Technology industries need an international standard to better serve people with disabilities, according to Gary Birch, executive director of the Neil Squire Society.
"It's standards to ensure that access to technologies can be guaranteed," Birch said. "There's no internationally agreed upon standards."
That was one of the key observations Birch made after he was invited to attend a UN conference in New York on the rights of people with disabilities.
The Neil Squire Society, a national non-profit based in Burnaby, has been using technology to help people with physical disabilities since 1984. Birch, a quadriplegic and global expert on the subject, was invited to attend the conference by the federal government's Office for Disability Issues.
The conference, on from Sept. 12 to 14, was a chance for Birch to network with other international representatives on the subject.
Some of the problems he noted were the cost of technology, which can be prohibitive for people with disabilities on a fixed income, and the rapid developments in technology that sometimes make solutions for people with disabilities obsolete.
Once someone figures out a way to make a piece of technology more useable for people with disabilities, a new model comes out, and that solution no longer works, he explained.
And while countries around the world may be struggling with similar issues when it comes to making technology accessible, the Third World is still waiting on widespread access to electricity.
"When you talk to other groups from Australia or England, a lot of the issues are similar, and then you end up talking to one representative from an African country, who says that's all very well, but we don't have electricity," Birch said. "Sometimes it puts our issues into context."
Following the conference, Birch said his organization also plans to collaborate more with G3ICT, a UN-led initiative to make information and communication technology more accessible to people with disabilities.
jmoreau@ burnabynow.com
