How sharing KO’d inaccessibility
I'm fortunate enough to be an advisor on a rather interesting "access" related project for the visually disabled and recall speaking to Sachin Malhan of Inclusive Planet about their Bookbole project. We recalled how when we first heard about the SETI@home project how fundamentally cool we thought that was despite the fact that we were using an 80486 PC. And rather like the SETI@home project Bookbole has ‘collaboration’ and ‘unlocking hidden value’ at its heart. To those not in the know Bookbole is taking on the shortage of accessible content available to the print and visually impaired. Accessible content is content in digital formats ‘readable’ by the visually impaired i.e. the best being human voice but the most practical (read ‘scalable’) being text ‘screen-readable’ by text-to-speech software. The problem is not just the volume of accessible content, but also meeting specific needs of the print impaired. Imagine Kim, a visually impaired science student, asking – ‘Its great to talk about more books being in accessible formats but how do I quickly get accessible class notes for my Exobiology class?’ A hairy problem that combines a problem of quantity with a problem of relevancy. At this point most members of the Inclusive Planet team start bouncing up and down in excitement. Some bounce better than others! The team found that every visually impaired person has invested time and effort into building a personal library of accessible digital content relevant to him or her. What if? Yes, what if they could connect the visually-impaired the world over and help them solve each others challenges by sharing stuff? Connect and share with the community at large. Connect and share with other similarly placed people. Collaboration! Unlocking hidden value! Build a big library of accessible content – but more importantly an intelligent library full of human connections, conversations. Imagine a campsight in the dark – everyone sharing their food, little fires burning, conversations – SOLUTIONS! Handing the power to solve the biggest obstacle back to community itself. The way it should be. While we returned attention to our beer www.bookbole.com is now up and running.
