Accessible computing

One of the key things you need to be able to write about is how users with specific needs can make use of ICT.

Specific needs means users who need some form of assistance to use ICT. They might be partially sighted or blind for example. Other key specific needs might include hearing loss or some form of motor (or movement) disability. All of these needs can make some ICT devices or applications difficult, or impossible, to use to their full potential - a YouTube video, for example, may not be effective without subtitles for a hearing impaired user, whilst a visually impaired user may find it difficult to use the keys on a phone keypad to send an SMS.

In order to use ICT more effectively it sometimes needs to be adapted to meet a users needs.

There are a range of ways this can happen - sometimes content can be adapted, for example by adding subtitles - whilst at other times specific software or hardware needs to be used. Examples include screen reader software for visually impaired users or adapted pointing devices to replace a mouse for users with motor disabilities.

It's important to find out a bit more about this sort of stuff, so here are some quite useful places to start looking, maybe...

• How disabled users access the Internet - Webcredible has a pretty useful summary of some internet related stuff
• Screenreaders at See The Difference - a very short summary
• Smartphone cameras bring independence to blind people - a recent article from the BBC
• The RNIB has some helpful guidance on using film, TV and radio, with examples of adaptive technology
• The BBC website has an accessibility guide which might be both useful and interesting

Legal Man

Some links to useful stuff for the legal bits and bobs that you need to know about...

• Data Protection Act - the ICO; Wikipedia
• Computer Misuse Act - GCSE Bitesize (actually v useful - page 2 has more stuff); Wikipedia
• Copyright, Designs and Patents Act - UK Copyright Service; Wikipedia
• Health and Safety at Work Act - the HSE page; Wikipedia
• Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - Guardian (and it explains it too); Wikipedia
• Health and Safety Regulations (focus on the 1992 regs) - Knolwedge Base; Wikipedia
• Freedom of Information Act - the ICO; Guardian; DirectGov; Wikipedia
• Disability Discrimination Ac/Equality Act (NB: in 2010 the Equality Act largely replaced the DDA) - DirectGov; Wikipedia (DDA); Wikipedia (Equality Act)
• Digital Economy Act - Wikipedia; the Guardian has a whole section on the DEA; BBC

As the man said,

Get out of the city and into the sunshine
Get out of the office and into the springtime

Number Plate Recognition Kerfuffle in Birmingham

Automatic Number Plate Recognition and CCTV are used all over the place. When I drive into John Lewis' car park in Norwich I get scanned by both (I think - ANPR certainly). In many cases it's Quite Useful, I suppose, but things aren't always as straight forward...

It seems that in Birmingham in 2010 CCTV and ANPR was being targeted at areas with high muslim populations. Hmmm, now that strikes me as "dodgy" at least - to start with it's indiscriminate surveillance of everyone.Not to mention a potential breach of human rights legislation.

It's interesting (although complex) to consider quite what happens when ICT and human rights laws collide. We can (and do) monitor loads of stuff using ICT - your ISP is probably monitoring, in a way, whatever you do each time you use Google. If you're reading this blog at school then there are certainly people monitoring what you're doing. Are they infringing your human rights? Or are they just making sure you're not up to something illegal or unwise?

In this case, the authorities soon backed down and cancelled the scheme (I was tempted to write 'idea', but I'm not sure they had much of one really. The legal case against the scheme looked sound and it would have been difficult, at least, to justify that much surveillance of ordinary people without any form of intelligence (but, then, I watch Spooks remember...).

A report into the scheme, published in September of 2010, concluded that it was, indeed, largely illegal and had little justification. It highlights, however, the difficulties that the "authorities" have with the potential to use ICT and the legal safeguards which protect all of us. How far should they go? Compared with how far they could go?

The newly elected Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition Home Secretary, Theresa May, called for a significant reduction in the use of CCTV and ANPR in July 2010 - interestingly just after the Birmingham scheme was withdrawn. I'm not entirely certain how that fits with the publication of CCTV images after the inner city riots of the summer of 2011 though - seems that the government thinks CCTV is good some of the time but not all of it.

And I'm not quite sure how they square the legal and ethical circle of that.

The "I never knew how to do that" column #23

Here's some cool stuff that, maybe, you never knew about. Trust me, worth a look.

These are all videos with sound and stuff btw...

RSS Feeds and how they work and why they're useful for you, perhaps

Wikis and what they do (and maybe why you should be interested)

Social Bookmarking. Trust me on this - very cool idea, although I have no idea if you'll be able to use it at school.

Some interesting reading...

Ah, a blog post. That's interesting in itself.

Some links to take a look at to explore some of the recent stories that I find Quite Interesting. This generally falls under the category "Stuff that's happening that you should maybe know a little bit about for Unit 1".

Facebook changes and the impact on you? Maybe - Your life on Facebook

A thing about gaming in 'The Cloud' and it's potential for changing the way we use the Interwebz - OnLive cloud gaming comes to UK

How to unlock a car with an SMS? Yes, it seems possible. 


The arrest of a LulzSec hacker - which is possibly something you need to be aware of.

Let's go with that for now.

Paying with your mobile

Hmm, interesting- paying for stuff using your cell phone.

It's all part of the way in which ICT can help people to use stuff more efficiently. Why do you need a wallet full of cards when you have a cell phone and the ability to pass information over short distances securely? Everything, Penny, is better with bluetooth (although this might be using RFID...)

Some half decent links from the news report as well.

Passwords and the Law

Apparently it's illegal not to tell the police your computer password.

Yes, I know, caught me by surprise as well. But this is, apparently, the case, although I imagine that have to demonstrate good reason for wanting to know it.

This case, of a man suspected of having indecent images of children on his computer, highlights the issue. In those circumstances I can see why the law has a place - and this is under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 by the way. It would certainly be something that might make a useful contribution to a Unit 1, ICT and Society, exam.

There's also a story in the news about the impacts of the Digital Economy Act on file sharers - this blog article from the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones reviews the case, as well as providing lots of interesting links to other stuff on the Digital Economy Act 2010 - an Act which was pretty controversial when it was introduced and remains very open in the ways it might be applied.

Block 4 work - audience analysis

As I explained in class, there's a Writing for an Audience task at the bottom of the week 4 page (link direct to PDF file).

You might find this blog post from Septemnber 2009 handy actually

This asks you to investigate how ICT might be used by the visually impaired - specifically to use the internet. I've asked you to write a brief newsletter article (note: not a newspaper article!) with a target audience of teenagers - you'll see that I'm using a familiar target audience again. How nice of me...

You can keep this brief. Really it's about the investigation of the ways in which visually impaired people (i.e. a group with specific needs) might use the internet. The writing for an audience bit isn't that important - and certainly don't worry about the newsletter aspect of it - just try and make people want to read it. We'll come back to some techniques about how to make people want to read something in Block 6...

So, there you go.

Data Security Work

I need you to be able to:

• deal with benfits and drawbacks effectively
• find information from a variety of sources
• produce a bibliography effectively

For these reasons there's a short piece of work about Automatic Number Plate Recognition for you to complete this week. By the end of next week will be fine (that'll be by Friday October 1st (eek - October already!)

You'll find the work on That Blue Square Thing - it's the Automatic Number Plate Recognition task in the Data Security section of Block 3 - Law. Here's a direct link to the PDF document.

Public/Private Data and the Law

A bit of an update on a few things.

Firstly, these articles may be helpful to develop some of the legal and data security issues you need to understand:

• BBC Webwise guide to the DPA
• Doctor loses patient details - an example of poor security

In terms of the distinction between private and public data, I was interested to see some of the examples people were coming up with in class. Good examples of private data included information about criminal records, health records (with the specific example of records from an STD clinic), PIN details for bank cards, national insurance numbers and driving licence details.

I wonder, however, if there are ever cases where criminal records need to be made public - when someone is convicted their case may make the press, for example, and this is then a matter of puboic record (think of Pete Docharty for example - everyone knows he has a criminal record). I wonder, as well, whether there is an argument that sex offenders should, in some circumstances, have their details made public in some form?

Interesting examples of public data included gender and your family relations, say through a family tree. I wonder, though, whether there are some people who may wish to keep their gender private? I think this happens - you may be able to find examples of history where this has happened as well (George Eliot for example).

Perhaps your relations might be a slightly tricky area as well. Some people may not want to reveal their who their relations are! If you think about typical bank security questions like "what's your mother's maiden name", then perhaps the information is actually something we should be a bit more concerned about.

I did wonder in class whether there was a difference between the amount of information people of my age like to keep private and the amount that people of your age make public? Facebook profiles, and other social networking sites, can contain an awful lot of information which, in the wrong hands, might be better to keep private...

Communications revolution?

Interesting questions I have today:

• does e-mail make me more or less efficient at work?
• could I communicate without the internet for a week?
• is there sometimes just too much information out there?

I don't think there's much doubt that ICT has changed the ways many people, certainly in the western world, communicate. But there are certainly drawbacks as well as benefits to using stuff like e-mail.
Here's this weeks task:

1. think about the question "Should Leiston High School use e-mail as the main way of communicating between staff?" There are some context questions you might want to think about in the E-mail pros and cons presentation on That Blue Square Thing
2. you might want to take a look at other sources as well - there are some web links on the website
3. use the E-mail @ LHS writing frame to write a short report to answer the question
4. e-mail me this, preferably by Friday September 24th

Any problems, please let me know. You should have my e-mail address by now.