この記事は次の言語でも読めます：日本語
Hi, it’s Mizuki!
Today, many people read news online rather than newspapers.
One of the most popular portal sites is Yahoo.
According to ICT Research & Consulting Inc., Yahoo News is the most downloaded app in all mobile news apps in Japan as of January 2016.
http://ictr.co.jp/report/20160126.html (*Only Japanese)
In Silicon Valley, I had a wonderful opportunity to meet Gary Moulton, a program manager on Yahoo’s Accessibility Team.
Gary shared his interesting background.
His first job after gradate school was as a clinician.
He worked on a project that provided early intervention for children with disabilities.
The theory at the time was, the earlier you identify a child with a disability and provide intervention (e.g. speech therapy), the more easily it would be to integrate that child into the educational mainstream when that child was old enough for kindergarten.
During this same period, he taught child development and human development to undergrad and grad students.
When the first Apple computer came out, he started developing software programs that could be used to improve cognitive abilities (e.g. sight-word vocabulary).
In 1985, Gary visited Apple headquarters in Cupertino, CA.
At that time, Apple was selling computers to schools and those computers had to be accessible for students with disabilities―US education law required that students with disabilities needed to be integrated into regular classrooms.
Apple wanted someone who had experience working with people with disabilities and hired Gary for their Disability Solution Group.
After working at Apple for 10 years, Gary moved to Microsoft and worked on its accessibility team for 17 years. Yahoo, where he works now, needed someone to work on the accessibility of its Web properties and he was hired there in 2013.
Gary also talked about two laws that changed the lives of people with disabilities and impacted the high-tech industry.
First is the Federal law mandated that the US federal government can’t buy any electric office equipment that isn’t accessible.
Because the US federal government is the largest employer of people with disabilities it is a big market.
As a result, high-tech companies like Apple and Microsoft need to make their product accessible.
The other law is the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA).
This Federal law mandated that anything that provides direct one-to-one communication such as email is required to be accessible.
The above bit of accessibility history was really surprising to me.
Today many people with disabilities can use computers, smartphones, and other electric devices. Technology changed the lives of people with disabilities and helped them to be more independent.
It could be argued that access to technology for individuals with disabilities is the result of the Federal laws in the US.
Without those laws, there might be no devices that could be used by people with disabilities today.
Personally, accessibility of technology helps not only people with disabilities but people who are learning a different language or getting older.
For example, when Jeff moved to Japan, he couldn’t really enjoy watching Japanese TV programs with me.
It was hard for him to catch up with what people were talking about in Japanese.
Therefore, we started turning on the captions so that he could read the Chinese characters (Kanji).
In other words, captions helped him understand the content of Japanese TV programs.
One day, Jeff and I visited my mother, and turned on captions on my mother’s TV.
Then she said “Oh, the captions are really good. Sometimes I cannot catch up what they are talking about.”
At that moment I realized that though she doesn’t have a disability, she is getting older and cannot hear as well as she could when she was younger.
Without accessibility to technology, people who don’t have “standard” skills or abilities would have to give up many things.
I really appreciate those leading edge high-tech companies that have put a lot of effort into improving access to hardware, software and Web properties.
To be continued…