By Courtney Mahoney
Peter Field is a member of Ottawa’s blind community who faces barriers because of his disability.
As a parent, Field says he’s unable to read his child’s report card.
“I pay my tax dollars to the education system, so I should be entitled to a product from that educational system,” says Field. “So far, the school board that I am dealing with will not do that.”
Many companies depend on information that is unusable for clients with disabilities. One Ottawa business has introduced new forms of technology to make information more accessible, particularly for the blind.
T-Base Communications Inc. has been around for a decade. Len Fowler, the company’s co-founder, says companies are unable to reach a large percentage of the population by using formats the blind can’t access.
T-Base converts traditional business information, like documents and invoices, into formats the visually impaired can use.
“The cheaper we make the stuff accessible, the less excuse anybody has not to do it,” says Fowler.
“If you want to get your message out to 50 per cent of the population that is not currently getting your message, this is how.”
T-Base Communications’ consumer market ranges from Canada’s five main banks to individual clients. T-Base can convert any document into large print, Braille and audio recordings.
Sam Saikali, general manager of Al’s Steakhouse on Elgin Street, says his restaurant used T-Base’s services “because a very good customer of [theirs] is blind.” They have one menu printed in Braille and Saikali says he would like to invest in more.
Other companies and services are investing in T-Base to help them address the growing need for accessible technology.
Field and the company’s co-founder Sharlyn Ayotte have created guidelines for the Public Service Commission, allowing Field to receive all the documents he needs for his job with the Treasury Board in a usable format, such as Braille.
Fowler works with the Canadian Council of the Blind on website accessibility for the visually impaired. Bill Pope, IT consultant for the council, is working on a project to certify websites as accessible for the blind.
“The web-based community for the visually impaired is growing,” says Pope.
“People who spend a lot of time building websites have to kind of sit back and think about how they want to reach that community.”
Software that reads the text on the screen is often used by the visually impaired. To their disadvantage, any graphics used on a website will not be read.
“For a person who is visually impaired, they have to stop and filter out all of that stuff,” says Pope. “It just becomes noise in their world.”
Companies can achieve accessibility for visually impaired consumers by eliminating all graphics or linking to an area where all information is written.
Within the next few weeks, T-Base and its ACES team — a group that assists companies in making their websites accessible — will be training members of the council on the standards necessary for a website certification. T-Base has already assisted in a similar program in the United States.
It was for cases like these that Fowler and Ayotte say they started T-Base. The company now has offices in Canada, the United States and Australia and is gradually moving into the European market.
Despite these accomplishments, Fowler says he would still like to see Canadians addressing accessibility with more importance.
“If you’re going to say everybody in Canada has equal opportunity, then let’s make it so,” says Fowler.
“But we’ve got to create an equal playing field to start.”