Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

This has been a really exciting week in Washington, DC, with the focus of today's 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It's hard to imagine a world without the ADA, which was passed during my first year in the disability field. It became a model of civil rights legislation for people with disabilities, and I'm sure paved the way for the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. Last week there was a strong technology focus in the events: I was invited to an event at the White House (actually, the Old Executive Office Building) to hear from senior leaders from the Administration make announcements and talk about the power or technology to help people with disabilities. Kareem Dale, the President's senior disability advisor, was the master of ceremonies, and he got the federal CTO and CIO , an FCC Commissioner, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce overseeing the broadband program, and a senior federal procurement policy guy there. Ka...

Overview One of the great things about the Obama Administration is that they've generally lowered the bar for citizen participation in federal policy. I'm much rather post something in a blog than go through a formal sending of a snail mail letter! The FCC just did a series of four blog posts asking for feedback on their new accessibility plans. Here are my comments on the big picture and a couple of their proposals. I'm also going to copy portions into the comments section of their specific posts. Comments on the FCC's Accessibility Plans (June 2010) My main recommendation to the FCC is to be more ambitious about accessibility. Although the Clearinghouse and Awards programs could be helpful to the cause of greater access for people with disabilities, I don’t think they truly take on the biggest opportunity for change. We have a model for this kind of change: TTYs (text telephones) and relay services though the telephone. When the technology in question was the te...

Last night I was able to meet Vivek Kundra, the new Chief Information Officer of the federal government, at an event organized by Full Circle Fund and the Craigslist Foundation hosted by IBM at their offices on Market Street in San Francisco. For me, it's an amazing change. In the last month, I've been able to meet Obama's CIO, the new CTO, Aneesh Chopra, and the head of the White House Office of Social Innovation, Sonal Shah, all in small group settings where every attendee got to speak. These three are hopefully representative of the technology and innovation agenda of the new administration. They are all coming out to the San Francisco Bay Area, a hotbed of tech and innovation, primarily to listen. But, it's also clear that they have a really clear grasp of many of the issues facing innovation in the federal government, tempered with a healthy dose of reality. In the tech area, Vivek Kundra noted that the annual IT budget of the federal government is $76 billion....

The Bookshare team has been attending the summer conventions of the two major blind consumer groups, the NFB and ACB. We had great user parties, listened to our users and talked to other key players in the accessibility field. We also announced a couple of assistive technology partnerships. The first release was about support for mobile phone use with software developer Code Factory of Spain . It still takes downloading the book to a PC and transferring it to the cell phone, but I'm looking forward to getting rid of that extra step! The second announcement was by Plextor of Japan, about their new ebook player that will play Bookshare books . The device also allows users to record their own audio books. The last item I wanted to highlight was a White House blog post with President Obama hosting a delegation of people who are both deaf and blind . I was just delighted to see this quote from the post: This visit was not and should not be viewed as a sympathetic thing for the Pre...

Betsy Beaumon and I had the pleasure to meet today with Kareem Dale, the special assistant to the president for disability policy. We had a wide-ranging conversation about Bookshare and the current hot disability issues. Really exciting. The one incredibly newsworthy item was Kareem emailed me (during the meeting) a statement he drafted on the topic of the Global Treaty that was discussed in late May at the SCCR event at the World Intellectual Property Organization. I found it very exciting as President Obama's position on this developing issue! The following is the email I received from Kareem Dale in its entirety (and I have his permission to distribute it): Access to information and ideas is essential for personal and professional growth and full engagement in a democratic society. But engagement can be severely limited when information is not available in accessible formats. We are committed to building a world that no longer puts up unnecessary barriers. We must create...

I'm getting ready to head to the Social Enterprise Summit 2009 next month in New Orleans. I'm especially excited about the significant focus on public policy and advocacy for social entrepreneurship. We were lucky to have the support of the Surdna Foundation for a policy-specific conference track. Experienced practitioners tend to engage at levels above their specific organization. For me, it's about advancing the movement. It's crystal clear to me that the creativity of social enterprisers is essential to bringing us out of this current economic and social hole we're in. With President Obama expected to launch a new White House Office of Social Innovation, this seems like an opportune moment to get together with leaders from the social enterprise movement to help influence the national and international agenda! If this gets you interested, I hope to see you in New Orleans!

A Guest Beneblog by Ann Harrison (Benetech Communications Director) I watched a person in a wheelchair the other day navigate a tricky curb cut while crossing the street. The young man moved along skillfully without the need for assistance, but the scene brought back memories of a day in January when I accompanied a friend in a wheelchair to inauguration of President Barack Obama. As Benetech’s Communications Director, I support the team that maintains Benetech’s Bookshare library for readers with print disabilities. But our adventure at the inauguration gave me an even greater appreciation for the challenges that people with disabilities encounter and the support that exists to meet these needs. Ignoring recommendations by organizers that disabled people not venture into the dense crowds and frigid weather expected on inauguration day, my friend Steph summoned me and three other girlfriends to Washington D.C. to make sure that she could attend the event. We knew it would be a long day...