Cost 219ter

Proceedings of

Extending Horizons

16th January 2007

Conference organised by COST 219ter

Accessibility to Next Generation Networks

DR JOHN GILL: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the BT Centre auditorium. Please make sure that you have your mobile phones and pagers switched off. There are no fire alarms planned for today. In the event of an alarm sounding, would you please leave the auditorium by the two fire exits at the front of the room?

Good morning. My name is John Gill. Today, I’m chairing this COST 219ter conference. For those of you who don’t know what COST 219ter is, Professor Patrick Roe will enlighten us later.

The aim of this conference is how to ensure that older and disabled people are included in the opportunities offered by next generation network. It is an appropriately vague term. Some people refer to it as 4G, beyond 3G – whatever. That is not what is important. The sorts of aspects we will be covering today are what services could this sort of technology provide to people with disabilities. Will these service providers be interested in providing services appropriate for older and disabled users?

What do we mean by “accessible” in this context? That is a far from easy question to answer. How do you assess accessibility when prototypes do not exist? How do we influence the development of these future services?

Between the speakers, they will be looking at different approaches to this problem. They will be talking about systematic analysis and quantification of needs. How do you prioritise research and development in this area? How do you ensure appropriate and timely standards? In this instance, procurement of the process frequently depends on having those standards available. How does one cope with the disability groups? Will there be a need for appropriate regulation and legislation? How does one formulate that, which is quite difficult when you don’t have the service available to talk about?

We are going to start this morning with a welcome from Vivienne Reading, a European Commissioner in Brussels.

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