Accessibility Tools for the Disabled

There were several technologies that caught my attention at the FOSE and GovSec conferences in Washington, DC last week. One was Digital Forensic Evidence Tools, and two was the Accessibility for the Disabled technologies.

I got interested on the first one because of how these tools could be used in analyzing and evaluating the digital files which head whistleblower Benhur Luy in the Pork Barrel Scam case stored as evidence.

The second one always attracted me because of the legal ramifications and the social dimension that they bring.  I will focus my discussion only on this one for this column.

In the United States, legislation was passed into law – Section 508 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the 21^st Century Video and Communications Accessibility Act. It mandates that website owners and/or publishers of Federally-funded programs and services should make their websites accessible to all end users including the disabled.

One of companies that attended FOSE/GovSec and has the expertise and the patented software to make it easier for the federally funded agencies to comply with the legal mandates was AudioEye (www.audioeye.com).

I had the chance to meet and talk to AudioEye’s Senior VP for Sales and Client Services, Michael Griffith at the conference.  Based in Tucson Arizona, he referred and showed me the company’s website.

AudioEye has an audio player that is made available to all end users without the burden of any software/plugin installations. The player is cross-platform and will provide access regardless of the operating system, be it Mac, Windows, iOS, or Android.

When I talk of accessibility, I always think of considering the difficulties those individuals of varying disabilities face.  Be they in the form of blindness, partial vision loss, color perception deficiencies, deaf, hard of hearing, impaired mobility or dexterity in their hands, cognitive conditions such as dyslexia, and other impaired senses common in older individuals, AudioEye as demonstrated to me was built with these differentiating disability characteristics in mind.

AudioEye provides tools unique to each impairment.  Wrapped up into a single platform, it creates an all-encompassing accessibility solution.

AudioEye also offers captioning, transcription, and translation services.  The synchronization has been proven to be effective in both audio and video files generated by You Tube, Vimeo, and other sites.

While it is known for its text to speech technology, the AudioEye solution now includes native support on a limited basis for Voice or Speech Recognition.

A few years ago, when I introduced the eBook technology in the Philippines, I came across a research that showed varying comprehension results.  When you just read, research showed a 20% comprehension. When you just listen, comprehension is 30%.  When you read and listen at the same time, comprehension is 50%. And when you read, listen/watch, and do or enact what you are reading and listening to, comprehension is about 80%.

It looks like the accessibility tools for the disabled could benefit non-disabled beings as well!

The Federal Government operates over 2,000 top