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STFSTF 488
Title:Recommendations to allow people with cognitive disabilities to exploit the potential of mobile technologies
Author:Mike Pluke
Subject:ISO TC173/WG10 Meeting
Place:Dublin, Ireland
Date: 10th– 12th February 2016
Travel Order: TP160122
1Scope of the event
ISO TC173/WG10 is an ISO group on “Assistive products for cognitive disabilities”. It is developing two documents that overlap in scope with the work of STF488. These are a “general guideline” and on “time management”.
The meeting was being held within Europe, at the National Standards Authority of Ireland(NSAI) in Dublin, with the specific aim of making it possible for STF488 experts to attend to allow some joint working to ensure that the work of the two groups is different but compatible.
2Participants
There were a total of 10 people physically attending the meeting in Dublin including the two STF488 experts Mike Pluke and Loïc Martinez Normand. The largest group of those physically attending the meeting where from Sweden, including the chairman, (from the Swedish Agency for Participation), the secretary and Stefan Johansson, accessibility expert and ideologist at Funka (who was the rapporteur of the general guideline). There was an ANEC representative from Greece, a participant from FranceBed in Japan and an Australian academic.
The largest group (6-8 people) of the remote participants were from the Swedish Begripsam project (a project on cognitive accessibility), and in addition there were people working for or associated with the RESNA (the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America).
For part of the meeting, Greg McGrew, from Ciena Corporation (a global manufacturer of communications network equipment and solutions) joined the meeting to discuss testing activities related to applying cognitive accessibility guidelines that they were doing.
3In-kind contribution
The 7 people present when the presentation was made signed the in-kind signature sheet. The sheet has been sent to ETSI.
4Outstanding presentations
The two main pieces of work that were being presented was the group’s “general guideline” and the “time management” standard. The rapporteurs for those items of work (Stefan Johansson and Gunnel Janeslätt respectively) led the discussions related to the two work items. The plan was to divide the time spent at the meeting between these two work items but, in the end, the general guideline received a significantly greater share of the work. This was good from the perspective of the STF as it is the general guideline that is most closely associated with the deliverables from the STF.
Nodoka Yamauchi explained how the majority of people with dementia in Japan were in their own homes and showed an impressive directory of assistive products and services to help support people with dementia. The products ranged from quite sophisticated ICT, including robots, to very low-tech solutions for colour coding pockets containing medication to indicate the days of the week. This latter low-tech solution was strongly related to the ISO group’s work on “time management”.
5Presentations/interventions from the STF
The drafts of the STF’s Technical Report (TR) and ETSI Guide (EG) were provided to the meeting in advance. In addition, a Powerpoint presentation was presented to the meeting. This presentation was to update the group on the progress of the ETSI work and built upon the full presentation that was remotely presented to the group in their October 2015 meeting. The draft deliverables can be found at:
and the presentation is embedded below:
.
6Stakeholders reaction/comments
The reactions to the participation of the two STF experts was overwhelmingly positive. During the meeting and in private conversations outside the meeting I was told how very pleased they were that we attended. It was made clear that we brought some expertise and experiences that were not otherwise represented in the meeting. The meeting acknowledged how useful it was to have people who had experience of developing standards and guides that can be used by developers in industry. They also appreciated the in-depth knowledge of how some standards related to their work had been developed.
The meeting appreciated how the STF experts were able to both contribute to the development of their work whilst also helping them to identify how the ISO work and the ETSI work were related.
7Knowledge acquired / guidance received for the STF work
The meeting provided an excellent opportunity to discuss in depth the similarity and differences of the work. The meeting appreciated that the guidelines being developed by STF488 were much more specific and detailed than the much higher-level guidance described in the ISO work. The ISO work is meant to apply across the widest possible range of contexts (including accessibility not related to ICT).
Both the members of the ISO group and the STF experts were able to agree that the ETSI work would be the first instance of detailed sector-specific (mobile ICT) guidelines that should be fully compatible with the higher-level ISO guidance framework. Without any sector-specific applications, the ISO work could be seen as too high-level to be directly applied.
Although the STF has done a lot of background work to ensure that the guidelines in the EG are based on a sound theoretical framework, the scope of the work does not allow the production of the high-level picture that the ISO group has managed to develop.This relationship between the two pieces of work was therefore seen as something that strengthened the credibility of both standardisation efforts.
One recurring theme during the discussions is that several of the participants held very strong views that the term “cognitive disability” (which is written into the terms of reference of the ETSI work and into the deliverable titles) is a very bad and outdated term and that it should not be used.
I explained to the meeting that we didn’t have the option of completely removing this term and that “cognitive disability” also appeared in the name of the ISO group and in the full name of the W3C Cognitive Task Force. The meeting agreed that the best way to overcome this problem would be to write some text to explain the positive associations with this term and to build bridges between its usage and the usage of more “politically correct” terms. Despite this, the STF will need to look about how we might minimise the usage of the term cognitive disability, trying to refer to the more acceptable terms “cognitive impairment” and “cognitive accessibility” as much as possible.
8STF results dissemination / recognition
The meeting allowed the STF work to be presented to the ISO group in the conventional way of making a formal presentation to the meeting. However, the meeting allowed the STF experts to show, as a result of the in-depth discussions, that their guidelines were being developed based upon a sound and well developed understanding of the user needs. The very positive reactions of the meeting participants described in section 6 is evidence that the meeting participants were very happy that ETSI was developing its guidelines in a good way.
9Impact of the participation on the STF
The STF has recognised that there may be a few aspects that the ISO group has covered that may not be so fully covered by the ETSI work. This provides the STF with the opportunity to see if there are appropriate guidelines that can be drafted to fill those potential gaps. The STF will need to continue to monitor the progress of the ISO work to ensure that the currently high level of compatibility can be maintained.
10Conclusion
The participation in this ISO meeting was seen as very beneficial, both to the work of the STF and to the work of the ISO group. Efforts will be made to maintain the currently good level of compatibility between the two highly-related activities.