Mr. Banks. Hello everyone, Dick Banks with EASI here. And our guest this week on the EASI's webcast is longtime friend of EASI, a guy that Norm and I have known, and on the EASI lists people have known for a very long time, Mike Paciello from New Hampshire. Do you have any snow yet Mike?
Mr. Paciello. No snow yet, now. We did have some flurries last week but no snow. Glad to be here with you Dick.
Mr. Banks. Thank you Mike. Mike goes back to the beginning of the web and has had a long history with the web. And we are going to talk a little bit about an exciting thing that has just come to pass in the last month. We will be talking about Mike's book about web accessibility. It is really the first book that I have ever seen that is sort of a hold your hand, easy to understand book. But before we get into that Mike, how did you become interested in accessibility issues?
Mr. Paciello. It is actually kind of interesting. I started working for the Digital Equipment Corporation back in 1981. And shortly thereafter, took a position as a technical writer. Digital Equipment had a relationship with the National Braille Press out of Boston where upon request we would produce or provide them with they electronic files for some of the computer reference manuals that we had at that particular time for blind software engineers and programmers who were working around the world.
And I was asked, actually there was kind of a request that was put out publicly to all the technical writers who were working for DEC at that time, if anyone was interested in picking up the project. It just seems that it was an interesting opportunity. I had worked with folks in the deaf community as a deaf translator before. So I already had a little bit of background with some individuals with disabilities. And this looked like a great opportunity to get involved.
I started taking charge of providing the electronic versions of the files. Really what they were is nothing more than a standard electronic text file. There was nothing special about it. Making sure there was proper spacing in paragraph and line breaks, and things along that line.
And this led me to look at things from so many different viewpoints. At that particular time Digital, IBM, and a few other companies were starting to get involved in something that was called Genco. Which really was the predecessor of what we know today as Standard Generalized Markup Language, or SGML, created by Dr. Charles Goldthorpe from IBM.
One of the advantages of the markup language was that you could call or markup an electronic file, and it would produce electronic books in a way that could be output to almost any device type. Back then, the popular thing was to either do it to a standard line printer, or to a post-script file.
But it certainly seems that there was an opportunity there to produce it in a way that would be accessible to Braille, and producing it for Braille output where there was a Braille printer or a Braille display. Or possibly creating large text versions of Bibles, or rather, books that we were dealing with.
So that was how I got started. I started to take an interest in markup language. And I started touching based with some individuals in the blind or Braille translator community. George Kersher is one person. Joe Sullivan from Dougsbury was another.
Mr. Banks. Yes. I know the names well, and I am sure many out there do. Obviously in your work with text and making that accessible, you got involved with the web very early. Can you give us a little history of how you became involved in the web? And talk a little bit about WebABLE, your website?
Mr. Paciello. Not long after I started getting involved with markup language, Joe Sullivan, George Kircher, myself, and several others including you and Norm.
Mr. Banks. Sure.
Mr. Paciello. George and I co-founded an international working group called the International Committee for Accessible Document Design, or ICADD. And we became very familiar with a very close friend of ours who has since passed away, by the name of Uri Rabinski. Uri was the president of a company called Soft Qaud. And Soft Quad was generally a leading developer of authoring tools for SGML. And that relationship eventually led to getting involved with the web.
Now I kind of was running a dual thing there. I was already involved with the web here at Digital, primarily because I had changed jobs from a technical writer to a usability engineer and was working on user interface design. The ability to create software that was much more usable. Then we would test people to see what would be best for them. How they were using Windows interfaces.
Mr. Banks. Right.
Mr. Paciello. Of course many of us that are in this area of assistive technology are quite aware of the challenges that were presented once the Windows environment became popular.
In about 1993, the web here at Digital was well on its way. We were still, at that particular time, using what were the first two major browsers. Which where the (inaudible) browser developed by Tim Berger. He is the guy who developed the web. And Links, which were both text based browsers.
And immediately I started getting involved and started thinking about the ramifications of the web. At that particular time, everything was text based. So there was not a graphical entity at all, other than attaching a file with a graphic to it. So it seemed to me that this was an ideal forum for the blind and the print disabled community as a means for communicating, sharing files, and what not.
But then, as history helps us to appreciate, not long after the web started to catch on back in its early days a certain group of students at the University of Illinois at Rebaata Champagne invented something that probably most of us have forgotten by now, a browser called Mosaic.
Mr. Banks. Oh my goodness.
Mr. Paciello. What Mosaic did was it basically launch what we have today as a graphical web. And it led to all of the things that we can do today with dynamic web content, the multimedia things, things along that line. But the point was that it completely changed the paradigm of the web from a text-based entity to a graphical entity. And the moment that it did that, all the problems that had been introduced in the Windows environment for software computers where now actually worse for the web.
Mr. Banks. As you remember both of those, the popularity of Windows and the inclusion of graphics on the web, were both times of panic for a lot of people with disabilities. Because of the popularity, and nobody paying any attention to accessibility.
Mr. Paciello. There is absolutely no doubt about that. And probably the biggest issue then was, it was at a time when I think many individuals who were working to increase accessibility in the Windows environment and the Windows interface, were just starting to see some successes. And now they got pounded from the backside of it, or with everything that was going on with the web. So there were a lot of issues right away that immediately made it difficult for many users in the visual disability environment and communities that they were going to be perplexed with.
So what I decided to do at that particular time was right away, in 1994, was to at least set up a website that would start to talk about some of the issues. There were other people that were also involved. Paul Fontain, who used to work for Digital Equipment.
Mr. Banks. Right.
Mr. Paciello. And then he went to the General Services Administration down in Washington D.C. Greg Vandurhaven was involved, from Trace, in earlier renderings. So there were some people that were beginning to get involved with this.
I decided to set up WebABLE and get it out there as a disabilities portal. Even back then, we used to call portals (inaudible).
Mr. Banks. Right.
Mr. Paciello. So if folks could at least have some access to the web and get some idea what was going on, and what were the issues around accessibility. So I set it up in, I think it was around 1994 when I launched it. And immediately it caught on and got a lot of popularity amongst not just the community of people with disabilities.
But where I was really targeting WebABLE, and to this day I still do, is to industry and to standards. To people who really, the ones who have control over what's going to happen today as far as emerging technology is concerned. And what is going to happen as far as the future. I try to build it as a site that would keep people informed.
Mr. Banks. Well, I am obviously going to put the url on this interview. So that people, while they're listening to you talk, can maybe be checking out the page. Or checking out the site I should say. I would like to get involved now with a pretty exciting event that happen in the last month. And that is the release of your first book on web accessibility.
And folks, I was sent a copy to evaluate. And I think it is going to turn into, for lack of a better term, I think it is going to become the Web Accessibility 101 Bible for people who need to know about the books. Talk a little bit about the book. I know it was a real trial to get that out finally, because things changing so fast. Talk a bit about it Mike.
Mr. Paciello. Sure. You know interestingly, I had been approached about doing this book back in 1996. That was the first time I was approached about doing it. But I was working at Digital, and things were just a little bit too heavy work wise. So I really did not get a chance to do it.
So my first publisher reapproached me, wrote the book, and had it all done. I actually wrote the book, and a lot of people find it somewhat incredible, but I actually wrote the book in three months. And the current book as it is right now is probably half the size of what it originally was. The original publication was closer to the seven hundred pages. Right now I think it cuts out at just under four hundred.
So it is quite different, and I will talk about the reason why it is different a little bit later. But the book was actually done and ready to go to press last year in May of 1999. But because of something that went on with my original publisher being sold to another company, and then eventually the original publisher decided that they could not put the book out for publication.
I went back to a couple of other publishers who had also expressed interest, one of which was a company called Miller Freeman. I had written a column for Miller Freeman in their journal called Web Techniques. And they said right away that they wanted to pick it up.
We went through all the legal channels of getting it done, getting it rewritten, getting it revised, and getting it updated the best that we could. I think you made a good point, the fact that things are changing so fast and so rapidly that it makes it almost impossible to release the book between the time that you write it and get it produced. There is a good three to five month production process.
So that by the time you finish the book, it could be six months later. Well within six months, by the time it gets to the shipper, things you have written are already outdated.
Mr. Banks. It is tough to read that way. But I really want to jump in here and say that a lot of the stuff you have in the book is not time dependent. And that is not an easy thing to do. There are basic rules and basic ideologies that are in the book. And basic design things that are in the book that will be good five years from now.
Mr. Paciello. Absolutely. And then again, that was one of the things I was going to say. I had to make a slight adjustment in the technical content so that it would not be time dependent, if you will. You may get a more general book, more of a book that people could rely on. As you said, getting them through the ABC's of designing a website for accessibility. Certainly all of the material that is in there showing people what kind of tools are there, how to code pages, all of that is by no stretch of the imagination irrelevant. It will be very helpful.
And I do think that it is a very good first book for people to get started on. Because one of the things that I also wanted to do was I did not want to make this a publication just for computer software engineers and webmasters, if you will. I wrote this so that everyone who reads the book not only will understand what they need to do to make a website accessible, but they will also know why.
And they will also know things about usability related to how they can, in the future, design websites or whatever the next emerging technology is by including people with disabilities in the development process from a software standpoint. And I have to say that I have received comments from respected colleagues and folks in the field who have commended me for exactly that part of it. Getting people to start thinking in terms of inclusion, including people with disabilities in the development of next generation technologies. So that we will not have to deal with the fact that whatever the next thing is, it will not be accessible. It will be accessible, because people with disabilities are included as part of that process.
Mr. Banks. And that is always something that we have really try to push, the proactive approach. All of us have. I mean by us, the people that have been in this since the ground floor. It is a much easier thing to design and develop web pages and that type of thing, at the front-end before you go into. Rather than try to retrofit. It is so much harder when you try to retrofit something that is already been done.
Mr. Paciello. Absolutely.
Mr. Banks. It is really tough. We did an interview with Harry Murphy, and it was sort of funny when we talked to Harry. Norm asked him where he thought technology was going. And Harry's answer was," I have no idea, because it happens so fast." I'm going to ask you about the same thing about the web Mike. Where do you think it is going?
Mr. Paciello. Well I know right now that development involving third generation, not the second generation of the internet, but the third generation of the internet will have a heavy focus on what most people today would called virtual reality. In the labs they are calling it immersive interfaces. So you will see the look and the feel.
The next generation web will focus on a couple of key things. One is it will be more at a three-dimensional environment. You'll also note that it will be certainly more collaborative in nature. That is, people will be able to the work on and share the same set of information interactively from anywhere in the world. Those will certainly present significant challenges again to many folks with disabilities.
And then the third thing is this idea that you are probably hearing quite a bit about, is the whole idea of appliances. More or less these are information devices, for lack of a better term here. But the device might be something like your refrigerator or your house, in that sense.
But these things will all be hooked up in one way or another to the internet, and to the web. And that again presents another set of challenges. Again, especially from a design standpoint. To ensure that individuals with disabilities will be able to interact with those appliances in a way that will be meaningful, in a way that will be useful, and certainly in a way that will help them to continue to be productive individuals in society.
Mr. Banks. Well if we can work on making those things accessible. The thing that I think of immediately is people with disabilities and independence. Being able to do things that they have never been able to do. In all, to have the ability to do things that they have never been able to do before. And I think that is extremely important.
Mr. Paciello. The important thing to keep in mind here to is that technology is an answer. There are no boundaries here where accessibility is concerned. The boundaries that exist today only exist because quite frankly, the scientists and developers and the researchers of the world, and ultimately business itself, are the ones that put the boundaries upon any thing that is being developed or enhanced where technology is concerned.
Mr. Banks. Well the real hope here, I think Mike, is I think there is a lot, and I don not mean this in a derogitory way but I think it is ignorance. People who are sitting and saying, "You know what? We are going to develop these things, and we do not care about people with disabilities at all." Do you agree with that?
Mr. Paciello. I would agree with you except that I tend to take a slightly different stand. Rather than use the term ignorance, because that generally rubs everybody the wrong way. I tend to think that there are a couple of issues here. And again this is one of the things that I really wanted to accomplish with my book. And I do feel, this is the first of three books that I am writing, that this is the one that I wanted to try to do. And that is, there is really and truly a lack of awareness and education to industry and to government, and to standards bodies. The people that are making the decisions about technology as a whole, the way that we live. And so we as a community of people who work with people with disabilities, or are people with disabilities, we need to kind of standup and worked on the education, the awareness, and outreach and really take a platform. I am not talking about protests and things along that line.
Mr. Banks. I know.
Mr. Paciello. I am talking about seminars, workshops, getting into businesses and setting up conferences. This webcast is a good example of that kind of outreach. And another thing is, asI have said all along, and I really feel that this has probably been a major issue, or a lacking on the part of some of these industries that were already involved in accessibility. The IBM's, the Microsoft's, the Sun's, the Compaq's, there is no identifiable champion for accessibility. There is no person that you can just look to and say, "This is the person who is taking the lead. This is the company that we can go into. This is the organization that is going to take us into the next generation, the new millennium or whatever you would like to call it, and really set the pace for key technologies that are accessible. And we need that. If there was a person or a champion, I truly and honestly believe that it would be much easier to influence and make a difference internationally.
Mr. Banks. I haven't thought about that. But the more you talk about it, the more I think you're probably 100 percent correct. I had never thought of it in that way before.
Mr. Paciello. Think of any movement that you can think of, whether it is civil rights, whether it is education, whether it is politics, it doesn't matter. Any kind of movement, any kind of national or international movement always has a champion standing at the forefront. And that often is what makes a difference.
Mr. Banks. I thoroughly agree with you. I completely agree. And I do like your, I stand corrected, I do like your word awareness rather than ignorance. It is a much better sitting word. And that is really the case. It is just simply that access issues are simply not thought about.
Mr. Paciello. That's right.
Mr. Banks. And that is just very brief and very short. But that is when you and I do. That is what EASI, and WebABLE, and Greg Vanderheiden, and all those other folks do.
Mr. Paciello. Absolutely.
Mr. Banks. Before we go Mike, I think there have been a lot of people who have been getting into access. As we present, and I am sure that as you do your workshops around the country have found out, there are a lot of people that want to do this because it is the right thing to do. However, there are those who do not consider it to be the issue of importance that it is. So the game is changing a little bit.
And I just when you talk briefly a little bit about the law. Do you see the law, particularly 508, as being something that will wake folks up to the fact that they really need to get past the talking part of this and really start to consider it seriously? Where do you think the law is going?
Mr. Paciello. As a technologist, I personally hate to see things mandated by federal laws. Because usually what that says is, "OK, you have to do this." I would much rather side on the area of innovation. And wish that technologists of the world, the leading corporations, would take that side of it. Especially where accessibility is concerned.
But the fact the matter is that they are not. And because there are misconceptions about the market and the importance of accessibility for people with disabilities in general. Such that laws like section 508, and particularly at least one that is already enforced and is having a direct impact on many of the high-tech telecommunications and emerging technologies like wireless and satellite is section 255 of the telecommunications law.
And I really do believe that, as many people are already aware, the Americans with Disabilities Act is having a national effect, and it is already influencing laws and standards all over the world. Canada has picked up tremendously, in what they are doing and what they are focusing on. The European Community has established a fund for all of the nation's there to focus on technology and access and laws that will mirror the effects of section 508 and section 255. Australia and Japan are doing similar things, so we are seeing these things being trendsetters internationally for people with disabilities.
Now on the national front here in this country, in the United States, you're not hearing a whole lot about section 255. Which somewhat surprises me. However, let me say this. I know that it is having an effect, because as a consultant in this field I have been involved with several high-tech corporations in a consulting capacity. And these corporations already have corporate standards, and have announced corporate movement based on section 255. And many of them have done similarly in regards to section 508. Because certainly their relationships with the government, and being able to do business with the government will be greatly hampered if they do not make these adjustments.
So we are not hearing anything publicly. Well, we are hearing some things. But we are just starting to see things trickle out, the effects. And I think once section 508 goes into effect, once it really becomes public law, than we will see a lot more in the area of readjustment and mindsets about the importance of accessibility.
I also think it presents a terrific opportunity for all of us, all the folks that are listening to this EASI webcast, all of the folks who are involved in technology throughout the world, it provides a great opportunity for us to stand up. To take the lead, and help industry at large really see the advantages of accessibility now and in the future.
Mr. Banks. How well you said that Mike. That is so true. So in closing, to let people know, I know that it is available at Amazon.com. Because I went and I looked, and I typed in Paciello as an author and there it was in all its glory, your book. Is it best to send people there? Do you want to send them to the publisher? Or what is best?
Mr. Paciello. Well you can do a couple of things. First of all you can go to almost any online publisher, whether it is Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, Borders.com. In fact, even Wal-Mart.com carries it.
Mr. Banks. Oh wow.
Mr. Paciello. So it is just about every online store, the online libraries and bookstores carry the publication. Now if you want more information about the book, if you on information about its cost, I believe the list price, the retail price is $34.95.
Mr. Banks. That is correct.
Mr. Paciello. Most of the online stores are giving discounts of five or six dollars. So you can certainly get it for somewhere around the $26 or $27 range. If you decide the want to order more than 10 copies my publisher, CMP Media, offers lots of discounts based on bulk sales and things along that line.
But you can just go to WebABLE. Go to www.WebABLE.com. And you will see an area right over there where there is a link to the book. And direct links to the publishers and the online sales crews that are selling the publication from there.
And one of the things that I have also done. I have had the opportunity to meet many people in workshops and seminars, and some of the public speaking set I have done here now and in the near future. And I have got lots of friends in that area. And so people ask me if I will autograph a book, or send them an autograph.
Well I did make arrangements for bookplates. So if you would like an autographed copy or an autograph bookplate, just send me e-mail. It is paciello@WebABLE.com. And I will be happy to send you an autographed bookplate if you would like that.
Mr. Banks. I did not know that, and I will be doing that. Mike, it was really a delight. We had trouble getting together for this, but it was well worth it. I know that you are a busy guy, and we are also busy. But I think this is probably going to be one of the most popular webcasts we have had. I wish you well with the book, and I cannot wait for volume 2 and volume 3. Again Mike, thank you for talking to us.
Mr. Paciello. And thank you again for inviting me. And I really appreciate the support from EASI for this business.