Disaster Area

Accessible Technology - On the Road to CSUN with Gary and Dan

Some friends of mine, Gary and Dan, who work at Microsoft in their accessibility organization are videoblogging and tweeting their way from Seattle to San Diego this past week on their road trip to the 27th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference aka CSUN (for Cal State Uni Northridge, where the conference originated).

One of the things I have come to appreciate as I have been exposed to it over the years is accessible technology. What is accessible technology? Basically anything that allows people with disabilities or functional limitations to participate fully in society - limited by only their own desires rather than as lack of access to all that life has to offer.

The earliest accessible technologies were things like braille and guide dogs for the blind. These are still of immense importance in the world of accessibility, but the meteoric rise in the capability of personal computers and the internet has created both a fantastic opportunity to connect people and a great challenge to make it accessible to everyone.

How accessibility technology advances in the connected world is a complex interweaving of hardware companies, software companies, advocacy organizations, charitable foundations, government policy making and the sheer determination of individuals coming up with solutions to problems they deal with every day.

Dan and Gary have an itinerary that has them dropping in on many companies and agancies on their way down the west coast. Fortunately, the west coast is ripe with opportunities to find out more about accessible technologies.

From a senior center to Boundless Technology and ViewPlus Technologies to rural communities and guide dogs for the blind, the video snippets do a great job of highlighting the need for assistive technologies and how those needs are being met.

My favorite though is when Dan and Gary visit Yahoo! which highlights how technology companies can collaborate to provide the best possible experience for the end user. Alan Brightman, Yahoo's Chief of Accessibility is a great interview. Biggest takeway -building in accessiblity from the start costs about 2% of the cost of a project. Adding it later the cost is 100% - i.e. you have to spend all that money all over again. The same general principle holds for all kinds of desing - airplanes included. It's best just to get the requirements right at the beginning...

Public Service Announcement: Let's Use "Lose" Less Loosely

Lose, a verb: To lose one's mind, one's wallet, a game

Loose, an adjective: not tight, lacking moral restraint

I don't know why this is so hard, but it could be because the long "o" sound makes people think that "lose" needs two o's.

The verb sounds with a z, the adjective with an s.

That is all.

Two Hundred Years of Progress

This has been around for a while, but I thought I'd lob it out there with a few comments.

This is Hans Rosling's 4 minute look at longevity and affluence through the last 200 years. It's a slick way to show how data changes over time. I've seen people quibble over his definitions of wealth and longevity, but he does paint an extraordinary picture in a mere 4 minutes. You can see the impact of the Industrial Revolution, both World Wars, the progress made in the West and the catching up of most of the rest of the world. What's interesting to me are the countries that go against the general trend.

For instance, if you look carefully at around 1939 and you can see a mid-size European country drop to almost zero life expectancy and then bounce back up by the end of the war. I'm guessing that was Poland that got flattened. Then watch China in the late 1950's bounce like a basketball.

Post WW2, Africa (blue dots) was unsurprisingly lagging behind as most colonies just started to become independent about then, but got swept along for a couple of decades with rising world trends, and then it stopped. The rest of the world kept improving, leaving the majority of Africa languishing.

Rosling's point about regions in China having different health and wealth could, of course, apply to any country. New York and West Virginia in the US are quite different, as are Surrey and Tyne & Wear in the UK.

But overall, a fascinating way to look at history. The point is not so much what questions Rosling answers, as much as the ones it provokes us to ask ourselves and dig deeper.

Math and Prezi

Interesting non-linear way to look at math(s)... via prezi

Math is not linear on Prezi

International Women's Day - Hurrah!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, what with the work trip to the UK a couple of weeks ago and then last week being occupied mostly by a not so fun medical procedure (nothing serious, and maybe more later - oh wait, no, sorry, I promised a friend I wouldn't - never mind).

The important event this past weekend was International Women’s Day on Saturday March 8. I’m not a big fan of special days or weeks or months for things (The International Day for Three-Legged Blind Dachshunds being a case in point), but this one is important.

In my opinion, the two most important Millennium Development Goals are Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women and Improve Maternal Health. The evidence from around the world shows that educating women has the largest positive effect on societal development. The effect is particularly evident in reproductive health, where sex education, and in particular birth control, always results in women having fewer babies, thereby stabilizing entire communities. Getting off the constant pregnancy/birth treadmill does wonders for not just the health of the women but the communities they live in, too. It's no big secret that the most godforsaken places on earth feature the highest birth rates and highest infant and maternal mortality rates.

Marking International Women’s Day, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour had this (among other things) to say:

“Many States appear to have simply ignored the commitments they have made. It is shameful that, in the 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, fundamental rights are still not enjoyed by many women around the world.”

The leveling of the playing field needs to continue everywhere. Even in the enlightened West there is still a long way to go before women get a decent hold on what might be called equality. It’s a crying shame that one of the last bastions of male privilege remains "the church". Replace “States” with “Churches” in the previous quoted paragraph and you still wouldn’t be far wrong.

Kathy Escobar, a contributor to the Emerging Women blog, has a really great post about women finding their voice in the Emergent “conversation”. It’s apparently still a bit like trying to order two pints of lager and a packet of crisps in a crowded British pub where the barman doesn’t know you, but still, you have to start somewhere. In particular, she highlights these thoughts, and expands on them very well:

• The only way this (restoration and reconciliation in the church) can begin to happen is if power (aka: leadership, voice, value) begins to shift.
• Those without power need to begin to step into it.
• Power is not finite. If someone gives up power, it doesn’t mean that there’s now less power in the room. It actually means that there’s more power in the room.
• Don’t underestimate how much tending and nurturing this shift is going to take.

Number three strikes me as particularly important, because to too many people in power, power sharing is seen as a zero sum game, when in fact it isn’t. Acknowledging other smart people doesn’t make you less smart. It may make you feel less superior, but shouldn’t that be a good thing?

Well, it may be a day or two late, here’s to women the world round. You deserve more than a lousy single day anyway.

Movies and Gender Roles

I just got back from staffing a diocesan youth weekend here in Seattle (appearances by both bishops - yay!). The theme was "Now Playing", basically a movie-themed weekend. I thought a fun game would be "guess the movie" based on a synopsis, a good review and a bad review - with any obvious details removed, of course. Well known movies only, of course.

I got my info from Amazon, as the bad reviews especially are easy to pick out with just a mouse click. One really interesting one star review was this one - see if you can guess the movie:

There's no way to put a good spin on this bad plot. The little meek heroine gives up her voice to get the man. Not too subtle, is it? The interesting woman in the movie is the smart, intelligent, proactive and powerful woman. Why can't they offer women role models who are powerful, smart and good? Powerful women are scary so they must be evil and seek to harm and diminish and denigrate other women. So much for sisterhood. It's very disappointing that in the 21st Century, we're still peddling this extremely negative message to little girls. And what must the heroine give up in order to have her man? Let's see...her voice, her talent, her home, her dreams, but alas, it's all worth it. Or so we're led to believe. Yuck. I am profoundly disappointed that these type of movies are still popular amongst parents and children alike.

At first I was taken aback, but quite quickly I was taken with how accurate the review was. Any guesses as to which movie it is? Answer after the jump...

Square One, and Maybe Two

Wow, Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users (the best free book anyone could ever want) once again nails the basics of well, the basics.

Somewhere in there is an argument in favor of core competencies (a much maligned business fad of the nineties...) which, I think, still has great relevancy to life, the universe and everything - including the church (which should really be addressing life, the universe and everything anyway.)

So what is "square one" and "the basics" for the church?

(And no, the basics do NOT include "making people feel so guilty about all the bad things they've ever done so they'll break down and give their lives to Jesus RIGHT NOW". But thanks for playing anyway.)

Making Learning Engaging

This is rapidly becoming my favorite blog. In particular, these posts, Most Classroom Learning Sucks, Dealing with a legacy school system and now Interaction vs. one-way communication combine to point out just how the way most subjects are taught, whether in school, the workplace, and even church just fails to deliver the goods. Not only that, when someone tries a different method, people get bemused to the point of bafflement.

There have been some interesting posts recently in defense of the traditional lecture, particularly by Maggi and Hugo. It's OK, nobody is saying that the lecture method never works, just that it only works for some of the people some of the time. and it doesn't work for some people almost any time. I think you'll find that people who are "good lecturers" are actually applying and using many other learning principles as well as lecture. And good lecturers are actually few and far between. The norm is much closer to Ben Stine in Ferris Bueller.

A critical pitfall of lecturing is that it can easily become a performance, where it's all about the performer, completely missing the point that it's supposed to be for the benefit of the learner...