alt.tech

While in France a couple of weeks ago i made a friend who’s completely blind since just over a year. That makes him one of about 45 million blind and 190 million visually impaired (WHO estimation) who are to a big extent unable to access public information on the Internet. While governments continue pushing public services on the net it seems to me that the visually impaired is still not getting enough attention. And even though government agencies, like the Swedish Administrative Development Agency (Verva), are taking the accessibility issues seriously, it just doesn’t seem to reach all the way to the user services. Accessibility continues to be a problem.

The city I live in, Stockholm, have been working on making their website more accessible. They even include a voice reader on the website. Problem is, you seem to need your vision to be able to start it. And the don’t seem to have understood that blind people normally wouldn’t browse the web using an ordinary browser and a mouse. They would use a voice reader to start with, wouldn’t they?

What’s really needed to make websites accessible is knowledge. It’s not about employing expensive new technology on your website, it’s about using the right standards and presenting your information correctly. Accessibility is about doing it right from the start.

Still, even when using the standards correctly we have a long way to go. Accessibility may not be expensive for the creators of websites, but the costs for all those blind who wants to access it is still to high. My friend in France had a hard time getting a paid job with his handicap, and purchasing the software he needs is not cheap. So, basically, the same software that all the seeing people get for free he has to pay for. And even then, information is harder to access, not least because it’s limited by the reading speed of the voice emulation. It’s obvious that if public information is supposed to be free, so should the software needed to access it.

And once gain, the free software movement is providing solutions. But it’s not progressing fast enough. But with 190 million visually impaired, corresponding to more than 3% of the world population, the need is very real. The conclusion should be obvious to everyone. Accessibility software should be free, and it needs public funding – now! The only result of not taking that step is leaving 3 out of 100 world citizens without proper access to public information and services.

On the twelfth of October the OLPC project starts a sale of the XO laptop. Buy one, pay for two. Yes, that’s right, you pay for two laptops and get only one. The other laptop goes to a child in a developing country, which is basically the purpose of the whole project, as I’ve written about previously.

Perfect Christmas gift for my kids!

Yeah, I know, they’re not actually “all gone”. But really, there aren’t really all that many out there these days. So, where did they go?

The reason for asking this is that I met a woman (while hitch-hiking) who was talking about the hitch-hiker culture of the 60′s and 70′s. According to her it was much more of a social movement than just about traveling. So, if it was sort of a social movement, it’s not enough to ask why the hitch-hikers disappeared, we also have to ask where this social movement went, or did that disappear aswell?

Let’s start with the easy question. Why did the hitch-hikers disappear. I would say that it’s probably mainly due to two or possibly three changes. First we have the spread of the freeways, where you’re not allowed to stop you can, nor to hitch-hike in the first place. That made longer distance hitch-hiking a real pain. Next we have the cars which became more easily accessible, possibly in combination with better public transport, which reduced the need for hitch-hiking. A third explanation could possibly be the mental barrier of fear against picking up strangers, providing that is a factor that’s changed over time. This is a rather common explanation, but I’m skeptical about it. I think most people have always been negative towards picking up strangers and this argument could just as easy be just another “things were better in the past” kind of argument. My opinion is that peoples fear of strangers isn’t really getting stronger over time; more like the other way around.

Ok, to the point already! Where did the social movement go? Well, when one technology fails a social movement, maybe they find other paths. Being pushed away by the freeways and laws they might well have found new ways on the Internet. Only this time it’s not about traveling, it’s about a place to sleep. (Well, sometimes the hitch-hiking turned out the same way I hear.) Breaking against the commersialistic approach of hotels, motels and hostels, they found something revolutionizing. Please join us at couchsurfing.com!

A search for “intelligent software” renders about 648,000 hits on Google. Compare with the following searches and their respective amount of hits:

“intelligent software” – 648,000 hits
“unintelligent software” – 72 hits
“smart software” – 496,000 hits
“stupid software” – 35,200 hits
“clever software” – 60,200 hits
“dumb software” – 9,640 hits

Ok, lets sort a bit:
“intelligent software” – 648,000 hits
“smart software” – 496,000 hits
“clever software” – 60,200 hits
—
“stupid software” – 35,200 hits
“dumb software” – 9,640 hits
“unintelligent software” – 72 hits

I think you get the point. There is a clear preference of terms like intelligent, smart or clever to describe software. Sounds reasonable, right? I think not. Intelligence to me is about thinking on your own, critically evaluating information, adding complexity. What most people in reality expects from a computer is the opposite. You expect it to do repetitive calculating tasks, handling massive amounts of data without making changes to it on it´s own.

In fact, what most people would define as intelligent is probably what annoys them most if done by a computer. If you knew exactly how your friends react to everything you say or do you would get annoyed and probably thinking they’re either boring, stupid or both. When your computer doesn’t reacts the way you expect, on the other hand, that´s what makes you the most annoyed with it.

Consequently, I would like to propose to all you software makers to enter into the domain of dimwitted software. That´s what we really want from you!