Background

The capabilities to handle different information media and control actions varies within wide boundaries among users of telecommunications and multimedia services. The variation may have a cause in age-related functional limitations, in disabilities because of other reasons, and in other natural causes. With the ageing populations in large parts of the world, many telecom users will have sensory and motor limitations. It is important to meet this wide variety in capabilities in the design of telecommunication services so that an increasing number of users can make benefit of them.

Multimedia systems and services have great opportunities to provide valuable and accessible information in a way that the individual user can control, if care is taken in accessible design of these services.

The accessibility activities in SG 16 and its predecessor have created Recommendation V.18 for text telephony, T.140 as the general Presentation Protocol for Text Conversation, T.134 for text conversation in the T.120 environment, H.323 Annex G for text conversation in H.323. Complemented by a number of additions to other Recommendations, the Total Conversation concept is founded for conversation in Video, Text and Voice as an accessible superset of video telephony, text telephony and voice telephony.

It is the task of the Accessibility question to cooperate in standardization activities leading to optimized accessibility to services and systems in the Multimedia field.

With the priority on mobile services in the general telecom development, this priority is also valid in the Accessibility area.

Items for study

1) Mechanisms for alternative and user selectable media, and its production, storage, transport, consumption and logical linking.

2) Media transformation mechanisms, and their inclusion in Multimedia Services.

3) Support for the perception limits of each medium for maximum usability, according to human factors.

4) Interface Recommendations for control of devices, systems and services in different modes.

5) Sections in relevant Recommendations on accessibility issues, declaring how accessibility is achieved, with priority for mobile services.

6) Utilization of wireless technologies for Accessibility.

7) Mechanisms for interworking with monomedia services in an accessible way (e.g. text telephony and voice telephony).

8) Expansion of Total Conversation into new areas required by the market.

Specific tasks and deadlines

• Enhancement of Total Conversation sections in Recommendation H.248 (2001).
• Document accessibility requirements on interfaces between communication devices and user interface devices (2001).
• Analysis of enhancement requirements on Total Conversation, and a plan for its completion (2001).
• Contribution to further accessibility sections in H.323 (beyond Annex G Text Conversation) (2001).

Relationships

• Other Multimedia Questions and projects for integration of accessibility features in the architectures, service descriptions and protocols.
• IETF in general, and specifically the megaco and avt groups.
• ITU-D SG 1 for information.