. The focus should be on pinpointing useful benefits and sharing common ground so that comparisons can be made between products and manufacturers.
   
• Make a template available to industry that uses a standard format and makes use of the terms. Industry should choose to use this to maintain the quality of information that it publishes regarding individual product models.

This critical piece could empower consumers so that they will create the demand for product features. This approach puts the onus for the individual product model information on the manufacturer, thereby, allowing participation at whatever level it decides. Such an approach may offer greater staying power than others such as maintaining a central database that catalogs individual products and their features. The number of products with their quickly outmoded features make central databases of AT difficult to keep current. A database of regular products and all their features seems impractical. This proposed information system would probably only attract those products with good descriptions, which would be very useful in itself.

Where To Find Resources

The newly created mechanisms should provide a platform to help people get accurate information. These mechanisms might address the following issues:

• Awareness of existing systems and a consumer-oriented explanation of how the existing systems are supposed to work.
   
• An easy-to-navigate interface linking the consumer to several types of resources and systems; it would serve as a “portal” to multiple resources.

These mechanisms need to have a long-term funding model, include all stakeholders and empower both people and business.

What To Do When You Need Help

In terms of advocacy, consumers need to know the manufacturers’ obligations, where they are stated and to whom they can go for assistance when needed. Presently, individuals with disabilities and their family members lack information on state lemon laws that cover malfunctioning or misprescribed AT and other laws or services related to their acquisition of technology. Additionally, all states have a Protection and Advocacy agency that retains a federal grant under the AT Act to address AT-related legal barriers. Likewise, disability advocates often do not understand the warranty obligations of various AT products because the majority of AT advocates are not AT service providers who understand technical product issues. Consequently, disability advocates may not make the best recommendations about manufacturers’ obligations or know whom to refer people with disabilities regarding AT issues.

UD Campaign Targeted at Industry

The Task Force believes that increasing consumer awareness and creating empowered and better-informed consumers will likely lead to an improved business market. To respond to and capitalize on this market need, companies should put efforts into improving product design and projecting the accessibility of their products.

Companies may have never encountered the need to re-assess their products and services from the perspective of accessibility. Designing accessibility requires a fundamental shift away from the notion of a product as a collection of powerful functions and towards a view that emphasizes the user’s experiences. Once the focus is on the user, accessibility as an improvement to usability becomes an obvious goal. Although user-centered design has made considerable progress, it by no means dominates current product design. Designing a product from the feature “out” is much easier than designing a product from the user “in.” So many of today’s products are rich in features, but poor in usability.

To make their products more accessible, businesses need more information and a better understanding of cost effectiveness. Promoting product awareness, supporting corporate decision-makers and rewarding innovative industry practices can accomplish changes in the business world.

Product Awareness

PROBLEM: In many cases, products, services and systems could be designed and manufactured for use by people with a broader range of abilities, but due to awareness issues they are not. First, there is a general lack of awareness on the part of industry about business benefits, the size of the market and consumer demand. Secondly, there is a lack of knowledge about how to incorporate accessibility. Engineers and designers are often unaware that commercially practical techniques are available to make their products, services and systems usable by people with a broader range of abilities or functional limitations. Therefore, UD is not routinely considered during product design and development — at a time when it is least costly and most effective to incorporate such features. Typically UD is considered as an afterthought, if at all.

A-3. RECOMMENDATION:

Create a universal design (UD) campaign targeted at industry to increase awareness, aid corporate decision-makers, promote the mainstream business benefits of UD [Example: http://easi.cc/workshops/bbaitsyl.htm] and reward industry innovation.

Awareness of Features in Product Design

PROBLEM: Manufacturers of mainstream products need to learn about UD principles to reduce the need for specialized AT products. Engineers, marketers and others cannot be expected to design and sell products for accessibility and widespread usability unless they are trained in the principles of UD.

A-3.1. SUBRECOMMENDATION

Develop resources to help industry professionals build mainstream business cases for accessible design in a global marketplace.

A-3.2. SUBRECOMMENDATION:

Develop resources with input from potential customers in support of helping manufacturers successfully plan and design products and promote features that will better serve all customers.

• These materials should reference UD features and analyze product feature combinations that are obvious advantages in some products such as on-screen keyboard equivalents in a software package.
   
• These materials should help companies be better able to explain accessibility features in their product material.
   
• Industry should include people with disabilities, who use AT, on consumer panels and product design teams. In this manner the expertise and experiences of the disability community can be united with the resources of industry and mainstream commerce, thus empowering consumers with functional limitations to ensure that manufacturers hear their voices.

Awareness of Business Practices for Corporate Decision-Makers

PROBLEM: UD practice is typically not a corporate priority. This may be due to the fact that corporate decision-makers — CEOs, business managers, marketing professionals, engineers and product designers — need to be better informed about the value and techniques of UD.

CEOs

In today’s highly competitive global marketplace, companies must allocate R&D dollars first to those projects deemed to offer the greatest benefit to the company’s bottom line. Merely showing a feature that would be useful to people with functional limitations, or that a feature will make “some profit” may not be sufficient to move that feature onto a company’s R&D product feature priority list. To make the investment, CEOs must be convinced that the investment in accessible features will generate a greater financial return than could be achieved by investing in other competing projects.

These “return on investment” calculations, while they may seem harsh to people outside the business community, are a necessary and appropriate response to global competition. Still, given the hundreds of millions of people with disabilities in the global marketplace, UD and AT products and services may become among the most competitive on the market. Decisionmakers today need to consult appropriate information to properly assess the value of including access and extended usability features in products for a growing international market or miss an important opportunity (See “The Economics of the Vision,”)

Business Managers

While design and manufacturing techniques exist for making some products, services and systems usable by a wider range of functional limitations, it maybe too expensive currently to incorporate certain accessible features into mass marketed products. For example, speech technologies have gradually become integrated into mainstream computers, although there are still some features that elude feasibility in mainstream production such as a Braille display on every device. Many corporate decisionmakers, including business managers, may be unaware of the changing possibilities of UD, unconvinced that accessible features or capabilities are practical, profitable or a worthy subject for commercial research and development, or that they can positively impact all of their users.

Marketing Professionals

There is a pervasive belief that there is neither a disability market nor a UD market. On the contrary, these markets do indeed exist. Yet, there is a lack of understanding of the requirements for marketing and selling to people with disabilities, or to the growing portion of the masses who have disabilities and/or functional limitations. It takes an effort to sell in this unique market, requiring targeted marketing and selling strategies that are often unfamiliar to marketing decisionmakers. Within this realm, there is also an inability to measure outcomes. For example, how can you tell if more people with disabilities would buy your software at Best Buy if you add on-screen keyboard access? This lack of reporting further complicates the issue, making it difficult for marketing professionals to know how to proceed.

Engineers and Product Designers

In some cases, engineers and designers incorporate accessibility features into the products, services and systems they design, though are often not the people within the company who make the final decisions as to which features will be included.

A-3.3. SUBRECOMMENDATION:

Develop resources with input from potential customers in support of helping aid companies to adopt business practices that will improve their ability to serve people with disabilities.

• These materials should be highly customized for different industries and different job responsibilities, e.g., executives, designers, engineers, sales agents, marketing specialists, etc. They should include up-to-date information so companies know about promising practices;
   
• Companies, trade associations and people with disabilities should be involved in developing these materials.

These materials should include specific steps describing how to improve business practices around accessibility or UD. For example:

• How to design a product manual that is more accessible (and usable to everyone);
   
• How to train your customer service representatives to communicate with people with disabilities;
   
• How to design your Web site for accessibility;
   
• How to effectively highlight accessibility features without stigmatizing your products; and,
   
• How to get accessibility know-how into your product design processes.

These materials should be disseminated through multiple channels or “points of entry” for multiple internal audiences. For example, they could be distributed through professional associations, peer networks and consultants. In fact, consultants on accessibility could adopt a generic product and then adapt it for multiple audiences to further accelerate the distribution of materials.

Awareness of Industry Innovations

PROBLEM: At present, business, industry and government lack incentives for UD and AT-related innovation. There are few mechanisms that inspire promising innovators to pursue breakthrough research and development in the area of UD and AT.

A-4. RECOMMENDATION:

Additional fiscal incentives should be created to reward industrial innovation. This could be done through either preferential buying, similar to Section 508, and or tax incentives (see Affordability of AT).

A-4.1. SUBRECOMMENDATION:

Encourage the development and extension of national award programs to highlight industry and individual innovations in accessibility. An example would be to expand the President’s National Medal of Technology Award to include a specific award or category for AT innovation. This initiative would bring awareness to the important work and opportunities for AT innovation, as well as to inspire future innovation and secure funding from private companies.

Awareness by Private Foundations

PROBLEM: Private foundations do not generally incorporate UD or AT as a mandatory component in their technology-related grant goals and applications. Private foundations could have a significant impact on the availability and awareness of UD and AT if they considered UD and AT in their grant-making process and considered accessibility in all forms of their foundation and grant communications. Foundations could also impact the availability of UD and AT by championing the issues raised in this report and making funds available to implement the recommendations of this report.

A-5. RECOMMENDATION:

Encourage private foundations to incorporate the inclusion of UD and AT in all technical grants and focus on AT in their grant-making process.