Session Chairman: Pierre-André Probst, Chairman ITU-T
Study Group 16
Mr.
Pierre-André Probst started his professional career
as a Research assistant at the High Frequency
Institute of the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology in Zurich (research work and tutor) in
the early seventies. He progressed through jobs up
to Executive Vice President of Swisscom, Member of
the Management Board with responsibility for the
Network Services Division (strategy, planning and
implementation of Swisscom network platforms). He
was also Head of External Relations (1999-2000),
relations with international organizations (UIT,
ETNO, ETSI, etc.) and the Swiss political and
economical bodies and now acts as an Independent
consultant in the area of ICT. He has participated
in the standardization work in ITU-T for many years,
as Rapporteur, Working Party Chairman, and Study
Group Chair. For the last 8 years, he has been the
chair of ITU-T Study Group 16, "Multimedia Systems,
Services and Terminals".
Welcome address, Malcolm Johnson, Director,
ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector
Yury Grin,Deputy Director, ITU Telecommunication Development Sector (BDT)
Dr. Yury G. Grin is Deputy to the
Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau
(BDT) of the International Telecommunication Union
(ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland. He joined ITU in 2006.
Prior to joining ITU, from 1994 to 2006, he worked
in the International Cooperation Department of the
Ministry for Information Technologies and
Communications of the Russian Federation, first as
Deputy Head and then as Director of the Department.
From 1990 to 1994, Dr. Grin was Deputy Director of
the R&D Institute of Economics and Composite
Problems of Communications.
From 1977 to 1990, he worked at the Moscow
Radiocommunications R&D Institute, first as Leading
Engineer, then as Senior Scientist and Chief of
Department.
In 1978, Dr. Grin obtained his PhD in physics and
mathematics at Lomonosov Moscow State University,
from which he had graduated in 1974.
Dr. Grin is the author of more than 80 scientific
and technical publications and holds more than 20
copyrights on inventions in the field of
communications and information technologies.
He has been awarded several high distinctions, such
as:
Master of Communications
Medal of the Soviet Peace Fund in 1977
Prize in the field of Science and Technologies
from the Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR in
1990
Silver medal from the International
Telecommunication Union in 2001
He
is a member of the International Academy of
Communications and a member of the Moscow Scientific
Society.
Dr. Grin is married and has four children.
His interests include classical music and art.
He speaks English, Ukrainian, Russian and some
French and Spanish.
Axel Leblois
Executive Director,
G3ict
Axel
Leblois is President and co-Founder of W2i, the
Wireless Internet Institute. Prior to creating W2i,
Axel Leblois spent over 20 years at the helm of
information technology companies in the United
States including as CEO of Computerworld
Communications, CEO of IDC – International Data
Corporation, President of Bull HN Worldwide
Information Systems – Formerly Honeywell Information
Systems and CEO of ExecuTrain. Axel Leblois is an
Associate Fellow of UNITAR, the United Nations
Institute for Training and Research, and founding
trustee of its North American affiliate CIFAL
Atlanta. Axel Leblois holds an MBA from INSEAD and
is a graduate of Sciences Po Paris.
Over the past five years, W2i has developed programs
with the United Nations ICT Task Force, InfoDev
(World Bank) and UNITAR in the context of the World
Summit on the Information Society. In 2006, the
Steering Committee of the Global Alliance for ICT
and Development selected W2i’s proposal to form
G3ict, the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs in
order to facilitate a multi-stakeholder dialogue on
ICT accessibility issues and develop a knowledge
base and best practices sharing platform in support
of the implementation of the new Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities in matters of
accessible and assistive ICTs.
Josée Auber ISO/IEC SWG-A
Josée Auber is director of European standards
activities for HP, one of the world’s largest IT
companies, committed to developing products,
services and information that are accessible to
everyone. Josée Auber manages HP's involvement in
standards organizations and industry consortia.
Josée also represents HP in ITU-T, Ecma
International, AFNOR and ETSI. A long time
participant in JTC 1, Josée has been the ISO/IEC JTC
1 liaison officer to ITU-T since 1999 and held the
position of task group leader in JTC 1 Special
Working Group on Accessibility. Prior to becoming
active in standardization, Josée held various R&D
functions in HP, in software and telecommunications.
Alex Li ISO/IEC SWG-A
Alex Li is the manager for public accessibility
policies and standards at SAP, the largest European
software company. His primary responsibility is to
represent SAP in addressing global accessibility
public policies and accessibility technical
standards development. He is responsible for
establishing the VPAT process within SAP. He held
the position of JTC1 Special Working Group on
Accessibility-Task Group 2 chairman and TEITAC
liaison. Alex also represents SAP as a member of the
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Steering
Council and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Working Group (WCAG WG). Alex has been with SAP for
8 years.
10:00 — 11:00
Session 1 - Human interfaces: design for accessible
ICTs
Recent evolution of accessibility features and
standards, standards supporting assistive
technologies, gaps, and opportunities.
Session Chairman: Whitney Quesenbery
President,
Usability Professionals’ Association
Whitney
Quesenbery is a user researcher and usability expert
with a passion for clear communication. She works
with companies from The Open University to the
National Cancer Institute to develop usable and
accessible web sites and applications.
She was a member of the Telecommunications and
Electronic and Information Technology Advisory
Committee (TEITAC), advising the U.S. Access Board
on update of Section 508 and 255 standards, and is
the chair for Human Factors and Privacy on the US
Election Assistance Commission’s advisory committee
on voting system standards.
Her most recent publication is a chapter on
“Storytelling and Narrative” in a new book on
personas, The Personas Lifecycle, by Pruitt and
Adlin. She’s also proud that her chapter “Dimensions
of Usability” in Content and Complexity turns up on
so many course reading lists.
Whitney has served as president of the Usability
Professionals' Association (UPA), and is a Fellow of
the Society for Technical Communication. She helped
launch World Usability Day on 3 November 2005,
bringing together people around the world to
highlight the need to “make it easy.”
Bill
Curtis-Davidson
Business Development and Solutions
Leader, IBM Worldwide Human Ability and
Accessibility Center
Bill
Curtis-Davidson is currently a Business Development
and Solution Leader in the IBM Worldwide Human
Ability & Accessibility Center, responsible for
integrating IBM accessibility services and
technologies into mainstream IBM solutions. He is
currently involved in providing specialized ICT
accessibility consulting services to clients, and
development of accessible kiosk solutions for
multiple industries.
An expert in U.S. Section 508 Standards, Bill is a
seasoned consultant who leverages over 10 years of
accessibility experience to help clients develop
innovative solutions that comply with applicable ICT
accessibility standards and which are broadly
usable. He also has over 12 years of multi-channel
design, development and usability experience
including work in web, software, e-learning,
multimedia, and video. Previously, he served as an
Information & User Interface (UI) Architect in IBM
Global Business Services, where he led UI
architecture, design and development with dozens of
clients in multiple industries.
Prior to joining IBM, Bill was a Research Scientist
and Adjunct Professor at the Georgia Tech Center for
Assistive Technology & Environmental Access, where
he taught universal design and contributed to
sponsored research projects for local, regional and
federal U.S. governments. In that role, he helped
design and develop a variety of accessible ICT
solutions for print, audio, video/television,
multimedia and web. One of these products was
featured in the 1998 "Unlimited by Design"
exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution’s
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Bill Curtis-Davidson serves on a variety of
non-profit and university committees including the
ACM Distinguished Speakers Program. He received a
B.F.A. Degree from the Savannah College of Art &
Design in 1990, and an M.S. Degree in Information
Design & Technology from Georgia Tech in 1998.
Tom Stewart
Chairman, TC 159/ SC 4
"Ergonomics of
human-system interaction"
Tom
Stewart is the Joint Managing Director of System
Concepts. He is a Chartered Psychologist, an
Associate Fellow of the British Psychological
Society and a Fellow of the Ergonomics Society. He
was a founder member of the Human Sciences and
Advanced Technology (HUSAT) Research group at
Loughborough University in 1970. In 1979, he joined
the management consultancy Butler Cox and Partners
and joined System Concepts in 1983, becoming
Managing Director in 1986. He has served as an
adviser to a number of national and international
bodies including the UK Health and Safety Executive,
the Design Council and the World Health
Organisation. He is President of the Ergonomics
Society. He is active in British, European and
International ergonomics standards and chairs: the
British Standards Applied Ergonomics Committee
(PH9); the International Standards Organisation
Committee (TC159/SC4) responsible for the ergonomics
of human-system interaction (including ISO 9241 and
ISO 13407) and the European Standards Working Group
on VDU ergonomics (CEN TC122 WG5).
Stephen Furner, Chairman, ETSI Technical
Committee Human Factors
Stephen is a Senior Technologies Manager at the BT
research laboratories, where he leads research into
human aspects of future technology in the Broadband
Applications Research Centre. He is a technical
specialist leading and carrying out research that
challenges emerging technology to meet real human
needs. Typical of Stephen’s research are projects
such as MoBIC – orientation and navigation for
people with visual disabilities; Teach Speech - the
delivery of speech and language therapy support into
the classroom by videotelephony; or Teletouch -
reaching into computationally generated worlds to
touch and feel the objects they contain.
Stephen regularly publishes academic papers and has
been on national radio and TV talking about the
research he carries out for BT. He originally joined
the company as a trainee technician in London. Here
he qualified as an engineer through part-time study
and was subsequently given special leave to study
Psychology & Sociology full time at degree level. On
graduation he moved to the BT laboratories Human
Factors Research Unit. Stephen is currently the
Chairman of the ETSI Technical Committee for Human
Factors and a member of DATSCG.
Selected publications:
Roughness perception in haptic virtual reality for
sighted and blind people, Kornbrot, D. E., Penn, P.,
Petrie, H., Furner, S., & Hardwick, A., Perception &
Psychophysics (2007 in press)
Assistive Technology for the Hearing-impaired, Deaf
and Deafblind, 2003, Marion Hersh & Michael A.
Johnson, with Conny Andersson, Douglas Campbell,
Alistair Farquharson, Stephen M. Furner, John Gill,
Alan Jackson, Jay Lucker, Keith Nolde, Erhard
Werner, and Mike Whybray, Published by Springer-Verlag
London, ISBN 1-85233-382-0
Haptic virtual environments for blind people:
exploratory experiments with two devices, Jansson,
G., Petrie, H., Colwell, C., Kornbrot, D., Fänger,
J., König, H., Billberger, K., Hardwick, A. and
Furner, S. 1999. International Journal of Virtual
Reality, 4(1), 10 - 20.
Eliminating the Handicap of Special Needs, Furner,
S. & Cooper, M. (1995) British telecommunications
Engineering, Vol. 14, April, pp12-16
Selected WWW sites:
European Telecommunications Standards Institute:
http://portal.etsi.org/hf/Summary.asp
Gregg Vanderheiden, Ph.D.
Department of Industrial and
Systems Engineering
University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Chair, INCITS/V2 and Vice-chair,
ISO/IEC, JTC 1/SC35
Gregg
C. Vanderheiden is a professor in the Industrial and
Biomedical Engineering Departments at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison and directs the Trace R&D
Center a federally funded center focused on
increasing the accessibility and usability of
information and telecommunication products. Dr.
Vanderheiden has been working in the area of access
to technology for 36 years. He was a pioneer in the
field of augmentative communication, assistive
technology, and computer access. Access features
developed by Dr. Vanderheiden and his team have been
built into the Macintosh OS since 1987, OS/2 and the
UNIX X Window system since 1993 and over half a
dozen features developed by his team are built into
every copy of Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, and
Vista. In addition cross-disability access
techniques from Dr Vanderheiden have been
implemented in systems as varied as the US Postal
Service’s Automated Postal Center, Amtrak Quik-Track
ticket kiosks, Viking Door Entry system, Phoenix
Airport Information and Paging System, and both WWII
and Korean War Memorial kiosks in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Vanderheiden is co-chair of the World Wide Web
Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines,
Chair of the ANSI/INCITS V2 Technical Group, and
editor of the ANSI/HFES 200.2 HCI Standards related
to software accessibility. Dr. Vanderheiden has
served on numerous federal advisory committees and
planning groups including Telecommunications and
Electronic and Information Technology Advisory
Committee (TEITAC), advising the U.S. Access Board
on update of Section 508 and 255 standards, the
Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Disability in
America, the Network Reliability and
Interoperability Council (NRIC), the National Task
Force on Technology and Disability, and the FCC’s
Technological Advisory Council (two terms).
Dr. Vanderheiden holds degrees in Electrical
Engineering and Biomedical Engineering and a Ph.D.
in Technology in Communication Rehabilitation and
Child Development.
11:00 — 11:15
Coffee break (Supported by G3ict)
11:15 — 12:30
Session 2 - Accessible contents and services:
addressing information deprivation
W3C initiatives, globalization of web
standardization efforts, issues in ensuring
compliance with accessibility standards (lack of
awareness, speed of technology development, lack of
training of web developers etc.); digital television
and digital radio opportunities.
Session Chairman:Eric Velleman,Director, Bartiméus
Accessibility Foundation
Martin Gould
Director of Research and Technology,
National Council on Disability
Martin
Gould, Ed.D. is NCD's director of technology and
research. He joined the NCD staff as senior research
specialist in January 2000. Prior to that, he worked
as director of outcomes research for an
international human services non-profit. He took his
doctorate in education from the Johns Hopkins
University in 1985.
Hiroshi Kawamura
President,
DAISY Consortium
Hiroshi Kawamura is the President
of the DAISY Consortium. After 5 years of his terms
of the Chair of the Section of Libraries for the
Blind/IFLA, he founded the DAISY Consortium in 1996.
Throughout the WSIS process, he has been serving as
WSIS Disability Caucus Focal Point to coordinate
Global Forum on Disability in the Information
Society in Geneva as well as in Tunis. In the
implementation process of the WSIS Plan of Actions,
he coordinated the International Conference on
Tsunami Disaster Preparedness of Persons with
Disabilities in Phuket 2007 and the Workshop on
Accessibility Guidelines and Standards for Persons
with Disabilities at IGF in Rio 2007. Recently, he
lead an international research team on disaster
preparedness of persons with disabilities and
developed extension of DAISY to support persons with
autism as well as psychiatric disabilities. He is
also active to bridge the North and South gap in
particular tackling global issues in the South such
as HIV/AIDS by knowledge sharing in DAISY format
native language reading materials.
Judy Brewer
Director, Web Accessibility Initiative,
World Wide Web Consortium (WAI/W3C) (via Web cast
from Beijing, P.R. China)
Judy Brewer directs the Web
Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C). Since September 1997 she has
coordinated five areas of work for W3C with regard
to Web accessibility: ensuring that W3C technologies
(HTML, CSS, SMIL, XML, etc.) support accessibility;
coordinating development of accessibility guidelines
for Web content, browsers and multimedia players,
authoring tools, and specifications including WAI-ARIA;
improving tools for evaluation and repair of Web
sites; conducting education and outreach on Web
accessibility; and monitoring research and
development which may impact future accessibility of
the Web. WAI guidelines developed through this work
include the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines,
adopted by an increasing number of governments
around the world, and the Authoring Tool
Accessibility Guidelines and User Agent
Accessibility Guidelines.
Judy is W3C's chief liaison on accessibility policy
and standardization internationally, promoting
awareness and implementation of Web accessibility,
and ensuring effective dialog among industry, the
disability community, accessibility researchers, and
government on the development of consensus-based
accessibility solutions. She holds a research
appointment at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). She has received
numerous awards for her work on increasing
accessibility of information and communications
technologies for people with disabilities.
Information on the Web Accessibility Initiative is
available at http://www.w3.org/WAI/.
Clive Miller
Technical Broadcasting and Engineering
Consultant, RNIB
Clive
Miller has an Engineering background in operational
Broadcasting and Computer Science. He has recently
been working for Royal National Institute of Blind
and Partially Sighted People as a consultant for
Accessibility in Digital Broadcasting and
participated in the ITU Focus Group on IPTV.
12:30 — 12:40
Signature of the “Cooperation Agreement for
development of a Toolkit on e-Accessibility &
Service Needs for Persons with Disabilities”
This Cooperation Agreement will enable ITU-D and
G3ict to collaborate in the development of an
on-line toolkit to support policy makers evolve and
mainstream policies and strategies addressing ICT
accessibility and service needs of persons with
disabilities. The toolkit, which complies to the
dispositions of the Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities, will support global
standards and serve as a global electronic
repository of policies and strategies and as a
platform for sharing experiences on best practices.
12:40 — 14:00
Lunch break and knowledge fair
14:00 — 15:00
Session 3 - Mobility: Wireless Devices and
Phones, accessibility and assistive functionalities
There are close to 3 billion mobile devices worldwide today, the largest number of ICT devices of any kind, which calls for a particular focus on their accessibility. Wireless devices also open significant opportunities for assistive solutions supporting the mandates of the Convention, which will be addressed by the panel.
Session Chairman: Jim Tobias
Co-chair TEITAC and President, Inclusive
Technologies
Jim
Tobias has thirty years experience in accessible and
usable technology in both the public and private
sectors. He began his career at Berkeley’s Center
for Independent Living, was a Member of Technical
Staff at Bell Labs and Bellcore, and their principal
liaison with the Baby Bells on accessibility, aging,
and education. He is now President of Inclusive
Technologies, a technology and marketing consulting
firm specializing in accessible information and
communication technologies. Clients have included
AOL, the California State University system, Cisco
Systems, HP, IBM, Microsoft, National Science
Foundation, Panasonic, and Verizon.
Jim has served on several FCC and Access Board
Advisory Committees, including co-Chairing the
recently-concluded TEITAC, which updated the
requirements for Sections 255 and 508. He chaired
the Alliance for Telecom Industry Solutions’s
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Accessibility
Forum.
His favorite projects have been: an innovative
telecommunications relay service with integrated
speech technologies, network-based talking PIMs, a
database-driven customized interface for voice mail
and IVR accessibility, a media-rich customized
online training system on accessibility, and “AT
Boogie”, an award-winning music video about
assistive technology.
Yoshinobu Nakamura
NTT DoCoMo
Yoshinobu Nakamura received postgraduate degree in
Electrical Engineering at Keio University, Japan in
1992.
He Joined the Mobile Communications Division of
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) in
1992, and he was transferred to Research &
Development Department, NTT Mobile Communications
Network, Inc. (now NTT DoCoMo) in July, 1992. Since
1992 to 2001 he was engaged in research and
development of mobile telecommunication network
systems.
For the last three years, he has been engaged in
planning and commercialization of conceptual mobile
handset models. Main products include mobile
handsets for elderly users, mobile handsets for
children, mobile handsets equipped with a digital TV
receiver, and so on.
Sean Hayes,
Incubation Lab Accessibility Business Unit, Microsoft
As part of the Incubation lab in the Accessibility
Business unit, Sean Hayes is responsible for
fostering innovation and tracking and developing
standards in the accessibility area.
Since joining Microsoft in 1999, Sean has worked to
drive towards truly open standards that allow
software to be developed universally and available
to all. He believes today’s solutions only scratch
the surface of what the power of technology can make
possible. He was an active member of the recent
TEITAC activity, and is a member of the W3C Web
Accessibility Initiative steering board and
participates actively in a number of W3C
accessibility groups.
Sean spent his first 5 years at Microsoft in the
Digital Media division, working on Digital
Television and HD DVD, before moving into the
Accessibility. Prior to joining Microsoft, Sean
spent 11 years at Hewlett Packard Research Labs, and
dedicated five years to the digital media department
studying advanced video techniques, including 3D
video sprites and models for flexible storytelling
using fuzzy logic. He eventually became involved in
the DVB standards body, which ultimately led to his
role at Microsoft.
Sean holds a bachelor’s of science in computer
science from the University of London.
Sean Hayes is technical manager, European standards
and strategy, for the Microsoft TV Group.
For More Information
On the World Wide Web,
visit http://www.microsoft.com/TV
Press only:
The Microsoft TV Team
Weber Shandwick
(425) 452-5400
mstv@webershandwick.com
Clayton Lewis
University of Colorado, USA
Clayton
Lewis is Professor of Computer Science, Fellow of
the Institute of Cognitive Science, and Scientist in
Residence at the Coleman Institute for Cognitive
Disabilities at the University of Colorado, Boulder,
Colorado, USA. Best known for his work on user
interface evaluation (the thinking aloud and
cognitive walkthrough methods), he has been working
since 2004 on improving the accessibility and
usefulness of information technology for people with
cognitive disabilities. He is currently supervising
a project course on cognitive assistive technology
on the Android platform, in which students are
creating a variety of applications that take
advantage of the resources of that platform to
increase the independence of users.
15:00 — 16:00
Session 4 - Product development methodologies
Ensuring that products are designed with
accessibility features at an early stage, use of
universal design methodologies.
Session Chairman: Chiara Giovannini
Program Manager, European Association Representing Consumers
in Standardization (ANEC)
Ms.
Chiarra Giovannini holds a law degree and Masters
degree in European Law. She manages activities in
the areas of Design for All and Information Society,
including Information and Communications
Technologies.
Gunnar Hellström Omnitor, Sweden
Gunnar Hellström specializes in Accessible Telecommunications and Information
Technology. He is the founder of Omnitor, a Swedish company with a
dominating proportion deaf employees, devoted to consulting, product
development and service provision in this area. Through a series of
consultancy tasks, Gunnar has provided international leadership and produced
numerous international standards for accessible telecommunication services,
including text conversation in multimedia, text telephony, wireless
multimedia and video communications for sign language and lip-reading.
Gunnar served as Rapporteur for Accessibility to Multimedia within ITU-T
Study Group 16 during 1997-2004, and has performed many projects for
development and policy creation in accessible communication. He has also
developed "Allan eC," a multi-media communication product that optimizes
personal communication, among others for deaf and deaf-blind users, making
benefit of some of the standards he has been working with.
Roman Longoria
Vice President, Computer Associates
Dr.
Roman Longoria is Vice President of User Experience
for CA. Since 1990, he has been doing Human Factors
research and design working within the software
industry, NASA, the Department of Defense, and
academics. Since 1995, he has been focusing on the
design of enterprise software. He was one of the
first members of User Experience group at Oracle in
1995, which grew into one of the most prestigious
groups in Silicon Valley. In 2003, he founded the
User Experience group at CA, which is responsible
for product design, UI standards, usability testing,
accessibility, and institutionalizing UCD.
He earned his Ph.D. from Rice University
specializing in Human Factors and
Industrial/Organizational Psychology. He is a
Certified Professional Ergonomist. He is also an
internationally recognized leader in the
human-computer interaction (HCI) community, serving
on industry committees and leading organizations. He
founded the Mobile Applications special interest
group for the local BAYCHI chapter of SIGCHI and ran
it from 2000-2003. He also serves on the National
Institute for Standards and Technology committee for
Industry Usability Reporting committee, providing
requirements and feedback.
He has over a dozen peer-reviewed authored works,
invited talks, and interviews in <interactions>
magazine. In 2004, he edited the book Designing for
the Mobile Context: A Practitioners Guide which has
been well received internationally.
Sean McCurtain,Head,
Conformity Assessment, ISO
Sean
Mac Curtain is Head of Conformity Assessment at the
International Standards Organization (ISO) and is
also Secretary of the Committee on Conformity
Assessment (CASCO). He is responsible for the policy
making aspects within ISO related to Conformity
Assessment as well as management of the technical
work program of CASCO. Prior to joining ISO he was
Executive Director at the South African National
Accreditation System (SANAS) where he was
responsible for all accreditation programmes. He was
an international peer evaluator for both IAF and
ILAC. Sean also spent the early part of his career
working in standardization and certification. He was
educated in both Ireland and South Africa. He holds
a B.Sc degree and also post graduate diploma in
electronic engineering. He has a Masters in Business
Leadership (MBL) and completed many quality related
courses. Although he was born in Ireland he spent
most of his working career in South Africa and only
recently returned to Europe to take up the position
with ISO.
16:00 — 16:15
Coffee break (Supported by G3ict)
16:15 — 17:15
Session 5 - The role of government in supporting
accessibility standards
Public procurement, regulations, and incentives in
support of accessibility standards for ICTs.
Session Chairman: Kevin Carey
HumanITy & RNIB non-executive vice-chair
Kevin
Carey is the Founder Director of humanITy, a UK
based charity which specialises in information
technologies and social inclusion. During more than
ten years of pioneering work in this field he has:
published more than 150 presentations and papers;
received a prestigious NESTA Fellowship in
accessible broadcasting; worked on content issues
for UK regulator Ofcom; and acted as Rapporteur for
the EU’s Inclusive Communications initiative. From
1997 when he joined the WAI, he has had a keen
interest in disability/accessibility issues and
regularly contributes to Managing Information and
Ability Magazine. He is Vice Chair of RNIB.
Cynthia D. Waddell
Executive
Director, International Center for Disability
Resources on the Internet (ICDRI)
Cynthia D. Waddell is the Executive Director and
Law, Policy and Technology Subject Matter Expert for
the International Center for Disability Resources on
the Internet (ICDRI), an internationally recognized
public policy center based in the United States
working for the equalization of opportunities for
people with disabilities.
She is the author of the first accessible web design
standard in the United States in 1995 that led to
recognition as a best practice by the federal
government and contributed to the eventual passage
of legislation for Electronic and Information
Technology Accessibility Standards (Section 508).
She also served as the Accessibility Expert (Built
Environment and Accessible ICT) for the UN Ad Hoc
Committee drafting the Convention on Rights of
Persons with Disabilities.
A frequent keynote speaker and writer, Cynthia
Waddell is the co-author of the books, Constructing
Accessible Web Sites and Web Accessibility: Web
Standards and Regulatory Compliance. Named to the
“Top 25 women on the Web” by Webgrrls International
in 1998, she received the first U.S. Government
Technology Magazine award in 2004 for “Leadership in
Accessibility Technology and for Pioneering Advocacy
and Education.” She holds a Juris Doctor from Santa
Clara University School of Law where she was
designated a Public Interest Disability Rights
Scholar.
Jim Tobias,
Co-chair, TEITAC and President, Inclusive Technologies
Jim Tobias has thirty years experience in accessible
and usable technology in both the public and private
sectors. He began his career at Berkeley’s Center
for Independent Living, was a Member of Technical
Staff at Bell Labs and Bellcore, and their principal
liaison with the Baby Bells on accessibility, aging,
and education. He is now President of Inclusive
Technologies, a technology and marketing consulting
firm specializing in accessible information and
communication technologies. Clients have included
AOL, the California State University system, Cisco
Systems, HP, IBM, Microsoft, National Science
Foundation, Panasonic, and Verizon.
Jim has served on several FCC and Access Board
Advisory Committees, including co-Chairing the
recently-concluded TEITAC, which updated the
requirements for Sections 255 and 508. He chaired
the Alliance for Telecom Industry Solutions’s
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Accessibility
Forum.
His favorite projects have been: an innovative
telecommunications relay service with integrated
speech technologies, network-based talking PIMs, a
database-driven customized interface for voice mail
and IVR accessibility, a media-rich customized
online training system on accessibility, and “AT
Boogie”, an award-winning music video about
assistive technology.
Inmaculada Placencia Porrero,
European
Commission Directorate General Employment, Social
Affairs, and Equal Opportunities
Inmaculada Placencia is Deputy Head
of Unit, for Integration of people with disabilities
within the Directorate General for Employment social
affairs and equal opportunities. The unit is in
charge of the coordination of the European policies
for people with disabilities and responsible for the
European Disability Action Plan. She is graduated in
Physics and Computer Science. Since 1991 she joined
the European Commission and worked in several
research programmes addressing accessibility and
applications for older people and people with
disabilities. The focus of her recent work in the
"e-Inclusion" unit of the Directorate General
Information Society and Media European Commission
addressed policy related activities in the area of
eAccessibility and eInclusion in particular work
related to Design for All and Assistive technologies
and other European and international activities
related to accessibility.
Martina Sindelar,
DG Enterprise and Industry
Martina Sindelar has a doctorate in
economics and worked several years in the German
Ministry for Economics in different positions. She
joined the European Commission in 1992 and took over
her current job in DG ENTR in 2003. Ms Sindelar is
responsible for ICT standardisation related issues,
mainly concerning e-accessibility and eInclusion.
17:15 — 18:00
Conclusions, recommendations and suggested follow-up
Session Chairman: His Excellency Luis Gallegos
Ambassador of Ecuador to the United States; Past
Chair of the UN General Assembly Ad-hoc Preparatory
Committee for the Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities, and Chair, G3ict
Ambassador Luis Gallegos received his Law Degree and
JD from the Central University of Ecuador and a MA
from the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy-Harvard University.
He joined the foreign service as a career diplomat
in 1966 where he has served as Undersecretary for
Political Affairs and Acting Minister of Foreign
Affairs in several occasions. He is currently the
Ambassador of Ecuador to the United States, member
of the UN Committee against Torture and other Cruel
and Inhuman Treatments, Chairman of the Global UN
Partnership for Inclusive Information and
Communication Technologies and President of the
International Rehabilitation Foundation. He was
previously appointed as Ambassador to the UN-New
York, Australia, UN-Geneva and El Salvador.
Among his accomplishments in multilateral
organizations are to have been Vice-president of the
Commission of Human Rights, Vice-president of the
Assembly of the member States of WIPO; Vice
president of the 57th Session of the UN General
Assembly; Facilitator for the "Revitalization of the
work of the General Assembly"; Facilitator for the
"Strengthening of the United Nations";
Vice-president of the Executive Board of UNICEF;
Vice-president of the Open-Ended Working Group on
Security Council Reform; President of the Political
Committee of the Non Aligned Movement; Chairman of
the Ad-Hoc Committee on a Comprehensive and Integral
International Convention to Promote and Protect the
Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities.
Feedback from Industry, Standards Development Organizations (SDO) and Government leaders on follow-up steps
Industry: Frances West IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center
Frances is Director of the IBM
Human Ability & Accessibility Center. She is charged
with the worldwide responsibility of establishing
IBM market leadership by promoting IBM advanced
research technology, products, services and
solutions in the area of human ability and
accessibility. She is on the Board of Directors of
the American Association of People with Disabilities
(AAPD) and of the Assistive Technology Industry
Association. She also was invited to testified, on
behalf of the IT industry, at a US Senate hearing on
the impact of accessibility open standards on the
European Union. In 2006, she spoke at the UN
e-Accessibility Conference in New York City, an UN
International Day of Disabled Persons event.
SDO: Andrea Saks Convener, Joint Coordination Activity on Accessibility and Human Factors (JCA-AHF), ITU
Her father, Andrew Saks, together
with James C. Marsters and Robert Weitbrecht were
pioneers of deaf telecommunications using surplus
teletypewriters and modems - the pre-cursors of
textphones and today's real-time text messaging. She
grew in a family of two deaf parents and assisted
them from an early age as their interface with the
hearing world: getting doctors’ appointments,
arranging guests’ visits, etc. She took that role to
the next level when she relocated from the US to the
UK in 1972 to promote the use of textphones
internationally. She was able to successfully lobby
the British Government Post-Office (the
then-regulator of telecommunications) to allow the
first transatlantic textphone conversation (1975)
and to grant a license for connection of text
telephones on the regular telephone network. Her
first involvement with ITU standardization activity
started in 1991 and has ever increased in scope.
Self-funded, she currently attends many ITU-T study
group and focus group meetings promoting the
inclusion of accessibility functionality in systems
being standardized by ITU, such as multimedia
conferencing, cable, IPTV and NGN. After the recent
creation of ITU-D Q20/1 on accessibility matters by
WTDC-06, she also started attending that group and
now performs as a bridge between the two sectors on
the issue. She has been a key person in the creation
of all accessibility events in ITU, and currently is
the convener of the recently formed joint
coordination activity on accessibility and human
factors, as well as the coordinator of the Internet
Governance Forum’s Dynamic Coalition on
Accessibility and Disability.
Government: Urbano Stenta, Advisor on Disability, Directorate General for Development Cooperation, Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Pierre-André Probst,
Axel Leblois
Josée Auber
Alex Li
Whitney Quesenbery
Bill
Curtis-Davidson
Tom Stewart
Stephen Furner
Gregg Vanderheiden, Ph.D.
Martin Gould
Hiroshi Kawamura
Director, Web Accessibility Initiative,
World Wide Web Consortium (WAI/W3C) (via Web cast
from Beijing, P.R. China)
Clive Miller
Jim Tobias
Yoshinobu Nakamura
Sean Hayes,
Clayton Lewis
Chiara Giovannini
Gunnar Hellström
Roman Longoria
Kevin Carey
Cynthia D. Waddell
Inmaculada Placencia Porrero,
Martina Sindelar,
His Excellency Luis Gallegos
Industry:
SDO: