Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Guido Gybels, and I am the Director of New Technologies at the Royal National Institute for Deaf People in the UK. My talk today will be about how Information and Communication Technology has dramatically changed the world we live in, in what now commonly is referred to as a global village, and I want to explore more specifically how this has impacted on disabled people in general and on deaf and hard of hearing people in particular.
But before I properly kick off my presentation, I thought it would be helpful to spend a few words talking about the organisation that I represent. RNID, the Royal National Institute for Deaf People, founded in 1911, is the largest charity representing the interests of the 9 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the UK. We are a membership charity with well over 34.000 members, employ around 1.300 staff and we spent 46 million pounds during our last financial year trying to dramatically improve the lives of deaf, hard of hearing and speech-impaired people. Indeed, our overall aim is to achieve a radically better quality of life for deaf and hard of hearing people. We do this by campaigning and lobbying, by providing information and raising awareness, by delivering training courses and consultancy on deafness and disability. We are the largest single communication support agency in the UK and our services include sign language interpreters, lip speakers, speech-to-text operators and note takers. We have educational programmes seeking lasting change in education for deaf and hard of hearing children and young people, we have comprehensive employment programmes to help deaf people into work and we run care services for deaf and hard of hearing people with additional needs.
RNID of course also manages RNID Typetalk, the national telephone relay service for deaf and hard of hearing people that allows textphone users to communicate with voice telephone users. We operate a Video Interpreting service for remote sign language interpretation as well.
Also, we supply equipment and products for deaf and hard of hearing people through Sound Advantage and we have an extensive and unique programme for social, medical and technical research.
My own department is a research and development team consisting of engineers, scientists, computer programmers and research assistants and we pursue every opportunity to harness information and communication technology to tear down the barriers to opportunity and fulfilment that sadly enough still exist in our modern world.
This world has evolved dramatically over the last decades. In fact, ever since James Watt's first steam engine transformed the agricultural society that had lasted for 12,000 years into a fundamentally new type of civilisation - the industrial society - our way of life has been increasingly affected by science and technology.
More recently, we have lived through an even more dramatic change, as this industrial world of steam and coal, and later steel and oil, has evolved in only a few decades, into an Information Society. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this societal change. It has changed the way we work, the way we learn, the way we shop, the way we entertain ourselves, the way we interact with government, and indeed now also the way we relate to other people.
Never before in the history of mankind have we had access to such a wealth of information and communication as today. Never before in the history of mankind have we had such a wide variety of communication tools and services to our disposal. And never before in the history of mankind have we been so reliant, so dependent on all these information and communication facilities in order to fully participate as a citizen in society.
The implications of this huge shift in the way we organise our culture are enormous. And it is undoubtedly true that new technologies have brought great benefit and advance to our world. But at the same time, there are also clear and present dangers that this ever more technologically dominated world might disadvantage certain groups of people even more than they were before.
This duality, these two faces of Janus, these simultaneously good and bad facets of technology, require us as a group to forcefully pursue a strategy of vigilance, of active campaigning and lobbying, of raising awareness and above all, of making sure that we actively engage with engineers and scientists shaping the technologies of tomorrow, with service providers and product manufacturers delivering us the technologies of today and with legislators and regulators to see to it that the digital divide will decrease and eventually disappear altogether.
So, let me give you the good news first. Technology has effectively great potential to enhance the lives of citizens everywhere in the world. The greater availability of and access to information and communication has opened up the world, has educated the citizens of our planet, made them more vocal, including in their quest for greater equality, for better accessibility to the services and products of today's world. And indeed, technology can help overcome some of the previously thought absolute, unbreakable barriers to opportunity and fulfilment.
If you can do your grocery shopping on the Internet, then you don't have to make the difficult journey to the local supermarket. If eGovernment services are online, then a sign language user doesn't have to wait 3 months to get an interpreter just to carry out a basic government transaction. With speech recognition, we have been able to give voice control over their environment to severely dysarthric speakers, allowing them to live independently for the first time in human history.
However, with this tale of progress also comes one of the biggest legends of our modern world. The illusion, the false assumption that this progress in science and technology is by definition always opportunistic and will by definition always better the lives of everyone.
Unfortunately, as deaf and hard of hearing people have learned all too often through bitter experience, unless the needs of all people, regardless of their abilities and preferences, are taken into account while technology evolves, there is a very real risk that large groups of people will face increased and even completely new barriers to opportunity and fulfilment as a result.
Hearing people can watch a plethora of television programmes, yet deaf and hard of hearing are often excluded because there are no subtitles. Hearing people can go to the station and buy a ticket, yet sign language users often face huge difficulties in dealing with a counter transaction. We pick up a phone and make a call anywhere in the world. But textphone users are often lucky if they can even make a local call.
This belief that the increasing integration of technology into our daily lives has spawned a two-tier society is of course not new. The notion of a digital divide that separates the people of the world in haves and have nots, in those who can and those who can't, has been around for quite a while. This digital divide has many facets to it. There is the economic aspect: access to information and communication technology comes at a price, so those at the lower end of the income spectrum often, even if they would want to, can't really use and benefit from it as much as higher income groups can. That same division can be observed between the industrial countries and the developing countries as well.
There is a cultural and educational barrier: where the youngsters of today are imbued with computer skills and technology devices everywhere, others struggle with these new devices and paradigms and therefore can be left behind.
And then of course, there are those who are prevented from full access to information and communication, and to the devices and services that deliver these, because of accessibility and usability problems. People with disabilities are amongst the most heavily impacted group. They want to use these technologies. They would benefit from them. But because their design and implementation prevent them from using them, they find themselves at the wrong side of the digital divide and, consequently, facing new barriers to opportunity and fulfilment.
And to make it even more complicated: often these various incarnations of digital divides coexist: because of the fact that they are often disenfranchised due to lack of access to information and communication technology, many deaf and hard of hearing people find themselves at the lower end of the economic scale, which prevents them from using potentially enabling technology like broadband and of course that in turn disadvantages them even further. So, they end up in a vicious circle.
I am glad that quite a few speakers over the last few days have supported the view that these accessibility problems are in the first place environmental predicaments. It is not the individual nor the individuals' specific set of abilities and preferences that causes the barrier, it is the fact that products and services have not been designed and built as fully accessible and usable entities. We put the burden not with the individual, we put it clearly and squarely with those who have conceived and constructed these services and products, and in the process of doing so have failed to meet the requirement of full inclusivity.
The solution to this problem lies in a radical shift in our thinking. For the last few decades, the overall stratagem has focused mainly on reactive tactics. As and when barriers have occurred, we have tried to come up with specialised solutions. When normal telephones could not be used by many deaf, hard of hearing and speech-impaired users, we created special textphones for them. When meeting rooms did not offer them access to loop systems and good quality audio, we created listening devices. When airports didn't have strobe alarms for alerting deaf passengers in case of an emergency, we created special beepers for them to carry around in the airport.
All of this work has been hugely important and often liberating for the individuals concerned. But this route can only go so far. And while reactive work will remain an absolute necessity for many years to come, in order to keep attacking these barriers that continuously are being raised in the Information Society, we definitely need a more proactive strategy as well.
Only through this, and I apologise for the clich?, proactive line of attack can we achieve real, fundamental progress. The reactive side of the work is like the medicine that we use to combat the headache resulting from a brain tumour. Unless we actually remove the cause of the headache, unless we remove the tumour, we will not be really solving the patient's problem.
What we need to do in the Information Society is to solve the underlying cause of all these barriers that keep being erected. To do that, we need a completely new approach, a new way of thinking. In my mind, this requires us to establish a sensible, joined up approach, combining the reactive and the proactive strands that I just mentioned.
So, in practice, what it means is that we do not just focus on identifying problems in technology, and then try to come up with some temporary patch, until a new problem occurs somewhere else, but that we also work with the technology sector to feed the requirements of all users into the technology development process from the very first stages of design and all the way through the process from design to final implementation.
As much as I would like to take credit for this idea, for this methodology, it is not mine, nor is it a new idea. When you look at the principles of inclusive design, this whole concept of building products and services that are by design accessible and usable for all, regardless of abilities and preferences, has been one of the corner stones of that principle.
The key element of inclusive design is that it centres on the users and sees them all as individuals. It demands that we start developing systems not based on what we want as designers or technology manufacturers, but based on what people need as users.
In that respect, inclusive design and the concept of mainstreaming provisions for deaf and hard of hearing people, and indeed all people with disabilities, be it sensory impairments, physical disabilities, learning difficulties or mental health problems, this mainstreaming principle goes hand in hand with inclusive design.
I have often argued that unless we succeed in bringing the needs of deaf and hard of hearing people into the mainstream, we will continue to fail to make the Information Society a truly equal place. You can't have equality when deaf people have to use specialised, niche market devices and services.
Let me give you an example. Telephony has become one of the most used and most important services in our modern world. If you can't use a phone, you will not qualify for many job positions, you can't participate in the telephone quiz on the telly, nor can you phone home to tell you'll be late when caught in a traffic jam somewhere.
Deaf people have to a certain extend been helped by the existence of text telephony. Textphones try to form a text equivalent to what voice telephony is for hearing people. It is real-time, character-by-character communication, where the information flows immediately to the other side and where you can barge in or interrupt, just as you would be able to do with a voice telephone.
But despite this, textphones have always been a very niche market product, specifically built for deaf people and in terms of service delivery and product characteristics nowhere near what hearing people have enjoyed in voice telephony.
If you are a hearing person using a voice telephone, then you just pick up the phone and dial any number anywhere in the world. You don't have to worry whether or not the person at the other side is using the same handset as you, you don't have to worry about technical configuration of your handset, you are not restricted to only dialling someone on the same network and with the same settings in their handset as you have. You can walk into any shop in the high street and buy whatever handset you like, at very competitive rates. You can choose between a wide variety of airtime contracts and you can pretty much use your phone to call anyone anywhere anytime.
Yet, if you are a deaf or hard of hearing textphone user, you can't do any of this. You have to settle for a hugely expensive, yet very basic and awkward device, with a pathetic little screen and a clumsy keyboard, yet costing almost as much as a PC. Except in the UK, where there is the TextDirect platform, you can't dial other users who don't have a very similar terminal as yours. International calling is mostly impossible, and relay services are non-existent in most countries in the world, meaning that as a textphone user you can't talk to hearing people on their voice phone.
Yes, textphones have helped people to some extend, in that they made available a, albeit limited, telecommunication service to a group of people who already faced huge social and economic isolation in society. But at the same time, it is quite clear that in this way, with specialised, non-mainstream devices and services, there is only so much you can do. As long as deaf and hard of hearing people don't have exactly the same freedom of communication through text that hearing people enjoy through voice, with all the features for ubiquitous call setup, conference calling, call holding and call forwarding and any other function available in voice, at the same low prices and with the same choice in handsets, airtime contracts, service providers and everything else that exists in voice telephony, textphone users will not be truly equal in a society where the ability to communicate with anyone, at any time and anywhere has become so vital in order to fully participate as a citizen.
Therefore, the only solution to this problem is to make sure that catering for all people, regardless of their abilities and preferences, is moved into the mainstream. Since quite a few years, from a social and ethical perspective we have come around to the view that a truly civilised society is one where we do not discriminate against people based on their gender, beliefs, skin colour, sexual preference or indeed the presence or absence of any disability. We now need to translate that social and ethical belief into a technical reality in a world where technology is becoming ever more integrated into the bedrock of society.
To use the same example of text telephony to illustrate this: unless interactive, character-by-character text is integrated into every telephone handset as a standard feature, and supported by the networks and part of the service, deaf textphone users won't be equal, as they will face barriers to communication that hearing people don't face.
The same applies across all technologies: unless subtitles become a standard feature on all television programmes, as well as on every single piece of video content streamed on the net, deaf and hard of hearing people won't have full access to them. Unless websites are being built as fully accessible information resources, so that everyone, whether or not they are deaf, blind, have a physical impairment or have learning difficulties, can use them in full, some people will be disenfranchised as a result and society will not be an equal place.
All of us here have a responsibility in this respect. This conference is a great forum for me to repeat once again this message that I have been carrying out for a while now. But, it is not enough. To a certain extend, I am preaching to the converted here. Most of the people here already know about the problems. They see every day that society is not a truly equal place. They have often experienced themselves how disadvantaging technology can be if it doesn't take into account different abilities and preferences for different users. However, unless we carry out that message to the world outside, unless we actively and tirelessly campaign, lobby, yes fight for these rights, unless we promote and actively support inclusive design, not just for ourselves, but for everyone that is burdened by barriers in the information society, nothing will change.
We need to work together. Not just organisations of hard of hearing people. We need to forge alliances, all across the area of deafness and hearing loss and beyond. We must not be infighting; we must not compete with other disability organisations. We must join efforts, we must bundle our strengths and resources. If we do that, then all of us will benefit from it, and ultimately every single individual in society will gain as well.
And that's the beautiful part of it: inclusive societies do not just help disabled people, they benefit every single individual. Just like the Disability Right's Commission report on Web accessibility in the UK recently showed that by making a website accessible, the experience improved for non-disabled users as well. When we are walking down a busy, noisy street, we are all hearing impaired. When I had a car accident a couple of years ago and could not walk for weeks, I was in a similar situation as wheelchair users.
And we, as users and organisations working with users and representing them, we have a pivotal role to play. Many speakers have mentioned it throughout this conference, but raising awareness is a key task for us all. We must work with manufacturers, service providers, network operators, legislative bodies, regulators, standards organisations and any other stakeholder to help them understand what the user requirements are and to continuously improve services and products in what after all is an ever-changing environment.
And finally, as technology and the problems of inclusion are a global problem, we need above all a global strategy and collaboration across the borders of national states. This is not to say that there are no differences between different states in different parts of the world, most notably visible in the contrast between developing countries and the western nations. But underneath those differences still reside the same fundamental principles of equality. Developing countries are often in a position where precisely because many of the technology features that we have become so accustomed to do not yet exist on the same scale as here in Europe, they have an opportunity to get it right from the start. And they can learn from the many mistakes we in the West have made. At the same time, we should offer them our expertise and knowledge and support in developing their infrastructure.
The rewards for all of us are potentially colossal. If we succeed in making sure that the Information Society becomes at the same time a globally Inclusive Society, we will have achieved for the first time in millions of years of human civilisation, a truly equal society, we will have satisfied the very promise of what it means to be human: to shape the world and make it into a better place where everyone, regardless of abilities and preferences, can fulfil their full potential. Let us transform this dream into reality.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Speech by Guido Gybels, given at the IFHOH 7th World Congress, Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, Finland, on 8 July 2004.
Slides for: Disabled People in the Global Village. (Microsoft Powerpoint 2000 Show 258MB)