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Delivering Broadband Accessibility for People with Disabilities
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Posted by Laura Ruby
Director, Accessibility Policy & Standards for Trustworthy Computing
How can the United States ensure that people with disabilities share fully in the benefits of broadband technologies and services? This was the focus of a conference today in Washington, DC, involving government officials, consumer advocates, industry leaders and academics. Speakers included Federal Communication Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski and Kareem Dale, Special Assistant to the President for Disability Policy. I participated in a roundtable discussion moderated by representatives of two of the conference co-sponsors, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation and the American Association of People with Disabilities.
The conference was timely because next week the FCC will deliver to Congress a National Broadband Plan to extend the benefits of broadband to all Americans. The plan recommends steps to better understand and address the needs of people with disabilities, stimulate innovation in accessibility solutions, and ensure access to the government’s electronic and information technology.
The need for action is well documented. The FCC recently published findings that the online activities of broadband-using people with disabilities are comparatively narrow in scope; that is, they do fewer things online. They face barriers that will also hinder millions of other Americans as the nation’s population ages. Microsoft, which has been working to integrate accessibility into our processes and products for 20 years, commissioned a 2003 study by Forrester Research, which found that 60 percent (101.4 million) of working-age adults are likely or very likely to benefit from the use of accessible technology.
The FCC’s call for biannual reports and further studies of accessibility is important because the resulting data will help shape future product development. We hope the FCC will seek input from industry as to the kinds of data that will help us best meet customers’ needs. The FCC’s plan to develop an online clearing house of information on accessible technologies will foster greater awareness of the variety of solutions available.
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Promoting An Accessibility Ecosystem of Choice and Opportunity
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Posted by Laura Ruby
Director, Accessibility Policy & Standards
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) held a field hearing last Friday in Washington, D.C, on broadband access for people with disabilities. The event, part of the agency’s efforts to develop a National Broadband Plan, included a technology exhibit of some of the options and programs available to improve accessibility.
Microsoft had an opportunity to demonstrate some of the enhancements in Windows 7 that make it easier for people to see, hear, and use a computer. These include the new lens mode and full-screen mode in Windows Magnifier; our resizable on-screen keyboard with text prediction, hover and scan modes; and new speech recognition and multi-touch technologies. We also showed how Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in enables closed-caption support of HD streaming media and rich Internet applications.
Microsoft has long been committed to developing innovative accessibility solutions and to integrating accessibility into broader product planning, research and development, and testing. We’re also committed to improving the interoperability of our software with the hundreds of assistive technology products that third-party developers have created to work with Windows. These specialized hardware and software products provide additional accessibility features for those with significant vision, hearing, dexterity, language, or learning needs.
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Unlicensed Spectrum a Boon to the Economy
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Posted by Anoop Gupta
Corporate Vice President, Technology Policy & Strategy
As consumers increasingly ask for mobile access to content and information wherever they are, sensible public policy regarding the allocation and efficient use of wireless spectrum is critical to ensuring that people can stay connected – whether they’re sitting in a coffee shop, riding in a car, or walking down the street. The huge importance of spectrum policy was highlighted at a workshop on the topic that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) held in Washington, DC, on September 17 as part of its effort to develop a National Broadband Plan.
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Moving a National Broadband Plan Forward
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Posted by Anoop Gupta
Corporate Vice President -- Technology Policy & Strategy
Steve Ballmer joined CEOs John Chambers of Cisco, Stephen Hemsley of UnitedHealth Group, and Jeffrey Immelt of GE in a videoconference with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski earlier this week. The topic: how the national broadband plan being developed by the FCC can provide benefits throughout America in all the critical areas of our economy, such as healthcare, energy and education. Broadband is equally vital to most all nations.
Steve emphasized that our economic growth can no longer be fueled by debt and that we must return to the traditional stimuli for economic growth: innovation and productivity. Today, broadband is foundational for driving innovation and productivity across all economic sectors, including energy, education, healthcare, and e-government.
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High Capacity Broadband is Core to America’s Future
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Posted by Anoop Gupta
Corporate Vice President, Technology Policy & Strategy
Today I had the privilege of participating in a workshop convened by the Federal Communications Commission as part of its effort to develop a National Broadband Plan by early next year. Today’s session focused on how best to supply the greater bandwidth required by emerging applications and devices, which could deliver huge social and economic benefits in nearly every aspect of our lives – in education, healthcare, commerce, energy and government, to name a few.
I want to commend FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and his colleagues for vigorously taking on this incredibly important and urgent challenge. Every 18 months, data storage capacities (driven by Moore's law) are doubling, and devices and applications are quickly evolving to take advantage of the trend. Bandwidth available in homes is rising too, but more slowly. This discrepancy is already creating a bandwidth bottleneck, and the situation will get worse over time.
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Paving the Way for Ubiquitous, Affordable, High-Capacity Broadband
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Posted by Paula Boyd
Regulatory Counsel
Martin Luther King, Jr. dedicated his life to the ideal of an all-inclusive nation that remedied not only racial inequality, but also economic inequality. In today’s tech-centric society, ensuring widespread access to high capacity broadband has become a prerequisite to expand economic opportunities throughout America.
So it was fitting that today, at the Martin Luther King Jr,. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., a broad-based new group took an important step toward making affordable broadband ubiquitous with the announcement of the “Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition.” The Coalition includes NGOs that represent educational and medical facilities, a range of public interest groups and private sector firms such as Microsoft.
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Schools, Libraries, Hospitals Should be Top Priority for Broadband Funds
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Posted by Marc Berejka
Senior Director, Technology Policy & Strategy
originally posted April 23, 2009.
Update 5/21/09: For the past four years Don Means has been a pioneer in the effort to bring the benefits of broadband Internet access to more Americans. Specifically, Don and his organization, the Community TeleStructure Initiative, have been working through the details of building high-speed links to community facilities around the country.
As Google’s Richard Whitt explains in a blog post, Don’s efforts received a nice plug today during a forum hosted by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. As the post explains, Don’s “Fiber to the Library” program seeks to provide high-speed data connections to each of the nation’s 16,548 public libraries. The estimated cost? About $20,000, per library, according to Don’s calculations.
We agree that would be money well spent.
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From 4/23/09: It’s been nearly a decade since Bill Clinton unveiled his plan to “bridge the digital divide and create new opportunity for all Americans.” Since then, government and private industry have made considerable progress extending the reach of the World Wide Web. Yet, in many communities the same challenge remains: How do we harness the Internet to deliver economic and social benefits to all segments of the population, in all parts of the country?
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed by President Obama in February, will help. The bill provides $7 billion to expand broadband Internet access in the U.S. That’s a lot of money, but as the Federal Communications Commission has pointed out, it’s not enough to wire every home in the nation.
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Concrete Steps to Enhance Broadband Wireless Access
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Posted by Marc Berejka
Senior Director, Technology Policy and Strategy
November 4th was an eventful day in Washington, D.C., and around the country. Yes, 125 million people cast their votes and selected a new president. But the U.S. Federal Communications Commission also cast ballots on how American innovation can help close the digital divide. The agency’s five commissioners voted unanimously to set the parameters under which unlicensed wireless devices can access the so-called TV “white spaces.”
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