Revo Pixis RS internet/DAB/FM radio review

Posted on November 30, 2013 by Steve

I just received a shiny new Rivo Pixis RS digital radio direct from Revo and after using it for a short while I felt it definitely deserved a review. What follows is my initial impressions after setting it up and using for a short period.

Revo Pixis RS Radio - (source Revo website)

Revo Pixis RS Radio – (source Revo website)

When my old Pure Tempus DAB clock radio joined our other broken Pure radios I needed a replacement and was very reluctant to buy another Pure due to very real quality concerns. My requirements are actually simple, but it’s seemingly very hard to find a device that matches them. My wife and I have tried several brands and models over the recent years, all falling short in one way or another.

  • Great sound – as a wannabe sound engineer / musician this matters a lot, even given DAB and Internet radio limitations. Both speech and music are required
  • Clear clock-display with sleep option – as an young older person my eyesight ain’t what it was
  • Low light levels – I want to sleep at night and some clock radios give you a sun tan at night
  • Easy use with customisable internet feeds and podcast selection
  • Reliability – after so many early failures I want something that goes on and on, yet can be updated with patches

I’ve been aware of Revo for a few years and  liked the look and specification of the Pixis on ‘web’. Having Internet radio means I can listen to remote stations like KPLU along with those essential tech podcasts like FLOSS Weekly. Meanwhile, my wife can catch up on The Archers (hmm, maybe not such a positive after all). So I though the extra cost of the RS was worth it. Trouble was it was out of stock at all the usual suspects like Amazon so I called Rivo. The really friendly, helpful and knowledgeable person I spoke to reassured me it would meet my requirements and stated the Pixis RSs had just arrived at the warehouse and would soon be going out to the retailers. I grabbed one there and then, over the phone, and it arrived next day by UPS.

The Pixis is a complete doddle to set up with a serviceable wizard,In use is equally easy to operate. I’m pleased to say it meets all my requirements with ease, though the reliability and update ability have yet to be proven (note though, the external build quality is excellent).

The sound is great with a good driver and bass reflex cabinet; I had to reduce the bass a tad as the default was a bit over the top for my taste. The clock is clear with the backlight level auto adjusted to room conditions and it can be reduced further, or even switched completely off in standby.  Even better most of my podcasts and internet stations of choice were already listed in the extensive Pixis lists.  Further the layout and navigation are both excellent. If your clock radio requirements match mine above then you need look no further the Pixis RS (and I guess the similar Pixis). It is the best design and implementation of a digital radio I have ever come across. 

That said, as usual, I have a few observations and thoughts that I’d like to pass on to Revo in the hope they are useful in improving and already great product.

Some time back I imagined what a good internet radio and associated web selection service would be like. This was before I have seen any consumer products, or perhaps before they existed. We eventually purchased a Logitech squeeze radio but this *really* sucks. The radio user experience is complex, buggy and just plain horrid, plus the service often goes down with no explanation. The Pixis however comes *really* close to my imagined ideal. OK, so having Open Source server software like Squeeze to play with is nice, but actually it’s not really needed, if ,as with the Pixis, interoperability standards like UPnP are supported for media streaming.

So what improvements would I like to see? Well very few.

  • A bigger clock. It is small. Why not use the entire screen?
  • An option to turn off the backlight when listening, or at least when sleep is active.
  • Finer volume control at lower levels – the steps are slightly too course. Perhaps a different non-linear law like the old volume ‘pots’?
  • A top level favourites mode that aggregates all the others. It’s OK to have favourites for each mode, (though both internet station and podcasts is fiddly) and find station by media makes sense. However, for favourites your don’t care which media they are on, you just want to access them.
  • Bigger sleep UI buttons. When your are half asleep and want to extend sleep it’s a bit too small.
  • Sleep to remember the previous time used – shouldn’t need to set it every time.
  • Search through podcast lists. It’s great having podcasts listed under each station but the BBC R4 lists is very long and a search would be really useful.

That’s all I have on my wish list. Even after a very brief time using the Pixis RS I’m stuck by it’s great design.. However, as accessibility and ageing are my area of interest I’ll add a couple more comments.

Older users, including those with age related visual and dexterity problems, or even those with dementia, would benefit from a slightly modified UI to have larger text and buttons and possibly a slightly simplified navigation. Spoken feedback would help too. That said, the Revo is great in this respect, the main issue is the small text in lists.

In addition, unlike radios with real buttons, touch screens are not accessible to people who are blind or have low vision. However, being software based, it should be easy to add speech synthesis and auditory touch browsing, as in Apple’s iOS VoiceOver or Android Eyes-Free facilities, both of which are built into mobile phones. This would increase Revo’s potential market considerably.

So in summary the Revo is an near-perfect radio for my use as a clock radio and my experience with Revo people has also been exceptionally pleasant. I’d love to have more contact with them.

[UPDATE: 2013/11/30] with media streaming the Pixis is listed as ‘Unknown Device’ in Windows Media Player Streaming options device list. Otherwise streaming from PC just works. I’ve been advised by Revo that this will be fixed

[UPDATE 2013/12/01] After a couple of nights use one considerable weakness has become apparent when using the Pixis as clock radio; the clock display is not shown unless the Pixis is turned ‘off’. Well, it is, but it’s very small in top left corner. To be fair the Pixis is not advertised as a clock radio, but it would be ideal as one if a solution is found. 2 potential solutions occur; a top level icon to manually display the clock or a setting to give time display priority so it automatically displayed, perhaps after a timeout. A work around is to simply turn it off to read the time: it picks up from where it was  when turned back on.

 

Posted in a11y, age, Audio, Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Apple again raise the accessibility bar with OS X switch control

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Steve

One of the least promoted features in the Mavericks release of OS X, but in my view one of the most important, is the built-in switch access. Why? Well, one of the least supported group of people are those who rely on simple switch devices operated with limited gestures in order to interact with technology. Connecting switches is now less of a problem than it was with USB now a standard. Previously, hardware mods were required thus invalidating warranty, if at all possible. Also newer switch connectivity solutions for mobile devices like Tecla have arrived. Still, lack of built-in software control this has meant a limited choice of software that directly supports switches (eg a few games) or specialist third party switch access software.

A Mac laptop with a bigh yellow switch connectedAs with VoiceOver, the built-in assistive technology that enables blind people to access OS X and iOS devices, switch access in these OSs means consumer kit is now more easily available to those who really need it. Plus, of course there is the usual so called ‘curb-cut’ benefit to us all when we may find it useful in unexpected circumstances (eg triggering behaviour with a wired remote control when other means are not possible).

Who uses switches and how?

People with severely restricted mobility often have limited ability to make fine and/or course gestures and so are unable to operate a mouse, keyboard or touch device with any degree of accuracy. This obviously excludes interaction with most tech these days. For these people, a range of mechanical switch devices and associated assistive technology software provide alternative access through very basic gestures. Such gestures include press/release a big button, suck or blow on a straw and in the case of Stephen Hawkins, twitch a cheek muscle to operate a sensitve switch. Another related technology is eye gaze which tracks a user’s eye movements in order to control a pointer or selection on a device

How does switch access work?

As with screen readers for the blind, software is needed to convert between expected user interface interactions and what the operator wants to use. Generally, switch access focusses on input control, though as users may also need visual support speech feedback is often also provided.

Close up of OSK showing row group selection

As input gestures are greatly limited the interaction ‘events; are greatly simplified, often to  ‘next item’ and ‘select item’. This leads to so called ‘scanning’ when the input focus is moved from one item to the next until one is eventually selected by the user. As you can imagine this makes operation of an user interface or entering text extremely tedious! A number of scanning ‘modes’ aim to alleviate this to some degree and also match user capabilities. Such modes include ‘auto scanning’ where the cursor moves continuously and ‘group scanning’ where groups of items are selected rather than each item in turn. However, this is an area that cries out for research and innovation!

Traditionally, the user experience has been with a simple grid of items that can be selected. Movement from one item to the next in a grid provides simple linear access suitable for limited gestures Compare this to the more random access a pointer or keyboard. Grids are either a complete replacement user interface, as in the excellent Grid 2, or an overlay that lies on top of main UI, in the same manner as On Screen Keyboards (OSKs) now familiar from touch devices.

Close up of Mac screen showing in application scanning selectionAnother approach is direct in-application access, something I experimented with a few years back with Mozilla Firefox in a project called Jambu.  A further, example can be found in Special Access to Windows, In this mode a selection marker (blue rectangle in the photo) is drawn directly around items in the interface, such as buttons or menu items. This indicates they have the input focus and can be selected. The movement is then between items, both across groups and within groups, providing a more immediate, less indirect user experience when compared to a grid.

You can lean more about switch access in ‘Switch access to technology’, a free pdf by David Colven and Simon Judge, available from the Ace Centre.

What have Apple added to OS X?

After a quick play with the new switch control options (available in system preferences -> accessibility) it’s clear that Apple have done an excellent job and cover most requirements. The support allows full control of the UI and text entry, plus switch access to log-in is possible. By the way, switch access landed in iOS 7 a while back and while I haven’t tried it it appears similar from the blogs I’ve looked at.

As you can see in the first photograph, I plugged in a single button to a USB port using a  Joy Cable converter. Out-of-the-box, the default settings worked well providing usable auto scan once I had identified my switch  (by pressing it) and assigning it an action. The space bar is treated as a switch and give an action of ‘select item’ by default. Some normal access was required to set up the options but once configure operation was perfectly possible with just a switch. Though, admittedly, I performed limited testing.

A wide range of options are available and cover differing numbers of switches and scan modes. A home panel grid overlay provides user access to a range of interaction modes. Overlays are provided for pointer control and an On Screen Keyboard. Further custom overlay designs can be built with an editor. Further more, In-application scanning is provided and works well, though I had some issues getting to it from the main panel with my single switch. Other options such as speaking items with the TTS voice enhance the experience.

So all-in-all this is another fantastic addition to accessibility from Apple. Once again, Apple have led the way on this. Windows has had basic switch support via games controllers for years, but no built in accessibility support, other than the OSK. Linux (GNOME) has had GOK and Caribu for a while but no in-application access. Let’s hope other desktop, and more importantly, portable, OSs follow Apple’s lead here.

A note for for developers

As with VoiceOver, the switch access used Apple’s Accessibility APIs to provide access and applications must be written to correctly support this and so be accessible. If you are a developer you should use best practices and either stick to built in controls, or be very clear on how to make custom controls fully accessible. The benefit is more users for you programs an apps. AT developers will find that unfortunately the Accessibility APIs are not very open so creating 3rd party AT support is as easy as it should be.

 

 

Posted in a11y, OS X | 14 Comments

What programming experience should a good programmer have?

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Steve

I was recently asked

Which languages [and tools] do you consider a competent/experienced and useful programmer would have ability to programme in these days. Especially for personal computers, tablets and/or smart phones.

That’s an interesting question and I gave it some thought, before replying. It’s not just languages that are important, though they do influence how programmers think about solving a problem. The architecture they are used in is also very  important eg event driven, single thread or threaded. Plus, as the question indicates, so are tool chain and workflow experience. Team development experience and deep and prolonged use of at least one language solving real design issues are the hallmarks of a good developer.

I think the specific problem domain is less important but some do require specific skills – eg Real time telemetries. However certain experiences are all very desirable eg UI,  various client-server splits and database. Some platforms require specific languages, eg iOS needs Objective-C but good skills are transferable so a decent developer can take a running start, especially if experience in C or Java.

Another requirement is knowledge of the platform APIs or frameworks which can be very large and take a time to become well experienced in. Again a good developer will soon learn his way around as needed. Indeed someone said

The key to being a good developer is to be able to find your answer as quickly as possible, without learning anything else.

That said, a good, solid grounding is irreplaceable.

So here’s an attempt at listing some key languages, tools and skills in demand today:

  • Without a doubt web technologies and especially the triad of HTML(5), CSS and Javascript. This covers web apps, mobile apps, and now server too (node).
  • Not a language, but an appreciation of the REST architectural style is vital.
  • Modular, object-oriented, and block structured compiled languages like Java, C++ (C at a pinch). This covers native mobile apps, Desktop OS systems programming and also server side
  • Python is also an excellent alternative to Java / C++ even though is not strictly compiled.

Closely following these core competencies are:

  • Server side languages for web app such as PHP, Ruby, Java, Javascript (node) or .NET/C# (or perhaps Python) as web apps almost always require some server-side support.
  • SQL, though noSQL use is also valuable
  • Shell scripting experience with bash or cmd can be very useful, especially for build but deep knowledge is often more a system administrators bag

Of course I think every programmer would benefit from a good understanding of Assembler 🙂

In terms of generic tool chains supporting team work

  • Version control, especially distributed like git
  • Issue/bug tracker
  • A good IDE or equivalent tools eg Eclipse, VisualStudio, browser debug tools
  • Build tools

These are closely followed by the equally important

  • Unit testing tools
  • Continuous integration tools
  • Accessibility test tools and assistive technology

Finally, and perhaps most important – any solid opensource community experience is a major plus.

So what do you think? Have I missed anything critical? I’m not interested in ‘me too’ language nominations or raw DOM verses jQuery flames. I’m after what core experience a ‘competent/experienced and useful programmer’ could be expected to have?

Posted in development, opensource, web a11y | Leave a comment

SS12 EU Student assistive technology competition a success at AAATE conference

Posted on September 21, 2013 by Steve

[Updated 23/09/2013 – added posters, code and photograph]

The second SS12 EU assistive technology (AT) competition held as part of the  AAATE 2013 conference culminated in the announcement of the winning student team as part of the closing session. As with the previous SS12 EU during ICCHP, and indeed previous events run in the United States of America, the students presented interesting and well executed assistive technology ideas. The winners hard work was rewarded with a trophy, certificates and a Nexus 7 tablet for each team member.

SS12

The five teams of 2 or 3 students each presented the AT projects they had chosen to work on during the last semester (or in one case holiday). They are in no particular order:

And the winner is …… Johannes Kepler University with their Touch Braille keyboard.

The SS12 teams and judges (Sean is behind camera)

The SS12 teams and judges (Sean is behind camera)

The award presentation was part of a week of activity designed to enable the students to learn as much as possible about Assitive Technology research, products and services. These activities include introductions to a wide range of topics from the SS12 EU team as well as access to conference all sessions. Stanley Lam described the history and aims of Project:Possibility, the originators of SS12.  Sean Goggin, chair of Project:Possibility, introduced the seminal CSUN conference, from the perspective of a member of the conference organising team.  Neel Shearer discussed working in a commercial environment.  I gave a high level introduction to open development and it’s application to AT.

Project:Possibility

Critically, the students were given registration to the AAATE conference, one of the premier conferences for those working the field.  They also placed posters describing their projects. Of course, the social activities in a selection of Vilamoura (Portugese Algarve) restaurants and bars were an important highlight for all. Naturally, the students and others involved in SS12 had T-shirts to clearly identify them as a group. Ensuring all this activity ran smoothly, Andrea Petz was kept fully occupied.

AAATE

AAATE logo

The AAATE conference forms an important part of AAATE‘s mission to advance AT quality and uptake. This activity meshes well with that of Project:Possibility, namely to introduce computer science students to the worlds of AT and accessibility. In the EU the SS12 organisers, led by Klaus Meissenburger, are also keen to embed AT modules into more university computing courses.

Finally we raise a big “thank you” to our sponsors for enabling us to run such a great event this year.

We’re looking forward to even more student teams and increased impact on AT awareness next year at ICCHP 2014. we hope you can join us. If you would like to enter a student team next year then keep an eye on the AAATE Project:Possibility page and the ICCHP SS12 page.

Posted in Assistve Technology, opensource, ss12eu | Leave a comment

Google’s new web accessibility course

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Steve

[Also posted on http://blogs.collaborativeportal.atis4all.eu/RDBlog/post/342.aspx]

Google’s Accessibility team have launched a free accessibility course targeted at devs and others who work using Chrome and users of the ChromVox screen reader. While the course is called Introduction to Web Accessibility, the specific focus is on blind/visually impaired users’ accessibility.

Here is the official announcement:

“Today we announced registration for Introduction to Web Accessibility, our online course that helps you discover simple ways to make your websites more accessible to visually impaired users, without breaking code or sacrificing a beautiful user experience.* * This course is intended for software developers, and it teaches the basics of ARIA markup and tools and techniques for accessible development. The course runs with support from Google content experts from September 17-30 (but the content will remain available after the course officially ends).

To learn more about the course, check out our GDL episode featuring
members of our accessibility team (myself included) in conversation with Vint Cerf, Google’s VP & Chief Internet Evangelist.

If you or any web developers you know would find this course useful, visit g.co/webaccessibility to register.”

The course restrictions have caused a lot of discussion in the web accessibility community, as has the limitations of ChromVox as a screen reader. However, the general feeling is this course by someone as large and influential as Google is a good starting point.

What do you think?

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

SVG and accessibility

Posted on September 6, 2013 by Steve

Blog post on the ATIS4All portal on SVG and accessibility

SVG, the W3C scalable vector image standard, has been around for a very long time. Despite it’s many strenghts it has not been used much on the web or other HTML apps until recently. This was partly due to the less than smooth integration with HTML, plus fixed resolution raster images were often good enough and easy to produce. Recently however, 2 developments have led to an increased interest in and use of SVG; ease of integration, for example <IMG> supports SVG in more browsers, and the meteoric rise in mobile devices with variable screen sizes have caused a need for cleanly rescaling images.

Accessibility of SVG is now an issue as it appears more often on the web, often providing entising visually-oriented content and animations. Seeing that SVG is a declarative markup format, just like HTML, we can apply much of the principals of HTML accessibility. However there are extra conciderations unique to SVG to consider during devleopment.

A recent bog post by Douglas Alan Schepers goes into great detail on the Current state of Authoring Accessible SVG

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

HTML apps and the 50 year software engineering legecy

Posted on August 22, 2013 by Steve

I no longer call myself a ‘software engineer‘ but I do consider it to be a vital part of my career background. To my mind, engineering provides the rigour and discipline aspects of being a developer, the other parts being the craftmanship of software and community social interactions with other members of a project/product team.

To be fair I’ve been a round a while; from my first early tentative hacks of 6800 assembler listings of a BASIC interpreter, through commercial development of mission critical mobile data systems, to open development of accessibility and HTML apps. Along the way I’ve picked up a number of  good practices as projects got larger and more complex. Some I rapidly unlearned (eg Waterfall & V models, Yourdon, Jackson), others have stood the test of time (eg modular encapsulation, OOD, unit testing) and new ones have come along (eg Open Development, Agile methods, TDD, Human centred design). These great thing is these all apply regardless of technology used.

My Big App

My Big App

So it was interesting to suddenly notice a year or so back that at conferences like the first jQueryUK conference how HTML developers are starting to wrestle with some of the problems already experienced by previous software developers. The issues are arising as we attempt to build apps in HTML technologies, layering javascript heavy designs on top of the declarative basics of HTML and CSS.  The issues are those that occur when you move to development-in-the large. For example, the need for modules, and namespaces, relying on the scaffolding of 3rd party libraries or frameworks, cross platform (browser) support and handling the social aspects of working in teams or open projects.

I guess it’s a new generation coming along and many grew up on the cut-n-paste hackiness of the early web. Now the problems have got bigger and more serious so the approach needs to change. To solve this, a number of libraries/frameworks have become the first port of call for developers trying to make life easier on complex HTML apps. Some of  these plug serious gaps in the language such as the lack of modules required for design in-the-large (I’ll deliberately not mention class based OOD here). Others provide abstraction and encapsulation of the messiness of the web, but these often work in almost purely programmatic ways, ignoring and replacing the strengths and principles of declarative HTML.

Some large monolithic libraries pull in masses of code even if not needed, this having a bad affect on load performance sensitive usages, such as mobile. For example jQuery (and jQueryMobile) undoubtedly make a developer’s life simpler in many ways, but are monolithic. Now, however the original purpose it served, namely using CSS declarative syntax for DOM element selection, is now available natively in browsers with element.querySelectorAll(). Plus native can be faster at run time and without the loading overhead. Another example is how the javascript code for forms handling, especially validation, is often not necessary due to HTML5 improvements.

John Allsopp neatly picks up on this topic in his recent post recent post ‘Is HTML Relevant in the Age of Web Apps?‘, neatly highlighting the impact of sucking in all this code complexity.

As the systems we build increasingly replace traditional enterprise, client server, desktop and mobile apps (yes it will happen), this luxury of building disposable code, with no real concern for the tower of complexity our code rests upon, will pass.

It’s time for us to grow up, and start learning from the more than 50 year legacy of software engineering.

Because, as with all history, if we don’t learn from it, we are doomed to repeat it

So how can best learn the required good techniques? “4 Things I Wish I Would Have Known When I Started My Software Development Career” by John Sonmez, the Simple Programmer outlines 4 mistakes I’ve made myself in my career (and for some still have a tendency to do).

  • There is no “right way” in software development
  • Reading a book cover-to-cover is not the best way to learn
  • Learning particular technologies in-depth is a waste of time
  • Always have a side project

 

ActuaCC2elly, one book that it probably is worth reading cover-to-cover is Steve McConnell’s labour of love ‘Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction‘. I must admit I’ve only deep-skim-read it but it’s full of perfect gems of software construction mined from the coalface and lovingly presented for your delight. I have a scruffy old copy of the 1st version but Steve has updated it and I expect it’s even better. Not at all bad for a book that only cost’s £24.48 at Amazon.co.uk 

 

Use Code Complete for a side project with an open source project that practices community driven open development, and you’ll soon be on your way to learning from that legacy.

Engineer on.

Posted in development, HTML, opensource, web | Leave a comment

ATIS4ALL – discovering and discussing Assistive Technology

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Steve

Assistive Technology (AT, see video at end of post) is a peculiar subject for most of us. Often, by using AT to make adaptations to our physical environment or the technology we already use we can dramatically improve the quality of life for ourselves or those we care for. We can thus make every day activities much easier, or perhaps, actually possible at all. For example low tech gadgets like jar openers or using a computer’s Sticky Keys feature for one handed keyboard input will bring an end to endless frustration in our activities of daily living.  As a more sophisticated example, blind folks can happily use computers and mobile devices if they have screen reader AT like NVDA and Environmental controls allow those with physical difficulties to independently manage their living spaces (again see the video)

So given the benefits why aren’t we all buying, supplying and using more ATs, especially as they are readily available, often at major retailers, as with these plugs with handles from Amazon. Well, a large part of the problem is knowing that specific ATs exist, how they can be applied to and how to find the right solutions for individual requirements.

In fact, there exists in the UK, a range of ways to find out about AT at the national and local level. For example, much needed consumer research and reporting on accessibility is carried out by Rica. Specialists such as the RNIB list and sell many products for people with a range of visual issues, ATDemetia supply info on products for people with dementia and the Macular Society run local support groups. More general suppliers like Alvolution provide a range of AT products for conditions including Dementia, Learning Difficulties and Epilepsy. Plus, local organisations such as Devon in Sight provide resource centres where you can try out the options. Then again, national centres like the ACE Centre provide a wide range of services including assessment and if you are lucky your local service provider will be really switched on about AT, like Barnsley NHS Trust.

But what about products and services from wider afield such as Europe, or even globally? And how do we ensure those working in Policy and Research activities are actively included and collaborate effectively with developers, manufacturers and service providers? At least in the UK we have FAST who do a sterling job ensuring information is disseminated, even to the extent of producing the Department of Health’s annual report on R&D in AT (pdf).

Enter ATIS4ALL, an EU project (actually a Thematic Network) that aims to dramatically improve the widespread awareness and adoption of  AT. OpenDirective are part of the diverse consortium of organisations all involved in AT in one way or another. As a group we are attacking the problem on 2 fronts:

  • ATIS4all portal – a community and meeting place for discovery and discussion.
  • ETNA 2.0– an online database of AT that combines many sources of information.

Taken together these will enable ATIS4all to play an important role in addressing the issues discussed above so we can all more easily find the AT that will help us or those we care for.

The ATS4All portal is now open for business and like any such service it NEEDS YOU. The more people we have using it and contributing the better it will be for all of us. In particular we are looking for supporters to become actively involved in small or large ways. We need users, suppliers, developers, policy people, services, basically anyone with an interest in AT. If you think this will be of use to you and you want to get involved then  we’d love you to simply register and join in or perhaps become a Supporter. You can do as little as hang out in the forums or as much as collecting and curating useful AT resources. It’s up to you.

We hope to see you soon.

[Update 19/07/2013] This SCIE Social Care TV Video introduces AT and also describes it’s use in Telecare and Telehealth (no subtitles).

[Update 23/07/2013] Somehow my shout-out for Smartbox got lost in an edit. The Hawes’ family-owned business is most defiantly worth exploring for AT, especially for AT designed for people with physical disabilities.

Posted in Assistve Technology, dementia | Leave a comment

BBC publish draft mobile accessibility guidelines to address developer ‘assumptions’

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Steve

Whilst guidelines for web accessibility have been in existence for several years and are slowly evolving, until now there has been a lack of best practices targeted specifically at the additional complications of mobile accessibility (web or native). This is especially important now mobile use is so predominant and I believe is globally in the majority due to so many people outside the affluent West having phones and not computers.

Yesterday Henny Swan finally made an exciting official tweet:

Introducing the Draft BBC Mobile Accessibility Standards and Guidelines:bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet…#Mobile#Development#Design#BBC

Henny also blogged and Gareth Ford Williams followed up with more details on LinkedIn

Just to let you all know the Draft BBC Mobile Accessibility Guidelines were published today. You can find them on the Future Media Standards and Guidelines site at:http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/futuremedia/accessibility/mobile_access.shtml

A blog post about them is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/Accessibility-Mobile-Apps

The guidelines are in accessible PDF and Word format at the moment but should be in a much more digestible and usable format soon so watch this space.
These standards have been developed over the last 18 months and have been developed and tested using the following mobile projects: BBC Olympics, BBC Sport, BBC iPlayer, BBC iPlayer Radio and BBC Weather.

We are asking for feedback to identify areas of focus for the the further development of the guidelines and any comments, would be greatly welcome.

Best Regards,

Gareth Ford Williams
Head of Accessibility, BBC Future Media

This is an excellent start and should help raise awareness of the issues amongst commissioners, designers and developers and so improve the accessibility quality of apps and mobile tech in general.

User viewing mobile screen with a magnifying glass

Image by Hajime NAKANO http://www.flickr.com/photos/jetalone/

So just what exactly are the extra accessibility issues introduced by mobile tech? Well I like to think that accessibility boils down to this simple design mantra:

Don’t make assumptions about how users will access your content or app.

Obviously any engineering or craft activity has to make some assumptions or nothing useful would ever be created. However the assumptions can and should be minimised within meaningful constraints if we want to avoid excluding users (and so reducing market).

For example, it’s a good idea to not assume that all users will be using a mouse and can easily interpret visual-only cues. These assumptions were initially thought of in the context of users with disabilities, though some folks (myself included) pointed out they effect a much wider usage. For example, many users prefer to use only a keyboard for speed of access and  a search engine “spider robot” is effectively a blind user.  In fact a few years ago there was a hot debate over if accessibility should be primarily for people with disabilities or of general utility. Fortunately, this soon blew over and accessibility efforts are now concentrated on improving accessibility for all users and use cases.

With the rapid rise in mobile technologies (and I include all portable formats in that definition) it soon became clear that “contextual disability” also occurs and needs to be specifically addressed. For example in bright light conditions the screen becomes hard  to read, if not impossible. thus, adaptations usually designed for people with low vision or blindness are potentially usefully for all users in certain common circumstances. Another example is that when driving a car verbal interactions are much more appropriate so hands and eyes can be used for safe navigation.

Another design assumption has become apparent with the very wide variation in screen size and resolution  across devices (eg Apple’s retina displays).  In the early days of the web this was not an issue as screen size was a small range and as text was the content the browser was free to reflow to any screen size/resolution. However as I found when trying to make my first ever website with graphics look good on both 19″ and 13″ monitors, it isn’t that easy to accommodate variations. In fact given the state of browsers and HTML then I gave up.

Now we have a name for handling variation in screen resolution on the web; ‘Responsive design‘. With this a few core techniques allow the user experience to be adjusted according to screen size. At this point in time however, the technology such as CSS media queries is still a little immature, certainly when compared to some native solutions I have used. However this is a hot topic with solutions like CSS Grid Layout looking very interesting. We can expect rapid improvements.

In addition to screen size variation, the almost ubiquitous use of touch technology on mobile devices provides a new challenge for designers wishing to target multiple devices. Leading the charge are web apps and widgets which offer a path to creating solutions that can run on devices ranging from small screen mobile with touch to traditional desktop with large monitor, keyboard and mouse. In this space the W3C and others are working on new specifications for handling different input modes in unified ways.

Windows 8 appears to be targeting this world of portable and desktop devices and their different interaction modes. At the moment it’s somewhat schizophrenic with both the Windows Store Apps and traditional Windows 7 style desktop sides being quite separate. However I think we can expect Microsoft to learn and develop the user experience rapidly. What is of special interest is that Windows Store apps can be created using the key W3C specified open technologies (actually, this may be the preferred technology). This allows portable solutions to be more easily developed. Add the fact that Microsoft now play an active part in web standardisation efforts, we can expect improvements in the device and accessibility support in both Windows and web solutions.

A final assumption is more an issue of device and operating system manufacturers not supporting interaction methods available on desktop and that are commonly used by people with disabilities. In particular people with physical disabilities who use simple switch devices to interact have had little access to mobile devices. On the desktop, switches are nowadays connected as USB devices (often simulating games controllers) but very few mobile devices have USB sockets. Bluetooth is a viable alternative and for example Komodo OpenLab’s Tecla switch access device uses this approach to provide switch control of Android and iOS devices. An exciting development here is that iOS 7 includes switch controlled scanning and so we can hope Android and Windows will take note and follow.

In some ways it’s reassuring that mainstream developers are hitting and addressing many of the issues that the accessibility community has be working on for some time. We can expect faster and more innovative solutions. As long as accessibility remains firmly on the agenda and the accessibility community keeps up the highly effective work to help ensure vendors keep their eye on the ball..

Along with the W3C Mobile web Initiative,  the BBC draft guidelines have an important part to play as we collectively figure out how to remove damaging assumptions and create usable and accessible solutions that are available on a wide range of platform formats. As the authors point out, these are a starting point and they welcome the discussion on how to move forward.

As a footnote, the Cloud4All EU project is exploring automatic personalisation of devices according to a users accessibility preferences profile. This will act as a way to help remove the sensitivity to designer assumptions by applying the best available adjustments. An important part of this work is context awareness.

[Update 2013-06-20] in addition to the W3C Web Events working group the IndieUI and Pointer Events working groups are also working on combined input modes.

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Welcome to the new home for this blog

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Steve

I’ve moved this blog to here, , from its previous home at  http://fullmeasure.co.uk/blog. This was done as fullmeasure is my old site and the hosting limitations were becoming a problem. A link to this URL has been left there.

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