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Cost 219ter

Discussion : How to get to the future ?

Moderator: Jan-Ingvar Lindström, Everycom, Sweden

Notes taken by Tony Shipley, Phoneability, UK

The Session Moderator, Dr Jan-Ingvar Lindström, identified three strands for discussion on practical methods of achieving what is expected.

COST219 has achieved much in 15 years but what targets remain unrealised?
What is in the pipeline, as proposed events for the next 2-3 years?
How can COST219 approach new member countries across Europe?

Tony Shipley (TS): We must listen more to consumers, avoiding assumptions about their needs and prescription as to the ways of meeting them.

Gregg Vanderheiden (GV): Look at money flows. Don't rely upon company altruism to bring products to market. Develop business cases, either for mainstream supply or to encourage State provision. Example: server-based services can be most useful but who is to pay for them? In the USA, a tax on telephone usage pays for the text relay as a result of lobbying by a consumer coalition, taking the ADA as their starting point. There is no similar mechanism applicable to the InterNet.

Knud Søndergaard (KS): Special services are expensive. In the Nordic countries legislation has been necessary for the initiation of this type of service. We do expect industry to innovate and the innovations do need to be accessible to the disabled community. As we do not know what is in prospect, we cannot contribute to the process.

Jan-Ingvar Lindström (J-I L): Is it easy to implement a new technology in Denmark?

KS: It depends on the cost, and we have to negotiate for services. This workshop has shown some new initiatives but we don't know when or if they will come about. Speech to text translation is still a key matter.

Erkki Kemppainen (EK): We see successful R&D projects that are not translated into services, so what is missing? What are the motivating interests? A balanced approach is necessary, in which social and technological developments go forward together.

Klaus Fellbaum (KF): Machine speech recognition is still some way off. Would short cuts be acceptable in the meantime, using keywords for semantic content? COST219 could pilot studies of this.

Steve Tyler (ST): More research is needed on buyer behaviour. The disability community is complex as well as financially poor, so it is important to know what spurs people to decide on a purchase; there are market survey reports showing that even loan defaulters keep up the payments on their car and TV. When we produce business cases, we must be sure to make the links to mainstream practice; facilities such as OCR or dropped kerbs are not exclusively for disabled people. We need to make projects interesting to suppliers on account of potential commercial spin-off. Also, the level of education and awareness about technology is not adequate among disabled people. The technology needed over the next 5 years is already there, but it does need to be packaged properly.

KS: In answer to Klaus, the use of short cuts in speech recognition seems a good idea but I am nervous of the concept. Real-time short-form captioning of TV News has been tried and is not very successful. After all, many misunderstandings can arise even face-to-face.

J-I L then moved the discussion on to the third strand - Information Exchange across Europe

John Gill (JG): Information Exchange through Web sites is effective for the converted, but for others it is important to have material in the local language. This is beyond the scope of COST219 but others are free to pick it up.

Jonathan Brezin (JB): Is industry to be counted amongst the converted? IBM probably is, but industry in general cannot afford the luxury of academic study of these topics. In the USA, much has been achieved by setting out specific requirements in legislation.

GV: We have found that the Web also reaches the unconverted, because they search through Google, etc. However, documents remain valuable as valid and lasting sources.

Patrick Roe (PR): This reinforces the value of booklets. COST219 will make an attempt to expand its coverage to other countries.

End of Session, with summing-up by Dr John Gill.