Remarks Prepared for Delivery by
Dr. Karen Brown, Acting Director, NIST
IT Accessibility 2001 Conference
May 22, 2001
Gaithersburg, MD
- Welcome to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. I want to take this opportunity to thank our co-sponsors, the Information Technology Association of America and Oracle Corp., for their help in making this conference a success.
- This conference is of great importance to all of us who are interested in widening access to computers and information. According to Census Bureau reports, nearly 1 in 5 Americans has some level of disability. And, as our population ages, we will have more and more citizens whose needs will have to be considered in the design and purchase of products so that everyone has easy accessibility. NIST is pleased to help by sponsoring this conference as one step in sharing views of accessibility experts in industry, government, academia, and advocacy groups.
- President Bush has made it clear that assisting Americans with disabilities is a priority of his Administration, and I am excited by the fact that we have a role with others here today in addressing IT accessibility challenges, in particular.
- I’d like to take a few minutes to explain briefly what NIST is and our past involvement in the kinds of issues that the accessibility community faces.
- Our mission at NIST is clear and simple: to strengthen the economy and improve the quality of life by working with industry to develop and apply technology, measurements and standards.
- We work through four complementary programs:
- the NIST laboratories, which specialize in measurements and standards,
- the Baldridge National Quality Program, which manages the nation’s highest award for quality and performance excellence,
- the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, teaming with centers around the country to provide productivity-improving assistance to small manufacturers, and
- the Advanced Technology Program, which partners with industry to develop enabling technologies that will benefit the economy broadly.
- Our primary customers are the U.S. industry and the taxpayers. We don’t ever forget that. We are, after all, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
- NIST is not a regulatory agency – but we do work with regulatory and other agencies by providing technical advice wherever appropriate.
- When NIST began back in 1901- yes, this is our centennial year – as the National Bureau of Standards, our focus was on manufacturing, but we have always paid a lot of attention to the service sector.
- NIST has a strong track record in bringing together experts in industry, government, and academia to develop measurements and standards in many areas. This conference is just a small example of NIST bringing experts together at a neutral venue for sharing information.
- And NIST does have some history with technical matters related to the issues that face industry and other government agencies in addressing accessibility in information technology.
- Let me offer one example:
- Researchers in NIST’s Time and Frequency Division pioneered the closed-captioning technology. The NIST system, called TvTime by its developers, was originally designed to allow TV networks to send encoded time and frequency data and text messages within their broadcast signal to affiliates.
- Transmissions were sent along an unused portion of the TV signal and only monitors with special decoders could reveal them.
- At the suggestion of ABC-TV, the NIST researchers in Boulder, Colorado decided to try using TvTime to carry captions for the deaf.
- The new system was first demonstrated in December 1971 with a test captioning of an episode of ABC-TV’s "The Mod Squad".
- In December 1972, the Secretary of Commerce petitioned the FCC to approve closed captioning on broadcast TV. Although defeated, the petition caught the attention of PBS engineers who asked NIST staff to join them in refining the technology.
- Three years of work resulted in an improved and easier-to-use captioning system, the one approved by the FCC in December 1976.
- At NIST we are very proud of our contribution which led to the development of this technology which helps the hearing-impaired community.
- At our Boulder, Colorado, laboratories, we proudly display the 1980 Emmy Award that we shared for our work in promoting this technology.
- In the IT accessibility area, there are clearly many needs and many opportunities. It is important to provide the disabled and elderly in our nation with tools to function efficiently in their everyday lives. The productivity of these people in the workplace, as well as their satisfaction with everyday life, can be greatly enhanced through equipment, devices, and software that will provide easy access to computers, digital devices, and the Internet. These products will help both our disabled and our aging population to maintain their independence longer.
- With this conference, we hope to raise the visibility of this important topic to industry. We also hope to identify needs for testing and metrics, as well as for technical standards and interoperability.
- Largely through our Information Technology Laboratory, NIST is already working in some of the areas that will help people with disabilities through development and application of technology, measurements and standards.
- NIST is promoting the accessibility of digital content for hardware devices through the development of the NIST rotating-wheel Braille display, tactile graphic research, and participation in the Open Electronic Book Forum.
- We are working with industry to develop a standard means of reporting results of user testing for software – work that can be extended for testing accessibility.
- NIST is collaborating with the Veterans Administration on new test methods and signal processing for development of more sophisticated hearing aids
- We are working within the World Wide Web Consortium to create a new interest group for exploring barriers and potential solutions for problems of usability of the Web.
- NIST will be exploring other ways of helping wherever appropriate to improve IT accessibility.
- We hope that this conference can contribute to the development of an ongoing collaboration between NIST, industry, academia, and other government agencies.
- I wish you a successful conference and I hope you all come away with new perspectives, a better understanding of the issues and challenges, and more importantly, with new ideas of how to improve accessibility where you live and work, and how to include accessibility as part of any planning or design.