First Published on Marahaba https://www.marhaba.qa/employing-people-with-a-disability
David Banes – Global Access and Inclusion Consultant and Ex CEO of Mada the Qatar Assistive Technology Centre
Work is important. It is how we achieve our aspirations and quality of life, how…
Originally Published at https://www.differentbrains.org/addressing-neurodiversity-through-universal-design/
When we discuss neurodiversity we are recognizing that the way we all process and perceive information, think, and learn can be different from person to person. This diversity may be mild,…
Originally published at https://g3ict.org/blogs/thats-amazing-awesome-can-we-avoid-fake-news-on-access-and-inclusion
In many cases, the traditional role of Assistive Technology (AT) specialists has been to discover and assimilate information about persons with disabilities. They then map their k…
Originally at https://g3ict.org/blogs/recipes-for-success-integrating-options-for-impact
Bruce Springsteen once wrote “57 channels..and nothing on” - an indictment of cable TV when quantity of programming seemed more important than quality. It might need updating in 2019 when we think about acce…
Originally at https://g3ict.org/blogs/if-you-build-it-then-what-happens-awareness-in-the-at-ecosystem
In this series of blogs around the creation and maintenance of the assistive technology ecosystem, David Banes will explore some of the areas of activity that when integrated and delivered, supp…
I had the good fortune to spend much of the ATIA conference this year in the company of international delegates in my role as International ambassador. For those who have never been ATIA is a major US conference devoted to the AT industry with over 300 seminars, a major exhibition and over 2000 dele…
I was very fortunate to be invited to visit both Pakistan and parts of the Middle East in the last year. Looking back it is interesting to consider the common challenges and opportunities faced in providing services and assistive technologies that we encountered. In this blog, I reflect upon my time…
This week marked World Autism Awareness Day – it’s become a major global initiative that has been hugely successful in increasing awareness of Autism. I have some mixed feelings about how autism is portrayed in the campaigns having spent much of my early career working with young people with very de…
Personal Mobility is changing, and we are approaching a period where our current concept of wheelchairs will feel as outdated as crossing the Atlantic by sailboat.
Two significant trends are emerging that will see the business of the provision of powered mobility aids being one that will be subje…
So this time next week I will be on a plane bound for Florida and ATIA 2016 - I do often get asked for recommendations for those who can only get to one conference a year, and this is usually my number one choice.
First it covers the broadest spectrum of needs, autism, physical, sensory needs are a…
This is a really interesting piece by my friend Damien Radcliffe on Social media use within the Middle East - it tells an interesting story which deserves some time to think about. Fundamentally we see a significant growth in social media based upon visual content (images/video), growth in social me…
Its interesting to see how the advent of touch devices has changed some of the world of Assistive Technology. One of the areas which has felt that impact has been the use of switch technology for people with physical disabilities, as there has been the growth of an assumption that touch screens are …
Over the past few months years I've seen very mixed success at using the built in voice recognition on Apple and android devices - often variations in accent and pronunciation cause significant barriers to users - So I was really pleased to see this update that you can now provide a degree of traini…
The new Kindle Fire was released this week to a fascinating mixture of responses, pundits thought it was great, apple Fanboyz derided it and the blind community attacked its lack of access for the visually impaired with righteous indignation and anger, this following the same community lauding Steve…
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to travel to Orlando in the American state of Florida for a major assistive technology conference. The conference was a success despite the hotel catching fire and a tornado touching down in town whilst I was there: never a dull moment in the world of access t…
Mirrored from Digital Qatar
People all around the world will be celebrating the 5th birthday of Twitter this week. Here in Qatar, tweeps (term used to describe Twitter users) will be getting together at Aspire Park for the Doha Twestival. Like many others I can’t remember how exactly I worked prior …
Ok so ive been busy and its been a littlew whil since I have written a blog. But I want you all to get as mad as hell, stand up and shout - "I hate web ads with annoying sound effects" Im going to give this Tasbo to two in particular, the first is to the ubiquitous IMVU, I can live with the vaguely …
For those who haven’t come across the concept a while ago I proposed an “Anti award” I guess with a view to naming and shaming, not simply for products or services that were in accessible (there would be too many) but for those vendors, developers, manufacturers etc who seemed to take a deliberate e…
Ok I have to confess Im a little Bi-Polar about Apple, maybe schizophrenic is a better term. They have some great technology and have made great advances in builidng in access technologies that work really well out of the box. Voiceover on the iPhone is all that one Blind Friend needs - no extra cos…