Gadget Firms Tackled on Usability
From: BBC News - 05/15/2006

The Alliance for Digital Inclusion (ADI) has thrown its support behind an
initiative that seeks to make technology easier to use. "We recognize that
technology can be both a cause of and a solution to exclusion," says Heidi
Lloyd, spokeswoman for ADI, whose members include Cisco, Intel, BT,
Microsoft, and IBM. The group has joined the Royal National Institute for the
Deaf (RNID), the Disabled Living Foundation, and the technology consultancy
Scientific Generics in an effort to sign up computer, mobile phone, and TV
makers for the E-Inclusion Charter, which calls for improvements in the
navigation and usability of their products. "If you sign up to it, it's not
just a piece of paper, it's an undertaking to bring about real change," adds
Guido Gybels, director of new technologies at the RNID. Technology products
should be accessible to anyone who buys or uses them, Gybels maintains,
adding that everyone would benefit if high-tech firms paid more attention to
the design of software and hardware. Applying the principles of usability and
user testing to products and services offer business advantages, studies
indicate. 

Read the entire article at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4772139.stm

Links:
ADI
http://www.citizensonline.org.uk/adi

RNID
http://www.rnid.org.uk/

Disabled Living Foundation
http://www.dlf.org.uk/

Alliance for Digital Inclusion
http://www.alliancefordigitalinclusion.org.uk/

Scientific Generics 
http://www.genericsgroup.com/

The Alliance for Digital Inclusion (ADI) launches research project
http://www.emptech.info/news_story.php?ID=358

Access to Technology for Disabled and Older People
http://www.dlf.org.uk/news/adi.html

Guido Gybels
http://www.guidogybels.net/
http://www.ictrnid.org.uk/euc/biogg.html