In 1985, California State University at Northridge (CSUN) launched its first Technology and Persons with Disabilities conference. I didn't attend the first year, but I clearly remember publishing the announcement in TACTIC magazine, the predecessor to AccessWorld, which I'd launched earlier the same year. I remember how the announcements piqued my interest and confirmed for me that my own timing, professionally speaking, was in alignment with the rest of the access technology universe.
CSUN, as the conference has come to be called, was the brainchild of Dr. Harry Murphy. As he was planning the October 1985 conference throughout 1984, he envisioned maybe 200 participants, primarily from California. That first event drew 600 people, and they came from everywhere. Today, the CSUN conference attracts over 4,000 attendees.
CSUN workshops and exhibit requirements quickly outgrew its college campus origins. The conference was held in the Los Angeles Airport Marriott and Hilton hotels for several years, until it outgrew those venues as well, and relocated five years ago to the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego, California.
At the CSUN conference, educators, developers, rehabilitation professionals, visionaries, and self-proclaimed geeks from throughout the US, Canada, and several other countries come together to share information and excitement about the future of assistive technology. For three days, there are approximately 20 sessions to choose from every hour, and an exhibit hall where a few hundred companies demonstrate their products. Add to this the private suites hosted by companies with demonstrations, parties large and small, and new and emerging entrepreneurs testing out their ideas in one of the most recognized venues in the industry and you have far more than any single individual can absorb. This article is an attempt to share as much as possible of the 29th annual CSUN conference held March 17–22, 2014 in San Diego.
CSUN 2014 Conference Overview
The first thing to point out in providing an overview of the CSUN conference is that it is impossible to see and do everything the conference offers! The official conference this year began with a keynote address Tuesday evening, followed by three full days of workshops and exhibits. Products and sessions of interest to every category of disability are on hand.
Sessions are keyed to give attendees some guidance in selecting workshops of interest. You can look for all sessions, for instance, that have been flagged with categories such as blind and low vision, deaf and hard of hearing, communications difficulties, learning disabilities, web accessibility, aging or, my own personal favorite, other. While these categorizations aren't perfect, they aid tremendously in sifting through the smorgasbord of offerings to choose just one workshop per time slot.
That said, there might be three or four workshops in a given hour that fall into the same category, so other conditions will factor into making choices as well.
Armed with the schedule of workshops, the exhibit hours, and the list of companies exhibiting, making a schedule beforehand is a good idea. Even with a schedule, however, there will always be distractions — a product catching your ear or eye over here, a conversation with a presenter there, a chance meeting with a new developer with an exciting idea—all contribute to a kind of organized chaos that is somewhat intoxicating to most fans of access technology.
This article will provide a summary of those things that fit into my own CSUN tour. Before we go there, however, a few words about conference accessibility will help set the stage.
Conference Accessibility
Since the CSUN conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities functions as an international venue for showcasing and discussing products, policies, and practices for the use of technology across disability lines, it would follow that the event itself would be a model for what real inclusiveness and accommodations looks like.
Sometimes it is.
The hotel where it is held is completely wheelchair accessible, for instance, so that all presentation rooms and exhibit areas can be easily navigated by individuals using mobility devices.
All presentation rooms are equipped with microphones and decent sound systems, and a wide array of assistive listening devices is available for use by individuals throughout the conference.
A well-maintained dog relief area is set up in a convenient location, but there is always room for improvement.
Six weeks prior to the conference, I called the CSUN office to ask about tactile maps. Yes, there would be tactile maps (otherwise known as braille maps) available at registration, I was told. I had already paid the rather hefty conference registration fee and wanted to get mine in advance. The reply was unrelenting. I could have one when I arrived at the conference registration table.
I arrived at said registration table Tuesday afternoon, but was informed that the maps were gone. No more would be arriving.
The program and other conference materials were available in hardcopy print, hardcopy braille, or a DAISY CD. On my registration form, I had indicated a preference for electronic media and a tactile map, but had expected that the electronic media would be a more commonly available format such as a secure digital card or USB flash drive.
One other accessibility feature that seemed to reflect an inadequate grasp of issues was the statement on the website that people needing a guide in the exhibit hall could receive such assistance for 20 minutes. Obviously, 20 minutes would be of little or no usefulness in such a populated venue. Since I did not test this feature personally, however, I can't report on whether organizers were fastidious about the 20-minute limit.
Fabulous Kickoff, Fabulous Presentations
The Tuesday evening opening session featured keynote speaker, Tommy Edison, a radio announcer who is blind and who has carved for himself an impressive social media niche via his role as "the blind film critic" and his "blind experience" YouTube videos. Edison's approach to talking about blindness is refreshingly lighthearted and somewhat irreverent and his laughter is infectious. His attitude served as a perfect launch for the official start of the conference.
General breakout sessions began at 8 a.m. Wednesday morning. Again, with some 20 choices every hour, making a schedule was far from easy; here are a few topics and specific sessions that I found particularly informative:
- Best practices in creating audio description
- Examining copyright of third party captioning
- Workshops to help content providers and consumers navigate the complex waters of multiple reading platforms and content formats
- Dr. Robert Carter, (the Tech Doctor) and his colleague Allison Hartley made a presentation specifically outlining the products and procedures required to create and distribute podcasts
- Using iPhone apps for everything from barbecuing to planning a trip
- The use of the iPhone camera by people who are blind
- Scott Davert of the Helen Keller National Center and Amy Mason of the National Federation of the Blind made a particularly interesting presentation on communication, both simplistic and technological, for people who are both deaf and blind
- A blind architect presented his approach to creating a virtual audio walk-through in creating acoustically navigable spaces
- HIMS Inc. and Serotek Corp. teamed up for a lively presentation demonstrating how mainstream and specialized technology can work together to create a seamless electronic and communications environment equivalent or perhaps superior to that enjoyed by people without disabilities.
There were lighthearted moments, too, such as when the HIMS Inc. robot was invited to their after-hours reception for mingling with guests and again to introduce a session or two.
All of the sponsors—Amazon, Comcast, Google, Freedom Scientific, Deque, and others—offered sessions, demonstrations, and events of their own as well. Comcast demonstrated its new set-top box, which will feature talking channel guide and program information, a demonstration that particularly dazzled blind and visually impaired attendees.
And Amazon set one day and room aside during which participants were invited to test drive the Kindle Fire.
Cruising the Exhibit Hall
While the exhibit hall was always busy, it was a welcome relief from the sometimes crushing crowds conjured by the breakout sessions. If you were in the right place at the right time, you maybe exchanged a word with Stevie Wonder who came, just as the rest of us did, to have a look at the latest wonderful tactile representation of the face of Abraham Lincoln, an example of the power of the 3-D tactile graphics produced at the American Thermoform booth.
NPR Labs demonstrated a prototype of its effort to bring the text of radio to deafblind people, and HumanWare proudly demonstrated the wireless capabilities of the second-generation Victor Stream.
HIMS Inc. had one of the most innovative new products with its Blaze. A combination book player and OCR device, the Blaze seems to be picking up where the KNFB mobile left off, but the product is still in beta so it's not quite ready for prime-time reviewing.
Whether your greatest interest lies in portable magnification devices, braille displays, tactile graphics, handheld book players, accessible web design, iOS accessibility, or something else entirely, there were plenty of products worthy of attention at CSUN 2014. See elsewhere in this issue of AccessWorld for additional product information.
Conclusion
Is CSUN still the definitive access technology event? While there are ways in which it could be even better, it is indeed the class act it has always been, and many of us are already looking forward to next year.
The 30th annual CSUN Technology and Persons with Disabilities will be held in San Diego, at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, March 2–7, 2015. For more information, visit the conference website.
